Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"It was the virus that did it"

Capital.150 part one: measuring the past to gauge the future

“Political economy, in the widest sense, is the science of the laws governing the production and exchange of the material means of subsistence in human society. Production and exchange are two different functions. Production may occur without exchange, but exchange — being necessarily an exchange of products—cannot occur without production. Each of these two social functions is subject to the action of external influences which to a great extent are peculiar to it and for this reason each has, also to a great extent, its own special laws. But on the other hand, they constantly determine and influence each other to such an extent that they might be termed the abscissa and ordinate of the economic curve. The conditions under which men produce and exchange vary from country to country, and within each country again from generation to generation. Political economy, therefore, cannot be the same for all countries and for all historical epochs. A tremendous distance separates the bow and a...

" Au fond, Piketty est un économiste bien plus conventionnel qu’il ne le croit. Son élément naturel, ce sont les statistiques relatives aux niveaux de revenus, les projets de taxation, les commissions chargées d’examiner ces questions. Ses recommandations pour réduire les inégalités se résument à des politiques fiscales imposées d’en haut. Il se montre parfaitement indifférent aux mouvements sociaux qui, par le passé, ont pu remettre en cause les inégalités et pourraient à nouveau jouer un tel rôle. Il semble même plus préoccupé par l’échec de l’Etat à atténuer les inégalités que par les inégalités proprement dites. Et, bien qu’il convoque souvent, à bon escient, des romanciers du XIXe siècle comme Honoré de Balzac et Jane Austen, sa définition du capital reste trop économique et réductrice. Il ne tient aucun compte du capital social, des ressources culturelles et du savoir-faire accumulés dont bénéficient les plus aisés et qui facilitent la réussite de leur progéniture. Un capit...

Visualizing Capital I still think that reading Capital volume 1 gives a better idea than Harvey's illustration.

I recommend this Contradiction of Capital and Care

In my reading list:  Guns, Germs and Steel  (Jared Diamond, 2010) The book sounds as a confirmation of the following premises. "The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way. The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself – geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set ...