Is Capital a Thing? Remarks on Piketty’s Concept of Capital

Abstract

The thesis of my remarks is that Piketty’s overall position understands capital as something that exists within society, whereas I submit (on the grounds of Marx’s theory of society) that capital is the main category that determines the existence of capitalist society. Put differently, capital in the form of valorized labor determines the specific social form of capitalist society. Whereas Piketty’s position is built upon a positivistic concept of capital, I argue that capital is not ‘some-thing’; rather, capital is the central category of capitalist social reproduction. Capital, in other words, must describe the functioning of a social totality as a whole and cannot be related to a single aspect of it. Accordingly, though the focus on inequality is important, it tends to hide the real social organization of capitalist society.