Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/218858 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Review of Capital as Power [Volume:] 1 [Issue:] 5 [Publisher:] Forum on Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism [Place:] s.l. [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 1-78
Publisher: 
Forum on Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, s.l.
Abstract: 
According to the theory of capital as power, capitalism, like any other mode of power, is born through sabotage and lives in chains – and yet everywhere we look we see it grow and expand. What explains this apparent puzzle of ‘growth in the midst of sabotage’? The answer, we argue, begins with the very meaning of ‘growth’. Whereas conventional political economy equates growth with a rising standard of living, we posit that much of this growth has nothing to do with livelihood as such: it represents not the improvement of wellbeing, but the expansion of sabotage itself. Building on this premise, the article historicizes, theorizes and models the relationship between changes in hierarchical power and sabotage on the one hand and the growth of energy capture on the other. It claims that hierarchical power is sought for its own sake; that building and sustaining this power demands strategic sabotage; and that sabotage absorbs a significant proportion of the energy captured by society. From this standpoint, capitalism grows, at least in part, not despite but because of – and indeed through – sabotage.
Subjects: 
capital as power
energy
growth
hierarchy
power
sabotage
JEL: 
P16
Q4
P18
P28
L23
URL of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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