Capital Dynamics Research Articles

From FOSS to profit: Digital spatial technologies and the mode of production

Existing literature has scrutinized the impact of geospatial technologies from various angles. This article adopts a heterodox vantage point—the mode of production—to illuminate the intricate power dynamics woven into the fabric of these technologies. By focusing on the mode of production, we meticulously demonstrate how ostensibly novel digital technologies and geospatial data formats wield power within social relations of production. Responding to calls to scrutinize the political economy of spatial technologies and map-making tools, we aim to unravel the underpinning social relations, software development techniques, and technologies that shape file formats like GeoJSON and Esri Shapefile. By tracing the historical evolution of these formats, the article reveals how digital labor, both voluntary and expropriated, shapes the landscapes of profit-driven technology firms. The rise of open standards is not a departure from for-profit motives but rather a manifestation of the confluence of free, open, and for-profit. Ultimately, we argue that the intricate connections between digital technologies, geography, and capitalist structures enroll seemingly independent FOSS products into broader systems of capital accumulation. These findings highlight the far-reaching impact of geospatial technologies and their role in perpetuating and reshaping capitalist dynamics.

Racial Capitalism: From British Colonialism to the Settler Colonial Apartheid State

This article explores the development of capitalism in Palestine under British colonialism and the Zionist settler colonial project. It examines first, Israel's internal and external capitalist dynamism, including its treatment of its non-European citizens, namely indigenous Palestinians, and non-Ashkenazi (Arab) Jewish settlers. Second, it explores the state's interdependent relationship with Western, especially US imperialism. The article argues that the British colonial state was crucial in enabling the Zionist project to materialize, leading to weakening the socio-economic fabric of the Palestinians in their own lands and homeland, creating a favourable condition for the Zionist project to gradually penetrate the land of Palestine and dispossess its population. As a European (Jewish) settler colonial movement, Zionism, founded on racism and racialization, aimed at establishing a new Jewish enclave separate and independent from the indigenous Palestinians. This separateness made it resemble apartheid South Africa, yet the historical specificity of Palestine, where the Zionist settlers did not just alienate, exclude and when needed, use and exploit the Palestinians, but also expelled the indigenous Palestinians and claim Palestine as a ‘pure’ Jewish state.

Deglobalization and China’s Visions for Reconfiguring Development Space

ABSTRACT Recent years have seen proliferating media references to ‘deglobalization’, frequently drawing historical analogies with periods of crisis and dislocation, such as the 1930s. At the same time, scholars have traced shifting geographies of development as a multi-centred unfolding of capitalist dynamics, entanglements and worldmaking projects, amidst failures and crises in/of development, sometimes discussed in terms of ‘abjection’. Negotiating these conjunctures and narratives, this paper re-considers and contextualises media debates about deglobalization, placing them in discussion with how Chinese narratives are re-visualising global development. In tracing the rise of ‘New Development Thinking’ (新发展理念) in China, we consider how global development as a project has increasingly come to occupy centre-stage in China’s sense of repositioning itself as a world power. Our conclusions reflect on the resultant consequences and challenges.

Green Vulcans? The political economy of steel decarbonisation

ABSTRACT Studies of the political economy of decarbonisation have begun to move beyond the price-centrism of neoclassical economics to explore the role of profits in propelling, or failing to propel, a green transformation. This article pushes this argument further, claiming with Marx that the focus on profits is useful insofar as it leads us to a broader analysis of the capitalist dynamics of competition, overaccumulation, and crisis that any green transition will have to reckon with. This is illustrated through an historical study of the steel industry – a prodigious carbon emitter that must be urgently greened. This article traces the interwoven patterns of crisis and technological change in steelmaking through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before drawing out certain core themes that then serve as a lens through which to analyze the prospects of steel decarbonisation today. Since its modern birth, technological revolutions in steelmaking have generated and in turn been conditioned by crises of overaccumulation and restructuring. These same forces are shaping the drive to decarbonise the industry today, as vital green investments are obstructed by reoccurring cycles of overcapacity and weak profitability. Greening steelmaking, and capitalism more generally, means wrangling with this boom-and-bust logic and its political ramifications.

Modernidad, democracia y pandemia ante la emergencia de los nuevos autoritarismos

Modernity and democracy constitute the ethical and political horizon of our time. Apel and Habermas' discourse ethics, Rawls' theory of justice, reflect the effort to sustain our rules based on democratic values. In this paper we will take a critical look at the situation of current democracies, as well as on the impact of the pandemic on the exacerbation of a generalized crisis of democratic systems. When analysing the situation of democracy during the covid-19 pandemic, the rise of authoritarian features has been observed: new mechanisms of violence, new forms of control, social coercion, centralization of political and economic power. The pandemic has shown a crisis in the capitalist system, revealing the null protection capacity of the global democratic system. Taking into account some authors such as Bauman, Hannah Arendt, Donatella di Cesare, Zizek and Byung-Chul Han, we will analyse the crisis of modern democracies and their authoritarian elements, from the impact of the pandemic on democratic government systems. Finally, we will analyse the elements that promote the thesis of authoritarian democracies as inherent forms to global capitalist dynamics.

Principles of an economic sociology of innovation

AbstractAlthough innovation is a core element of capitalist dynamics, it turns out that, to date, there is no coherent Economic Sociology of innovation, leaving the discipline oblivious to explaining fundamental economic dynamics. Nor has the enormous importance of novelty and innovation in current societal transitions evoked a corresponding research program in Economic Sociology, meaning that Economic Sociology struggles to grasp contemporary societal change. The article reviews the rather disparate diversity of approaches that could speak to a remedy, stepwise assembling and integrating them to establish the principles of an Economic Sociology approach to innovation. First, resonating with ‘embeddedness’ as the core paradigm of Economic Sociology, it spells out the embeddedness of innovation processes in social institutions. Next, it reviews innovation in relation to the diversity of normative, cultural‐cognitive, regulative, and relational institutions, carving out the relevance of the combination of institutions in ‘fields.’ It then determines ‘valuation’ as the overarching mechanism of how institutional frameworks interact with innovation processes. Eventually, discussing ‘institutional work’ as a major property of institutional frameworks, it raises awareness for the mechanisms of the ‘co‐evolution’ of institutions and innovations.

”Detta hav av orättvisa”

“This sea of injustice”. Motherhood and Colonialism in Sara Lidman’s Jag och min son Exploring Sara Lidman’s novel Jag och min son (1961,1963), this article delves into its nuanced intersection of motherhood and colonialism. The narrative scrutinizes Sweden’s role in the colonial system, with a particular focus on the South African apartheid regime. Through the lens of a Swedish single father navigating Johannesburg in pursuit of personal enrichment, the story highlights his strained relationship to several mother figures, unraveling complex threads that intertwine parenthood, colonial structures, and whiteness. Using the theoretical framework of motherhood studies, such as the concept of the other-mother, the analysis seeks to unveil the intricate capitalist dynamics of familial relationships within the context of international power hierarchies. These themes in Lidman’s works would only grow stronger in the years to come, and by examining Jag och min son, these early tendencies in Lidman’s writing are illuminated.

The moral economy of land markets in the Nicaragua highlands

AbstractThis article explores how small‐scale farmers' shared moral understandings of land shape both land sales and land rental markets, in the context of the commoditization of agriculture in Nicaragua. The results here presented are based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a subsistence farming community in the highlands of Nicaragua. This research shows that even in relatively commoditized market economies, shared yet contested ideas around the ethics of a community moral economy stall and constrain the local marketization of land. Social relationships, ideas of a sacred origin of land, and expectations about the duties of landholders toward their community peers undermine the capitalist dynamics of supply and demand. This ethical challenge to capitalist market expansion into land markets enables the survival of small‐scale subsistence farming. These findings are important, as they show how land markets are shaped by differing perspectives on historical dynamics of land tenure, class differentiation, and the everyday moral economies in which competing ideas of obligation, solidarity, and fair prices are articulated.

The “Schengen Turn” as the Reshaping of the French-Italian Border: The Critical Convergence of the Geography of Border Controls and Capitalist Dynamics (1990s-2000s)

ABSTRACT On the 1st of January 1993, border controls at the French-Italian border were officially “abolished” in the framework of the Schengen area. However, the border didn’t disappear; rather, its geography adjusted to the evolution of the capitalist logics of the European market, creating a hierarchized borderzone where “boundaries and scales intersect to fuel further expansion of (…) the frontiers of capital” (Mezzadra and Neilson 2013, 321). The article draws on the fields of critical border studies and radical geography to show the critical convergence of capitalist dynamics and border police practices in the French-Italian border zone. This has been reflected in the production of transport infrastructures enabling high-speed cross-border circulation at the expense of local roads and practices. Moreover, the evolution from “fixed” border control to “random and mobile” identity checks led to the creation of a police targeting system that selects passengers on the basis of a social-racial profiling. After the Schengen agreements, the French-Italian border became a mobile device allowing the accumulation of capital through the selection of “legitimate travelers” and the control of “illegal migrants”, enacting locally the “polarization of mobility” (Bauman 1998) that occured at a global scale at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Clarification and Application of the Category Profit on Alienation

This article presents profit on alienation (POA) as one of the sources of profit in capitalist economies. In addition to identifying and situating POA among other profit flows, we have attempted to operationalize it in the real estate and finance sectors. In the empirical part of the article, we estimate POA in those sectors in Turkey for the period 2010–2019. The extent of estimated profits based on POA in those sectors is not insignificant. These findings confirm our position that utilizing POA in exploring capitalist dynamics would be a fruitful endeavor. JEL Classification: B3, B51, H27, G51

Deconstructing the market: agrarian change and social differentiation in Jordan

ABSTRACT Because of the advanced state of capitalist dynamics’ penetration in agriculture, Jordan constitutes an enlightening and overlooked case study. Shaped by a history of war, dependency and imperialism, the monarchy has undergone a rapid process of agrarian change that has radically changed the social fabric of agriculture. Nowadays, a new process is occurring: the growing polarisation of two social classes of capitalist producers reveals the processes of accumulation and disempowerment driven by relations of credit and debt. The market, both in its abstract and physical realities, is the central mechanism that fuels the ongoing process of social differentiation.

Post‐pandemic Transformations and the Recasting of Development: A Comment and Further Reflections

ABSTRACTThis Comment is both a response to critique and a wider contribution to renewed debate on the politics of development and development studies amidst multiple, intersecting challenges. In an article published in World Development in 2021, Leach et al. proposed that COVID‐19 and earlier epidemics provided fundamental lessons for post‐pandemic transformations and for rethinking development more broadly. In an article published in this journal in 2023, Wiegratz et al. critiqued Leach et al., arguing that their universalist framing effaces structural inequalities between the global North and the global South, and that the analysis underplays the importance of historically embedded political‐economic inequalities. This Comment shows how elements of the article by Wiegratz and colleagues point to ways to extend and elaborate Leach et al.’s overall argument — not to refute it — but that it is also based on a highly selective reading of the latter's work and its implications. Focusing first on the core question of universality, and then more briefly on the themes of inequalities and of uncertainty, it resurfaces parts of the authors’ work that Wiegratz et al. selectively ignore, and reflects on further recent evidence of pandemic impacts and inequalities amidst structural violence and contemporary capitalist dynamics. These are relevant across all geographies and polities, although in different ways, as shaped by particular contexts and histories that include, but also cross‐cut and complicate, dichotomies between the so‐called global North and global South. This Comment thus clarifies and extends the argument for a recasting of development around a radically transformative, egalitarian and inclusive knowledge and politics, relevant to all settings across the world.

Multiple territorialities and the shifting conservation frontiers of Patagonia

AbstractThis conclusion to the In‐Focus issue examines the conservation frontier in Patagonia. The conservation frontier is a historical process of spatial transformation connected to the mobilization of imaginaries that unlock existing regimes of resource control and promote new territorialization projects. The discussion highlights the creation of national park systems, the securing of the contested border, and the conversion of Andean Patagonia into a space of sublime wilderness. We argue that the contemporary conservation frontier is an open field of contestation defined by its multiplicities. The articles comprising the special issue reflect crosscutting themes regarding frontier multiplicities: varied conservation‐based territorialization projects; the genesis of onto‐epistemic frictions between actors; and disparate frontier temporalities that anchor spatial transformations. These contemporary frontier projects draw attention to new avenues of change related to Indigenous self‐rule and carework, co‐management regimes, infrastructure building efforts, and eco‐apocalyptic temporalities, as well as hyping the possibility of Patagonia as a bastion for alternative energy. Thus, this conclusion highlights how conservation frontiers are historically made and remade in relation to spatial production tied to capitalist dynamics and state formation.

Re‐centring class‐making across borders at various durées: Translocational optic, coloniality of class theory and multi‐scalar capitalist dynamics

AbstractSociological research on cross‐border class‐making often centres on contemporary dynamics of social inequality in the context of migration and mobility. Relying on the cultural–sociological and processual understanding of 'class', the article integrates three bodies of literature to study complexities of global and transnational class‐making to overcome the 'presentist' bias. Building on the accounts of the Annales School, and specifically on Fernand Braudel's famous distinction between courte durée, moyenne durée and longue durée of historic time periods, the article brings together three different bodies of research: (i) transnational and intersectional approaches; (ii) conceptual history of class theory and (iii) theories of racial and multi‐scalar capitalist dynamics to develop a flexible and relational, but historic‐sensitive toolkit for the analysis of global and transnational class‐making. One of the greatest advantages of this multi‐temporal outlook is that it allows to avoid over‐generalizing accounts on the logics of class‐making and to unpick potentially heterogeneous dynamics of class (re)production.

Labour Law and the ‘Capitalocene’: Law, Work and Nature in the Ecological Long Durée

The concept of the ‘Capitalocene’ draws attention to the origins of the climate crisis in capitalist dynamics, and specifically to the need for natural resources to be reproduced for less than their true cost if firms are to remain profitable. This insight suggests that the environmental crisis, manifested by extreme climate events, and the crisis in labour law, manifested by wage suppression and rising inequality, have the same root cause. Bringing production and reproduction back into balance will require changes of a structural kind to the global economy, and a rethinking of the law-nature nexus. Labour Law, Extreme Climate Events, Human-Induced Climate Change, Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Rising Inequality, Law-Nature Nexus

On the colonization of the environment

In this article, I apply the colonization thesis from Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action to capitalist societies’ relationships with their natural environment. Resolving the fixation of his critique of capitalism on the so-called lifeworld ( Lebenswelt) to include questions of the environment ( Umwelt) opens up new vistas in the ongoing ecological reorientation of Critical Theory. If we think about the exploitation of the natural environment in Habermasian terms, the paradoxical irrationality of the expansion of instrumental rationality from the market mechanism becomes evident, providing us with normative leverage against the systemic devastation of external nature. The conversed colonization thesis calls for promoting the ecological preconditions for self-determined societal development through the collective containment of capitalist dynamics: since it undermines the enabling capacities of the ecosystems based on which the ‘project of modernity’ thrives, economic instrumentalization of nature can no longer proliferate.

Ch'ixi Epistemology and The Potosí Principle in the 21st Century

Abstract The author focuses on the project exhibition, “The Potosí Principle,” curated by Alice Creischer, Max Hinderer, and Andreas Siekmann Initially installed in Madrid in 2010 and then traveling to Berlin and La Paz, the show cut across the institutionally defined and often rigorously guarded boundaries between curatorial practice, aesthetic expression, and scholarly research to explore global capitalism's dynamics from the perspective of the Spanish colonial empire and its distinctive imagery. However, despite the exhibition's creative installation techniques and revisionist history, it generated a considerable scandal when a self-organized group of La Paz-based artists and scholars committed to anticolonial practices accused the curators of continuing the logic through which the modern West has represented others. The author argues that this criticism parallels the often-fraught negotiations between artists, curators, and curated cultures at the boundary zones between art frameworks.

Economia Política da Uberização: A Exploração dos Trabalhadores conforme as Três Formas de Intermediação do Trabalho nas Empresas-Plataforma

Abstract A wide range of studies has emerged on the precariousness of uberized jobs. Nonetheless, there is a gap regarding how these precarious jobs are integrated into the global movement of private valuation and appropriation of the workforce. Thus, this essay aims to apprehend the movement of capital reproduction whose material base occurs in the digital platform dynamics, demonstrating the different forms of intermediated work engendered in the global accumulation process. Using a historical materialist approach, we analyze the phenomenon of uberization in the expansion movement of the production and circulation of goods, scrutinizing the dynamics of big platform companies regarding their relationship with workers and customers, revealing mediations in the movement of values, which culminates in three forms of labor intermediation: (a) Form 1: as a commodity for individual consumption; (b) Form 2: as part of the work processes of industrial capital; and (c) Form 3: as a moderator of exchange relationships. We conclude by indicating that the three forms of uberized products help us to understand how this commodity production process submits men and women to precarious working conditions and increased exploitation. Furthermore, forms 2 and 3, which are more complex and mediated, demonstrate how uberization spreads across the production chain and facilitates the extraction and attraction of surplus value elsewhere, denoting the imperialist character of capitalist dynamics today.

Profitability and Its Determinants: Operationalizing the ‘Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall’ in the US Economy, 1950–2020

This analysis seeks to demonstrate the theoretical and empirical salience of the ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ in relation to the concrete evolution of the US economy between 1950 and 2020. The theoretical-methodological approach adopted in this study is based on the work of Shane Mage and Murray E.G. Smith. This approach re-specifies the Marxian value categories and ratios for purposes of empirically operationalizing them as a theory of fundamental capitalist dynamics using national accounting data. Contributions include (1) the treatment of systemically necessary unproductive labour as a ‘constant capital overhead cost’ and (2) a method of managing ‘fictitious profits’ that are imputed into the national accounts and thereby enabling a more realistic estimate of ‘social surplus value’ (the numerator of the Marxian average rate of profit) in what has become an ‘era of fictitious capital’. The empirical findings reveal a persistent rise in the organic composition of capital, as well as a rise in the rate of surplus value, accompanied by a long-term downward trend in the average rate of profit in the postwar US economy.

Introduction

Scholarly and public interest in the nexus of capitalism and global governance has intensified in recent years. The persistence of economic inequality, the rise of populism, the backlash against globalization, the Covid-19 pandemic and supply chain fragility, the resurgence of open conflict in Europe, and the urgency of the climate change crisis have only drawn further attention to the relationships of markets and trade to norms and institutions. Solutions to many of these challenges, which are closely tied to capitalist dynamics, require interventions on a scale that only institutions of global governance can provide. At the same time, these challenges compromise governance institutions by making them susceptible to private influence. Moreover, critics have raised alarm about the ways some forms of global governance – such as powerful philanthropic institutions, private summitry forums, and international organizations that enforce economic globalization on nation-states – evade democratic accountability. Such developments have prompted scholars to analyze the entangled histories of capitalism and global governance and the evolution of the global economy and its regulation as well as collective efforts to provide for the well-being of humans and their environments.