Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/157995 
Year of Publication: 
2015
Publisher: 
The Bichler and Nitzan Archives, Toronto
Abstract: 
What is accumulation? Visibly, accumulation is a quantitative process, demarcated in financial quantities. However, what is the meaning of those quantities? This question has been the subject of great debate within political economic thought. A new theory of accumulation, capital as power (CasP), argues that the financial quantities of accumulation express the distribution of power among the owners of capital over the qualitatively diverse, complex and mutating social order. With this dissertation, I explore the relationship between the quantities and qualities of accumulation by examining the De Beers diamond cartel, focusing on the period 1935-55. What does it mean to say ‘capital is power’ in the specific setting of the global diamond assemblage? Research and analysis led me to focus on four important relationships that De Beers had to establish, maintain and transform in its struggle for differential accumulation: with diamonds themselves; with potential and actual diamond buyers; with governments; and, with families, especially the Oppenheimer family that controlled De Beers for over 80 years.
Subjects: 
antitrust
advertising
capital accumulation
cartel
culture
De Beers
diamonds
family
globalization
market research
monopoly
quantity-quality
state of capital
WWII
URL of the first edition: 
Additional Information: 
Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Program in Social and Political Thought, York University, 2015
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Doctoral Thesis

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