The Nature of Capital: Marx after Foucault

by Marsden; Richard

• ISBN13: 9780415198615
• ISBN10: 0415198615
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Nature of Capital: Marx After Foucaultoverturns the received wisdom on the incompatibility of the thought of Marx and Foucault to develop an original synthesis based on a critical realist re-reading of their work, and to understanding the postmodern condition.

Table of Contents

List of figures	xii
List of tables	xiii
Acknowledgements	xiv
Apologia	xvi
Credits	xvii
PART I Discovering what is real	1	(46)
Marketing postmodernity: `just like reality, only better'	3	(12)
Introduction	3	(1)
The postmodern market-place: the hyperreal mall	3	(5)
The postmodern workplace: the virtual university	8	(3)
Reengineering modernity: marketing change	11	(4)
Postmodernity and capital: a personal retrospective	15	(12)
Introduction	15	(1)
Beyond `control': reading Marx retroductively	15	(4)
The modernist Marx versus the postmodern Foucault	19	(6)
A third way: Marx <--- realism ---> Foucault	25	(2)
Retroduction and realism: how to theorize	27	(20)
Introduction	27	(1)
What is real?	27	(4)
How do we know what exists?	31	(8)
The nature of social objects	39	(8)
PART II Conclusions in search of a premise: formulating the problem of modernity	47	(40)
Beyond good and evil: the modern Manicheism	49	(17)
Introduction	49	(1)
The modern Prometheus	50	(2)
`The doubts which assailed me': the Rheinische Zeitung	52	(2)
The modern Manicheism: civil society and political state	54	(7)
Marx's early excavations	61	(5)
Everything pregnant with its contrary: nothing constant but change	66	(21)
Introduction	66	(1)
Forays to the surface: the counter-critiques	67	(10)
Redefining P123: how to explain modernization	77	(10)
PART III The unknown masterpiece: Marx's model of capital	87	(60)
The inner connection: production, distribution and circulation	89	(27)
Introduction	89	(2)
How to read the `rough draft'	91	(12)
An ironic travesty: the 1859 Preface	103	(5)
Some errors of traditional Marxism	108	(2)
The unknown masterpiece	110	(2)
The lesson of The Origin of Species	112	(4)
The nature of capital: surface, structure, movement	116	(31)
Introduction	116	(1)
Capital as a cell: society's genetic code	117	(2)
The metaphor of movement: value and gravity	119	(2)
Imagining capital: surface, structure, movement	121	(2)
Capital's structure: relations of production	123	(12)
Capital's movement: mode of production	135	(7)
The missing mechanics of capital's motion	142	(5)
PART IV: Capital: society's law of motion and microphysics	147	(58)
How labour is organized into a productive force: cost accounting, IR and HRM	149	(28)
Introduction	149	(1)
Productive `forces' and abstract labour	150	(5)
Disciplinary power	155	(15)
A political technology of the body	170	(7)
The promised `connected whole': Marx, critical realism and Foucault	177	(16)
Introduction	177	(1)
Marx and Foucault revisited	177	(4)
Foucault: a realist reading	181	(9)
Marx and Foucault: the promised `connected whole'	190	(3)
Working capital to the surface: explaining the here and now	193	(12)
Introduction	193	(1)
The problem redefined	194	(2)
The materialism of civil society and the fetishism of things	196	(2)
The idealism of the state and the reification of concepts	198	(2)
Discovering liberties: inventing disciplines	200	(2)
Capital and postmodernity	202	(3)
Notes	205	(13)
Bibliography	218	(12)
Index	230