The Negative of Capital: The Marxian Concept of Economic Crisis (Historical Materialism Book)

The complex exposition of the concept of economic crisis in Capital and its preparatory manuscripts gave rise to different interpretations about the causes and modalities of crises themselves. Are their causes chronic under-consumption, inter-sectoral disproportionality or a fall in the profit rate? Are they merely possible or absolutely inevitable? Jorge Grespan's work renews these traditional debates by treating the concept of crisis as the negative of the concept of capital. By means of a thoroughgoing exposition of Marx's masterwork, his book reconstitutes the steps by which Capital 's exposition progressively enriches its content and form. To this end, dialectical categories such as measurelessness and relative necessity are mobilised and developed. ‎Contents ‎Preface to the English Edition ‎Acknowledgements ‎Introduction ‎1. The Double Face of Capital ‎2. Content of the Crisis ‎3. Crisis and Modality ‎Chapter 1. The World of Commodity Producers ‎1. The Social Division of Labour ‎1.1. The Problem of the Beginning ‎1.2. The Fetishism of Commodities ‎1.3. Abstract Labour ‎2. Money and Crisis ‎2.1. Deduction of the Money-Form ‎2.2. The Fetishism of Money ‎2.3. The Metamorphosis of the Commodity ‎2.4. The Possibility of Crisis ‎Chapter 2. The Constitution of Capital ‎1. From Simple Circulation to Capital ‎1.1. The Circuit of Capital ‎1.2. The Concept of Surplus Value ‎1.3. The Inversion of the Bourgeois Law of Appropriation ‎2. The Subjectivity of Capital ‎2.1. The Fetishism of Capital ‎2.2. The Infinitude of Accumulation ‎2.3. Relative Surplus Value ‎3. The Measureless Nature of Crisis ‎3.1. Contradiction and Crisis of Capital ‎3.2. Crisis as a Potential Power ‎Chapter 3. The Figures of Reproduction ‎1. The Circuits of Capital ‎1.1. The Meaning of Capital’s Circulation ‎1.2. The Forms of the Circuit ‎1.3. The Turnover of Capital ‎2. The Reproduction of Social Capital ‎2.1. Simple and Expanded Reproduction ‎2.2. Crisis as Interdepartmental Disproportion ‎Chapter 4. Capital as a Totality ‎1. Competition and Profit ‎1.1. Competition as a Process of Realisation ‎1.2. The Formation of the Rate of Profit ‎2. The Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit ‎2.1. The Fall of the Rate of Profit as Mismeasurement ‎2.2. Tendencies as Necessary ‘Laws’ ‎3. Periodical Overaccumulation ‎3.1. Overaccumulation as Mismeasurement ‎3.2. The ‘Bad Infinity’ of the Cycle ‎3.3. Necessity in the Cycle ‎Conclusions ‎1. The Time of Crisis ‎2. The Effective Crisis ‎3. The Modalities of Crisis ‎4. The Power of Fetishism ‎Postface ‎1. Commercial Capital and Its Crises ‎1.1. Commercial Capital ‎1.2. Commercial Crisis ‎2. Interest-Bearing Capital and Its Crises ‎2.1. Interest-Bearing Capital ‎2.2. Financial Crisis ‎2.3. The Modality of Financial Crisis ‎Bibliography ‎Index of Names