1.

Record Nr.

UNISA996552347903316

Autore

Di Muzio Tim

Titolo

Debt as power / / Tim Di Muzio and Richard H. Robbins

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Manchester University Press, 2016

Manchester, England : , : Manchester University Press, , 2016

©2016

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (x, 205 pages) : illustrations, portraits, charts

Collana

Open Access e-Books

Knowledge Unlatched

Theory for a global age

Disciplina

336.34

Soggetti

Capitalism

Credit

Debt

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Towards a stark utopia -- 2. Origins: war, national debt and the capitalized state -- 3. Intensification: war, debt, and colonial power -- 4. Consequences: the debt-growth-inequality nexus --5. Solutions: a party of the 99% and the power of debt -- Appendix A -- Appendix B.

Sommario/riassunto

Debt as power is a timely and innovative contribution to our understanding of one of the most prescient issues of our time: the explosion of debt across the global economy and related requirement of political leaders to pursue exponential growth to meet the demands of creditors and investors. The book is distinctive in offering a historically sensitive and comprehensive analysis of debt as an interconnected and global phenomenon. Rather than focusing on the historical emergence of debt as a moral obligation, the authors argue that debt under capitalism can be conceived of as a technology of power, intimately tied up with the requirement for perpetual growth and the differential capitalization that benefits ‘the 1%’. Their account begins with the recognition that the histories of human communities and their natural environment are interconnected in complex spatial and hierarchical relations of power and to understand their



development we need to not only examine the particularities of a given case, but more importantly their interconnected, interdependent and international relations. Since debt under capitalism is increasingly ubiquitous at all levels of society and economic growth is now the sole mantra of dominant political parties around the world, the authors argue that tracing the evolution and transformation of debt as a technology of power is crucial for understanding the ‘present as history’ and possible alternatives to our current trajectory.