"..For the "window in which we can make revolution" really is closing, as Biel demonstrates in The Entropy of Capitalism. More significantly, he demonstrates how and why this window is closing: using thermodynamics, Biel articulates the limits of the capitalist system and how it has passed the point of disarticulation, degeneration, and static disintegration. Without rejecting the mainstays of historical materialist analysis of the capitalist mode of production (i.e. the labour theory of value, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall), he proves this logic by resorting to systems theory. In some ways this recourse to thermodynamics functions as analogical logic to breathe new life into marxian language that often seems stale; in other ways this filter is not simply analogical or metaphorical––Biel really does intend us to understand capitalism as a closed, thermodynamic system that is moving towards an entropic destiny."
"..Biel's use of thermodynamics is a way in which to look at a mode of production as a system that breathes new life into old concepts that might seem stale. Moreover, it does provide a methodology in which to talk about a lot of things as interconnected phenomena. If the capitalist mode of production is understood as a thermodynamic system, and we can map out its core logic (tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the laws of capitalist accumulation and capitalist reproduction, the class structure, etc.) by examining this system as one that is both social and ecological, then we can also understand how its order cannot help but lead towards a static situation where it uses up its energy margins, fails to regenerate itself, offsets its closed and degenerating logic in "sinks" that hasten its degeneration."
Author(s): Robert Biel
Publisher: Brill Publishers
Year: 2012
Language: English
Pages: 401
CONTENTS
List of Figures..............................................................................................ix
Introduction.................................................................................................1
1. Understanding the Limits and Decay of the Capitalist
Mode of Production.............................................................................19
Introduction and Core Hypothesis of the Argument.................19
Contribution of the Systems Perspective......................................21
The Entropy Question within Marxism .......................................24
The Significance of Human Capacity............................................30
A Trend towards Absolute Poverty ...............................................35
Imperialism and the Entropy Question........................................39
2. Capitalism as an Adaptive System .....................................................43
Simplicity and Complexity.............................................................43
The Critique of Modernism ...........................................................46
Issues of Structuralism and Evolution ..........................................49
The Role of Agency .........................................................................53
Phase Transitions and Acquired Momentum in
Capitalist Development..............................................................56
The Adaptive Problem Faced by Imperialism..............................60
Why Capitalism Can’t Adapt to Become More Green................66
3. The ‘Systemic Turn’ in Capitalist Political Economy .......................73
Defining the ‘Systemic Turn’..........................................................73
Capitalism Learns to Act with Systemic Processes .....................76
Fundamental Contradictions Still Drive Capitalism ..................79
Basic Principles of the Systemic Turn in Management ..............84
Systemic Consciousness and the Issue of Development ............90
A Critique of Evolutionism............................................................92
A Largely Phoney ‘Empowerment’ of Workers...........................95
Knowledge as a Basis for Selective Diffusion...............................99
The North-South Issue within the New Management
Models........................................................................................100
The Notion of ‘Embedding’ and Its Contradictions..................104
The Political Equivalent of Network Capitalism and
Its Limitations............................................................................109
Dissenting Networks and Why the Dominant Order
Fears Them.................................................................................112
4. The Era of Feedback from Entropy..................................................117
Information and the Possibility of a Change of Course ...........117
Managing the Social Contradictions of Capitalism
through Negative Energy Flows..............................................118
The Core-Periphery Dimension..................................................124
Payback for Earlier ‘Export to the Future’..................................126
The Information from Social Degradation ................................127
Energy and Identity.......................................................................132
The Peak Oil Debate......................................................................135
A New Regime of Nature..............................................................140
The Approaching Food Crisis......................................................142
The Era of Complexity and Capitalism’s Failure........................148
The Role of Finance Capital in Profiting from, and
Accentuating, Disorder............................................................152
The Political Dimension and the Plunge into
Militarism...................................................................................164
The ‘Colonisation’ of Security ......................................................169
5. Militarism and State Terrorism as a Response to Crisis ...............175
Introduction: Chaos and Order...................................................175
Networks, and a ‘Diffused’ Form of Chaotic Repression .........179
Justifying Real Terrorism from above by
Manufactured ‘Terrorism’ from Below: Historical
Antecedents and Contemporary Forms.................................182
The Destructive Impulse Takes Over..........................................190
The Self-Propagating Chaotic Machine......................................202
The Auto-cannibalism of Capitalist Democracy.......................211
The Hollowed-Out Core and the ‘Great Reversal’.....................217
6. Organisation of the Twenty-First Century
International System..........................................................................231
The Scope and Limitations of a Non-Eurocentric
Capitalist Mode of Production................................................231
Authoritarian versus Systemic Power in
International Relations.............................................................240
Rejection of a Rules-Based System..............................................242
Dominating Information about the Future................................245
Reinventing the Federation of the Western States ....................248
7. Contradictions in the Contemporary Phase of Imperialist
Governance, and the Forces for Change within It.........................263
Maintaining a System’s Core Features through Adaptation.....263
The Spectre of ‘Cold’ Imperialism, and the Ruling
Order’s Attempt to Conjure It .................................................267
Spheres of Exergy, Spheres of Predictability ..............................273
The Futile Quest to Rebuild ‘Soft’ Power....................................279
A New International Power Balance Premised on
Scarcity?......................................................................................286
An Inter-dependent Exploitative System Held
together by the Core .................................................................290
Towards a Regulation Premised on Addressing
Intra-core Entropy?...................................................................296
The Human Response to Scarcity and Restriction....................300
Struggling to Contain the Forces of Informality and
Human Adaptation ...................................................................304
The Historic Battle over Commons Regimes.............................309
Food as an Example for the Low-Input Economy ....................318
The Left’s Role in the Struggle for a New Mode of
Production .................................................................................322
Implications of Cybernetic Theory for Combating
Capitalism’s Hegemonic Pull over the Network Debate ......329
Principles of the Emergent Mode of Production,
and Found Objects, Which may Be Incorporated................334
The New Epoch of History...........................................................337
References.................................................................................................345
Index of Names........................................................................................377
Index of Subjects .....................................................................................383
