#capitalaspower — Public Fediverse posts

The basis for authority under feudalism was religion. Kings and their subsequent hierarchies were vested with power because religious institutions maintained that a deity had prescribed that it should be so.

Under Capitalism, the basis for authority can be found in the twin dominators of legal and economic ideology, but as the economic ideology wanes, rather than being replaced by liberatory ideologies, we are seeing the resurgence of religious language in everyday life, and this does not bode well for the future if what we seek is freedom. Because rather than religions of indigenous or marginalized communities, we are seeing the resurgence of the dominant organized religions, especially Christianity.

"If you take away the opiate of wealth, however, people will quickly return to their religious drug of choice. It happened after the Soviet Union collapsed (Pankhurst, 2012). And it seems to be happening within anglophone countries today. The growth engine has slowed and the gains that remain are going almost exclusively to the rich. If these trends continue (and the linguistic patterns that go with them), the future may look less like a post-capitalist utopia, and more like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale."
- @blair_fix

https://capitalaspower.com/2022/12/fix-have-we-passed-peak-capitalism/

#CapitalAsPower

When prices increase (which is not some magical phenomenon of markets, but the direct action of companies SETTING prices) Capitalist firms are engaging in a depth cycle, and in order for this to help them accumulate power, economic growth must be stagnant. But the measures for both economic growth, and inflation, are deeply flawed, and obfuscate the actual dynamics of this process. Fortunately Bichler & Nitzan, and Blair Fix have taken steps to elucidate these complexities.

"the evidence leans in favor of the stagflation thesis. Among the 114 countries studied here, energy growth correlates negatively with inflation among 74 of them — about two thirds of the sample. And overall, the average energy-inflation correlation is negative, at roughly -0.1"
- @blair_fix

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2023/01/17/is-stagflation-the-norm/

#CapitalAsPower

it's funny how so many opposed to the concept of degrowth, don't oppose it from a political economy standpoint, but from a colloquial standpoint.

Too often i've seen arguments being made that degrowth somehow = de-evolving as a species.

Growth is an economic concept driven by political factors. It is primarily a measure of the accumulation of capital. It is not an indicator of societal progress. Every single correlation you've seen that attempts to link GDP or per capita income growth to societal progress, is bunk.

We have made progress as a society IN SPITE OF growth, not because of it. In fact, if it weren't for economic growth, we would be a lot better off as a society

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/639/4/20200500_bn_growing_through_sabotage_web.htm

#CapitalAsPower

The handwaving of neoclassical and mainstream economists for subjects like inflation, and corporate pay gaps, is becoming more laughable by the day, and that's saying something because they were laughable to begin with. It's almost getting to the point where we can't laugh anymore. These tears are no longer tears of laughter.

"... firms are not units of production; they are units of power. Firms are hierarchical organizations shrouded in the cloak of corporate law. And today’s corporate rulers — like all elites before them — use their power to enrich themselves. On that front, the Song evidence suggests that US elites have recently upped their game, sending a torrent of income from the bottom to the top of the corporate hierarchy. In short, US firms have become more despotic."
@blairfix

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2022/11/19/firming-up-hierarchy/

#CapitalAsPower

The pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality is not only a problem because it pretends that hard work is what is needed in order to be financially successful. A more insidious aspect is that it encourages participation in a capitalist system by selling the idea that everyone can have a share of the pie, when in reality, Capitalists WILL NEVER SHARE THE POWER PIE!

" there is no better way to maintain power than to convince society that there is room for everybody on the financial bandwagon"
- Yuri Di Liberto

https://capitalaspower.com/2022/04/di-liberto-hype-the-capitalist-degree-of-induced-participation/

#CapitalAsPower

The State of Capital pretends to be the rational alternative to disorganized chaos, but really it is an autocatalytic sprawl of power thar self-reinforces along the logic of accumulation for the sake of creordering society according to the will of the powerful.

"The self-referential application of rationality as an end in itself plus hubris is the ‘mastery’ aspect of rational mastery. We propose that there are two modes of rational mastery:
(a) the extension of property and its monetary quantification, or capitalization; and
(b) procedural rationality institutionalized as bureaucracy: an organization’s rational goals are calculated and implemented using formal procedures by a hierarchical organization that is created according to allegedly rational principles.

The two modes exist side by side—indeed, capitalizing organizations like corporations are typically internally organized as bureaucratic hierarchies—and there are feedback mechanisms between the two modes"
- Ulf Martin

https://capitalaspower.com/2019/10/the-autocatalytic-sprawl-of-pseudorational-mastery/

#CapitalAsPower

The problem with thinking that capitalism = private ownership of the means of production, instead of power, is that we will inevitably use the wrong strategies to oppose capitalism. 150 years of failure to end capitalism should be enough evidence to understand that the Marxist economic strategy cannot work.

If capitalists are focused on the capitalization of power, then we must be equally focused on the decapitalization of power.

"The men and women of action, teetering on the verge of praxis, look for clear guidance. They want an ‘objective’ template to tell them what is to be done. But this objective template is nowhere to be found. The old theoretical scriptures no longer offer unequivocal instructions. Having been sanctified, immortalized and fossilized, they shed less and less light on the rapidly changing world. They can no longer be simply read and followed. They need to be deconstructed, interpreted and adjusted to the ever-changing reality."

https://capitalaspower.com/2018/10/theory-and-praxis-theory-and-practice-practical-theory/

#CapitalAsPower

Neoclassical Economists want us to believe that markets are able to achieve dynamic equilibrium where supply, and demand meet at an optimal point that satisfies buyers and sellers. The problem is, it's all bullshit.

"In practice, demand, supply and equilibrium do not and cannot explain any, let alone all, markets simply because they are unknown. They can be guessed through interviews but interview-based curves are logically dubious, statistically inadequate and, most importantly, empirically unverifiable. In this sense, the 1-2-3 toolbox is not almost empty, it is entirely empty."

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/722/

#CapitalAsPower

The myth that the public owns a nation's public debt, should have died a few decades ago and yet it persists. More and more, the public debt is owned by a small handful of Dominant Capital households and corporations, and when a crisis comes, it is the owners of the debt that get to decide what policies that nation will follow. And those policies have pretty consistently been about protecting the interests of the owners of the debt.

"Over the past three decades, and especially in the context of the current crisis, the ownership of federal bonds and federal interest has become rapidly concentrated in the hands of dominant owners, the top 1 per cent of households and the 2,500 largest corporations [while] the federal income tax system has done little to progressively redistribute the federal interest income received by dominant owners"
- Sandy Hager

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/382/

#CapitalAsPower

Since it is Christmas, I thought I would talk briefly about standards of living. Many people attribute the high standards of living in the developed world, to capitalism. But the amount of energy the State of Capital must plug into maintaining its power, far outweighs the amount of energy that goes into improving the lives of people. From guard labour, to policing, insane military, we see the constant enforcing of the power structures that dominate our lives. And that's not even counting the maintenance of copyright laws, or shelving of beneficial inventions, or the non-payment of most care work, or any of the thousands of ways in which power is maintained through social sabotage.

"in hierarchical societies, a good chunk of the captured energy is earmarked not for material gain, livelihood and wellbeing, but for sustaining and fortifying the hierarchical structure itself. Moreover, and as we shall see below, the split between the portions going to hierarchy and livelihood is never fixed. In fact, it is bound to vary, both across societies and over time, and this variability means that, in practice, there is no one-to-one mapping between the overall energy capture of society and the ‘livelihood’ of its population: for any given level of energy capture, there can be a whole range of ‘standards of living’.

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/639/4/20200500_bn_growing_through_sabotage_web.htm

#CapitalAsPower

When someone challenges your uninspected beliefs, the cognitive dissonance you experience can cause you to reject an uncomfortable truth in favour of a comfortable lie. Don't be that person who refuses to engage with solid critique, just because your pre-conceived ideas give you the warm-and-fuzzies.

"There is no joy more intense than that of coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms of currently accepted ideas."
—Cecilia Payne

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/

#CapitalAsPower

When I talk about the state, I'm not talking about just the government. I'm talking about the entire system that alienates people from their ability to self-govern and have control of the civic functions of society.

""The legal–organizational entity of the corporation and the network of institutions and organs that make up government are part and parcel of the same encompassing mode of power."

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/

#CapitalAsPower

During market turndowns, it doesn't really matter to Dominant Capital if they are losing market value. What matters is that they lose market value more slowly than the average, because this means they ultimately are gaining more market share, and once they bounce back, they will be stronger than the average firm.
Accumulation is differential.

"Further analysis in Nitzan (1992, pp. 418–22, Figures 9.15a–9.15h) demonstrates that the link between inflation and differential depth is positively related to firm size. The analysis disaggregates US-based corporations into eight groups ranked by assets size, showing that the larger the firm, the greater and more systematic its differential gains from inflation."

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/

#CapitalAsPower

For those who wonder about the application value of understanding Capital as Power.

Using the CasP depth/breadth cycle framework, I made some prediction back in October about what would happen with the birdsite once Elton Mush took over. And while my prediction wasn't 100%, I was still more right than I was wrong (and I might still be correct about the bots, because I've seen people talking about increased bot activity on that hell site)

#CapitalAsPower

Neoclassical Economists have ignored the Cambridge Controversy, and Marxist Economists are still being haunted by the Transformation Problem. And yet, instead of engaging with a theory that has better explanatory power than their own theology, they actively choose to ignore CasP or engage with it only superficially enough to cast aspersions. And then they have the audacity to call what they do science. Charlatans, almost without exception.

" mainstream economics remains a theology dressed as science. Like a well-organized religion, it promises everything and delivers nothing."

https://capitalaspower.com/2021/12/bichler-nitzan-the-1-2-3-toolbox-of-mainstream-economics-promising-everything-delivering-nothing/

#CapitalAsPower

When we talk about Strategic Sabotage, it is not just business limiting industry in the workplace. Strategic Sabotage has many approaches that can, and do, offer business the means by which to limit industry's ability to see to human needs. Because Industry is not just an economic phenomenon, it is a holistic social relation with aspects in multiple spheres of societal influence.

"Anything that can undermine the resonance of industry is a potential business asset. The private ownership of plant, equipment and knowledge (intellectual property); the ability to manipulate and leverage government policy and control the underlying population via education, propaganda and advertisement; the power to undermine autonomous thinking, restrict creative collaboration and humane planning, block the free movement of people and things, induce war and destroy the natural environment – these are all means with which business can sabotage industry. And whatever can sabotage industry can be used to extort income from it by threatening to incapacitate its activity. "

https://capitalaspower.com/2022/10/bichler-nitzan-the-business-of-strategic-sabotage/

#CapitalAsPower

While it is true that many capitalists are driven by greed, it would be a mistake to reduce our analysis of Capitalism to such a singular motivation. Instead, it makes more sense to look at a variety of motivations that all function within a logical framework of power. Regardless of the motivations, all capitalists must adhere to the logic of capital, which informs them quite clearly, that they must accumulate and augment their power, or lose it permanently. Power is both means and ends to the accumulator.

" the central CasP concept of differential accumulation has no lineage to Veblen’s notion of differential advantage. Indeed, the two concepts, developed in two different eras, are diametrically opposed. Veblen, who wrote at the turn of the twentieth century, before the appearance of business indices and financial benchmarks, emphasized the absolute drive for ‘maximum profit’ and saw strategic sabotage merely as a power means to an economic end. By contrast, CasP, which was developed at the end of the twentieth century, sees power not only as a means of accumulation, but also – and perhaps more importantly – as its ultimate purpose. Accumulators, it argues, are conditioned and driven to augment not their profits and assets as such, but their relative
power, and this means that, as
symbolic bearers of power, these profits and assets should be measured not absolutely, but relatively to those of others – hence the imperative of differential accumulation."

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/583/

#CapitalAsPower

If your analysis is focused on the wrong aspects of a phenomenon, your solutions can only fix things if they do so accidentally. We have too little time, and too little power, left to us to keep holding onto incorrect analyses just because they tell a good story.

"Industry is not synonymous with business, the ‘nominal’ is not a mirror of the ‘real’, and economic growth need not go hand in hand with the capital share of income. Production is certainly crucial: without it, there can be no society, no capital and no capitalists. But what matters for the accumulation of capital and the capitalists who own it is not production as such, but the power capitalists exert over it, and this power requires strategic sabotage. Without the strategic sabotage of industry, business enterprise disappears, capital vanishes and capitalism disintegrates. And unless we decipher the complex patterns and consequences of this sabotage, we can understand neither the development and gyrations of capitalism, nor how to contest and change them."

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/750/

#CapitalAsPower

We often think of Power as a terrible force used to subjugate society, and with good reason. Compared to the Power of Dominant Capital, our individual power, or the power we have as groups, seems incredibly small and inconsequential. But when we combine and coordinate our power, working together, we are capable of challenging even the power of the global ruling elite.

"Over the past century, capitalists have managed to impose the belief that their regime is natural and therefore unalterable. They have constructed a power architecture that is more sophisticated, encompassing and supple than anything the world has ever seen. And they have successfully concealed this state of capital by erecting an anti-scientific front that fractures the consciousness and dresses up the power institutions of capitalism as if they were mere technical aspects of a narrow ‘economic narrative’.

This edifice of power and deceit hinges on the normal rate of return and the ability of dominant capital to beat it. As long as ‘business-as-usual’ sabotage and dissonance keep capitalists convinced that profit is normal and the growth of capitalization natural, and as long as dominant capitalists are able to exceed the normal and increase their power, the state of capital holds steady and its patterns remain ‘deterministic’.

But this ‘determinism’ is not an external law of nature or a historical law of motion. Instead, it is merely the ‘determinism’ of the capitalist rulers. The patterns of this ‘determinism’ reflect the consensus of those who dominate society. They show the conviction of the rulers that they are in command — and that those whom they command cannot resist. This conviction, though, is never certain. Confronted with sufficient opposition, whether explicit or implicit, it can crumble. And when it does crumble, the result is to shatter the ‘determinism’ of the rulers, the patterns of their differential accumulation and, possibly, the entire state of capital that defines their rule."

https://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/

#CapitalAsPower #CoordinationAsPower