The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism.

• Author: Ceresa, Robert M.

Mezzadra, Sandro and Neilson, Brett. The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 312 pages. Paperback, $27.95.

This book offers a rich analytical framework for understanding radical politics geographically across time and space. The research covers a vast expanse, including the major areas and the margins of the world economy. The authors develop their framework with a set of related definitions and concepts that come largely from Marx, but also pull from case studies of business operations in extraction, logistics, and finance. The model, simply put: capitalist operations cause disruption as they expand to areas not yet integrated, only marginally integrated, and areas to be reintegrated anew under different circumstance into the world economy. The disruption causes political challenge as displaced peoples are pushed to action. The understanding shows the relevance of capitalist operations in diverse locales across a vast expanse around the world.

A brief review of a few key concepts involved in so ambitious an endeavor as the authors offer is worthwhile. Operations of capital, aggregate capital, and exploitation are key concepts the authors define and develop. These concepts highlight how anti-capitalist politics emerge from disruptions capitalist operations involve.

Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson define the concept of operations of capital as the internal and external interactions of space and time that are in and part of a cause and effect relationship (pg. 5), the sometimes (today increasingly often) technical cause and effect relationships at the heart of business, which business firms think about and exploit, ultimately, if they can, by organizing activities (in extraction, logistics, and finance) to bring such knowledge (i.e., the technical knowledge that a business operation involves) to market. The idea of external interactions involved in business operations is important. With it the whole world (of existing social, legal, and political institutions, and natural environments) and the history that reside outside of "business," narrowly defined, come into focus as a fundamental aspect of "business" broadly defined.

Aggregate capital is the term the authors use for the cultural orientation (i.e., the values and beliefs) that drives capitalism as a political culture. Capitalism for the authors is a society whole and intact, wherein a logic, commitment, or culture holds of...