Capital as Power: An Audio Interview with Jonathan Nitzan

THE QUESTIONS:

1. Why do we need a theory of capital at all? (00:51 minutes)

2. Why do we need a new theory of capital? (10:28 minutes)

3. What does your theory of capital do that the other problematic theories do not? (21:57 minutes)

4. Where do other power institutions such as the military or the police and other government organs fit within this cosmology? (06:32 minutes)

5. You have described capital as "finance, and only finance." This would seem to be an explicit inversion of Marx who considered finance to be fictitious capital. Can you describe the role of finance in capitalism? (19:30 minutes)

6. Marx's system of thought was a total system. What consequences, if any, does your theory have for other important Marxian concepts, such as alienation? (23:25 minutes)

7. Marx’s emphasis on production and labour gave workers a central role in both capitalist society and the communist society to come. What are the consequences for your understanding of the worker’s role in accumulation on the one hand and a humane post-capitalist society on the other? (20:57 minutes)

8. What, if anything, does your theory tell us about either resistance against capitalism today or the creation of a humane post-capitalist society? (06:20 minutes)

Duration of the complete interview: 1:51 hours