COP-MOP progress?

[Scot Griffin]

I first (and last?) encountered the COP-MOP concept in Nitzan, Jonathan; Bichler, Shimshon (2018) : The CasP Project: Past, Present, Future, Review of Capital as Power, Forum on Capital As Power – Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, s.l., Vol. 1, Iss. 3, pp. 1-39,

http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/536/

Has any progress been made in mapping out the COP-MOPs of capitalism and, especially, its predecessor modes of power?

Currently, I view capitalism as a radical (revolutionary) departure from prior modes of production because the primary purpose of capitalism is not to meet the material needs of humanity (as assumed by Marx) but to generate profits (capital) that perpetuate the power of the ruling class.  Meeting the material needs of humanity is at best secondary (and does not matter at all for some capitalist enterprises).  In this sense, there is no real distinction between capitalism as a mode of production and capitalism as a mode of power.  Capitalism established its “mode of production” as a “mode of power,” while previous modes of power were just one of the “relations of production” that ordered society in prior modes of production.

Topic

[Jonathan Nitzan]

Scot Griffin wrote:

Has any progress been made in mapping out the COP-MOPs of capitalism and, especially, its predecessor modes of power?

It’s work in progress.

In the meantime, and if you haven’t already, you might want to have a look at Di Muzio’s The Tragedy of Human Development. A Genealogy of Capital as Power.

[Author]

Replies