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ID: 141200

Plutonomy of the 1%: dominant ownership and conspicuous consumption in the new gilded age / Muzio, Tim Di

Muzio, Tim Di	Article
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This article offers a study on the plutonomy of dominant owners and what their consumptive practices might tell us from the lens of the capital as power framework in IPE. I argue that the differential consumption of dominant owners is an important dimension of an internationalised capitalist mode of power for two reasons. First, Nitzan and Bichler argue that the primary driver of accumulation is the desire for differential power symbolically expressed in a magnitude of money. In this article, I argue that there is a secondary dimension noted but underdeveloped in their framework and influenced by Veblen: the drive for social status and the display of positionality through differential intraclass consumption. Second, as identified by Kempf, I argue that the consumptive practices of dominant owners are helping to lock global society into an unsustainable and ethically indefensible quest for perpetual economic growth. This growth project not only undermines calls for needed social and economic change but also threatens populations with environmental collapse.

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Capital ; Consumption ; IPE ; 1% ; Dominant Owners ; New Gilded Age ;
Plutonomy

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ID: 155804

Uneven and combined confusion: on the geopolitical origins of capitalism and the rise of the west / Muzio, Tim Di ; Dow, Matt

Muzio, Tim Di	Journal Article
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This article offers a critique of Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancioğlu’s How the West came to rule: the geopolitical origins of capitalism. We argue that while all historiography features a number of silences, shortcomings or omissions, the omissions in How the West came to rule lead to a mistaken view of the emergence of capitalism. There are two main issues to be confronted. First, we argue that Anievas and Nişancioğlu have an inadequate and misleading understanding of “capital” and “capitalism” that tilts them towards a theoretical stance that comes very close to arguing that everything caused capitalism while at the same time having no clear and convincing definition of “capital” or “capitalism”. Second, there are at least three omissions—particular to England/Britain within a geopolitical context—that should be discussed in any attempt to explain the development of capitalism: the financial revolution and the Bank of England; the transition to coal energy; and the capitalization of state power as it relates to war, colonialism and slavery. We conclude by calling for a connected-histories approach within the framework of capital as power.

Key Words

Capitalism ; Rise of the West ; Geopolitical Origins

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