Buch, Englisch, Band 39, 384 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 794 g
Buch, Englisch, Band 39, 384 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 794 g
Reihe: Studies in Critical Social Sciences
ISBN: 978-90-04-20430-0
Verlag: Brill
The project of applying general systems theory to social sciences is crucial in today’s crisis when social and ecological systems clash. This book concretely demonstrates the necessity of a Marxist approach to this challenge, notably in asserting agency (struggle) as against determinism. It similarly shows how Marxism can be reinvigorated from a systems perspective. Drawing on his experience in both international systems and low-input agriculture, Biel explores the interaction of social and physical systems, using the conceptual tools of thermodynamics and information. He reveals the early twenty-first century as a period when capitalism starts parasitising on the chaos it itself creates, notably in the link between the two sides of imperialism: militarism (the ‘war on terror’) and speculative finance capital.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftssysteme, Wirtschaftsstrukturen
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
- Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Wirtschaftstheorie, Wirtschaftsphilosophie
Weitere Infos & Material
List of Figures
Introduction
1. Understanding the Limits and Decay of the Capitalist Mode of Production
2. Capitalism as an Adaptive System
3. The ‘Systemic Turn’ in Capitalist Political Economy
4. The Era of Feedback from Entropy
5. Militarism and State Terrorism as a Response to Crisis
6. Organisation of the Twenty-first Century International System
7. Contradictions in the Contemporary Phase of Imperialist Governance, and the Forces for Change within it
References
Index
INTRODUCTION
The structure of this book reflects how the theory was actually developed: in a concrete way, derived from facts and referring back to them. In this introduction, I will briefly summarise the main lines of the argument in a more abstract way, but the reader must bear in mind that this general exposition could only have been written at the end of the process, not at the beginning.
The 21st century opens up what is possibly the most difficult and decisive period in human history. The ruling capitalist mode of production is hitting violently against its limits: it manufactures unmanageable amounts of poverty, and depletes the ecosystem more than the latter can bear. These violent shocks threaten immense deprivation. but they also open up possibilities for renewal, if we can grasp them.
By employing the term entropy, in our title and as a central theme of the book, we aim to capture the flavour of a ‘demise’ of something. But is it the demise of humanity itself, or of the capitalist mode of production, whose decline might on the contrary herald a rebirth of humanity?
Radicals often speak of ‘the system’ to signify the socio-economic entity which currently oppresses us. The term implies that something (not just economic exploitation but ideological alienation, militarism etc.) has built up a momentum of its own and become a self-propagating force, severed from rational control and consuming the society which produced it. The premise of this book is that this intuition is exactly on the right lines, but will only reveal its true potential if we really push the systems notion to a point where we can be rigorous about its implications.
The task of a systems critique of capitalism could validly have been posed at any point of its history, but has special significance today, entering as we do a crisis of a new type where two systems – human and ecological – come into conflict and capitalism now consumes not just society itself, but its physical environment, to a point where neither can regenerate.
Systems are not fated to acquire a runaway ‘bad’ dynamic, it is possible for them to function sustainably. To understand this, systems theory suggests two complementary conceptual approaches: thermodynamics and information. Information applies to internal structure, the extent to which an ensemble ‘makes sense’ and functions coherently. Thermodynamics addresses the energy flows. There must be an exchange of energy with a surrounding system (environment) if we are to maintain or improve society’s internal coherence; otherwise (i.e., as a closed system) we would be condemned to degenerate in the direction of greater entropy. We can represent this entropy either as disorder, or, in a complementary formulation, as a descent into the wrong kind of ‘orderedness’, i.e. uniformity: a homogenised system which has lost the rich variety of signs is in no position to carry information.
Because we are lucky to have an environment, we can pursue a normative commitment to bettering the human condition. But we have to do this carefully. If we exhaust either the energy source or the environment’s capacity to absorb disorder (heat, waste), the entropy will return to haunt us. Today, with peak oil and climate change, both kinds of revenge impinge together, and interact.
The Green movement recognises such external limits, but what we must emphasise is the drive from within pushing against them. This is where Marxism is essential. Our strategic goal of eventually stabilising humanity’s relations with its environment must never be confused with stabilising the capitalist mode of production: were we side-tracked into attempting the latter (which is impossible anyway), we would disastrously amplify the causes of the problem. Only Marxism posits this distinction clearly.
As a basis for our subsequent argument, we therefore begin by re-stating the Marxist vision of capitalism’s internal contradictions, re-interpreting it to emphasi
