IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/zbw/caprev/199106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Autocatalytic Sprawl of Pseudorational Mastery

Author

Listed:
  • Martin, Ulf

Abstract

According to Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler (2009), capital is not an economic quantity, but a mode of power. Their fundamental thesis could be summarized as follows: capital is power quantified in monetary terms. But what do we do when we quantify? What is the nature of money in a capitalist society? Indeed, what is power? In the following, we try to develop a co ncept of power as the ability of persons to create particular formations against resi stance. The kinds of formations persons can think of depend on the society they live in, which can be identified by what Cornelius Castoriadis called its social imag inary significations (SIS). The core SIS of capitalism is rational mastery operating with computational rationality. Computational rationality in turn rests on a parti cular understanding of how signification works: it works through operational symbolism , as theorized by Sybille Krämer in analyzing the philosophy of Leibniz. When the concept of the SIS of modern rationality was developed in the 1950s and 1960s, bureau cracy was seen as the main organizational mode of rational mastery. We argue that there are two modes of rational mastery, capitalization and bureaucratization, that interact with each other in capitalist society. The paper concludes with deliberat ions on the future of rational mastery and possible ways out.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin, Ulf, 2019. "The Autocatalytic Sprawl of Pseudorational Mastery," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(4), pages 1-30.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:caprev:199106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/199106/1/bna-606.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Donald MacKenzie, 2008. "An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262633671, April.
    2. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2009. "Capital as Power. A Study of Order and Creorder," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157973.
    3. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "Growing through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(5), pages 1-78.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2024. "The Road to Gaza, Part II: The Capitalization of Everything," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2024/04, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    2. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "The Limits of Capitalized Power. A 2020 U.S. Update," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2020/06, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    3. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2023. "The Capital As Power Approach. An Invited-then-Rejected Interview with Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 2(2), pages 96-174.
    4. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "Growing through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(5), pages 1-78.
    5. Fix, Blair, 2024. "A Tour of the Jevons Paradox: How Energy Efficiency Backfires," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 108 (Supp, pages 40-64.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Martin, Ulf, 2018. "The autocatalytic sprawl of pseudorational mastery (version 0.12)," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2018/04, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    2. Fix, Blair, 2019. "How the Rich Are Different: Hierarchical Power as the Basis of Income Size and Class," SocArXiv t8muy, Center for Open Science.
    3. Blair Fix, 2021. "How the rich are different: hierarchical power as the basis of income size and class," Journal of Computational Social Science, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 403-454, November.
    4. Fix, Blair, 2019. "How the rich are different: Hierarchical power as the basis of income size and class," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2019/02 (v.2), Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    5. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "Growing through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(5), pages 1-78.
    6. Howard, Philip H., 2018. "Craftwashing in the U.S. Beer Industry," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 4(1), pages 1-13.
    7. Fix, Blair, 2021. "Living the good life in a non-growth world: Investigating the role of hierarchy," SocArXiv wem9p, Center for Open Science.
    8. Blair Fix, 2022. "Economic development and the death of the free market," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 1-46, April.
    9. Fix, Blair & Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2019. "Ecological Limits and Hierarchical Power," EconStor Preprints 195043, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    10. Fix, Blair, 2018. "Energy, Hierarchy and the Origin of Inequality," SocArXiv v9pur, Center for Open Science.
    11. Fix, Blair, 2021. "Living the Good Life in a Non-Growth World. Investigating the Role of Hierarchy," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2021/02, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    12. Rothstein, Sidney A., 2020. "Toward a discursive approach to growth models: Social blocs in the politics of digital transformation," MPIfG Discussion Paper 20/8, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    13. Levi, Tia & Israel, Emil & Grubman, Max, 2024. "Power (Re)distribution: How Dominant Capital Regained Control of the Energiewende," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Online Fi, pages 1-33.
    14. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "The Limits of Capitalized Power. A 2020 U.S. Update," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2020/06, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    15. Vastenaekels, Julien, 2024. "Degrowth and Capitalist Power: A Step Towards a Theory of Change," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 2.
    16. Fix, Blair, 2019. "Energy, Hierarchy and the Origin of Inequality," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 14(4, April), pages 1-32.
    17. Julien Vastenaekels, 2024. "Degrowth and capitalist power: A step towards a theory of change," Post-Print hal-04584989, HAL.
    18. William R. Morgan, 2023. "Finance Must Be Defended: Cybernetics, Neoliberalism and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-21, February.
    19. Thomas Delcey, 2019. "Samuelson vs Fama on the Efficient Market Hypothesis: The Point of View of Expertise [Samuelson vs Fama sur l’efficience informationnelle des marchés financiers : le point de vue de l’expertise]," Post-Print hal-01618347, HAL.
    20. Spaniol, Matthew J. & Rowland, Nicholas J., 2022. "Business ecosystems and the view from the future: The use of corporate foresight by stakeholders of the Ro-Ro shipping ecosystem in the Baltic Sea Region," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:caprev:199106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.capitalaspower.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.