Biel R. The Entropy Of Capitalism

Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2012. — 401 p."..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."Understanding the Limits and Decay of the Capitalist
Mode of Production
Introduction and Core Hypothesis of the Argument
Contribution of the Systems Perspective
The Entropy Question within Marxism
The Significance of Human Capacity
A Trend towards Absolute Poverty
Imperialism and the Entropy Question
Capitalism as an Adaptive System
Simplicity and Complexity
The Critique of Modernism
Issues of Structuralism and Evolution
The Role of Agency
Phase Transitions and Acquired Momentum in Capitalist Development
The Adaptive Problem Faced by Imperialism
Why Capitalism Can’t Adapt to Become More Green
The ‘Systemic Turn’ in Capitalist Political Economy
Defining the ‘Systemic Turn’
Capitalism Learns to Act with Systemic Processes
Fundamental Contradictions Still Drive Capitalism
Basic Principles of the Systemic Turn in Management
Systemic Consciousness and the Issue of Development
A Critique of Evolutionism
A Largely Phoney ‘Empowerment’ of Workers
Knowledge as a Basis for Selective Diffusion
The North-South Issue within the New Management Models
The Notion of ‘Embedding’ and Its ContradictionsThe Political Equivalent of Network Capitalism and Its Limitations
Dissenting Networks and Why the Dominant Order Fears Them
The Era of Feedback from Entropy
Information and the Possibility of a Change of Course
Managing the Social Contradictions of Capitalism through Negative Energy Flows
The Core-Periphery Dimension
Payback for Earlier ‘Export to the Future’
The Information from Social Degradation
Energy and Identity
The Peak Oil Debate
A New Regime of Nature
The Approaching Food Crisis
The Era of Complexity and Capitalism’s Failure
The Role of Finance Capital in Profiting from and Accentuating Disorder
The Political Dimension and the Plunge into Militarism
The ‘Colonisation’ of Security
Militarism and State Terrorism as a Response to Crisis
Introduction: Chaos and Order
Networks and a ‘Diffused’ Form of Chaotic Repression
Justifying Real Terrorism from above by
Manufactured ‘Terrorism’ from Below: Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Forms
The Destructive Impulse Takes Over
The Self-Propagating Chaotic Machine
The Auto-cannibalism of Capitalist Democracy
The Hollowed-Out Core and the ‘Great Reversal’
Organisation of the Twenty-First Century International System
The Scope and Limitations of a Non-Eurocentric Capitalist Mode of Production
Authoritarian versus Systemic Power in International RelationsRejection of a Rules-Based System
Dominating Information about the Future
Reinventing the Federation of the Western States
Contradictions in the Contemporary Phase of Imperialist
Governance and the Forces for Change within It
Maintaining a System’s Core Features through Adaptation
The Spectre of ‘Cold’ Imperialism and the Ruling Order’s Attempt to Conjure It
Spheres of Exergy Spheres of Predictability
The Futile Quest to Rebuild ‘Soft’ Power
A New International Power Balance Premised on Scarcity?
An Inter-dependent Exploitative System Held together by the Core
Towards a Regulation Premised on Addressing Intra-core Entropy?
The Human Response to Scarcity and Restriction
Struggling to Contain the Forces of Informality and Human Adaptation
The Historic Battle over Commons Regimes
Food as an Example for the Low-Input Economy
The Left’s Role in the Struggle for a New Mode of Production
Implications of Cybernetic Theory for Combating
Capitalism’s Hegemonic Pull over the Network Debate
Principles of the Emergent Mode of Production and Found Objects Which may Be Incorporated
The New Epoch of History