The Unique Ontology of Capital

Robert Albritton
Additional contact information
Robert Albritton: York University

Chapter 2 in Dialectics and Deconstruction in Political Economy, 1999, pp 13-53 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The object of knowledge of political economy, as I understand it, is capitalism. It is generally agreed that capitalism has existed for at least 300 years, but in that period it has developed unevenly and taken many different forms, some societies being more capitalist and some less. Despite the multiplicity of forms, there seem to be certain persistent forces or logics at work that tend to homogenise social relations in capitalist societies, even if they fall short of ever achieving full homogenisation. Commodity-economic logics seem to have a certain automaticity about them that, though never total, is discernable, as in the movement of capital from less profitable to more profitable sectors, or in the movement of prices as supply and demand vary. Also, once commodity-economic logics subsume the labour and production process they are both expansive and invasive, in the sense that in the long run they tend to expand globally and to subsume other forces or shape other social forces more than being shaped by them, as evidenced by the increasing globalisation of capitalism and the impact of capital on all areas of social life. And if we look at capitalist history, it seems as though the tendency towards the domination of economic life by an increasingly self-regulating commodity-economic logic grew until at least the 1870s (some might say to the present day, but today the degree of state intervention and other forms of organised intervention is much greater than in the 1860s in England).

Keywords: Political Economy; Capital Accumulation; Capitalist Society; Labour Power; Concrete Level (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-21448-4_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230214484

DOI: 10.1057/9780230214484_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().