Speculative Capital Online study program The principle of historical materialism asserts that societies organize around their tools; a radical new tool system makes possible a radically new society. We are in process of an historic transition -- a leap -- from an industrial system to an electronic-based system. The existing economic system (i.e., here the form of industrial society known as capitalist system) is attempting to a (re)organize itself around new technologies. This process expresses itself as "globalization"; or, globalization is capitalism in the age of electronics. An aspect of globalization -- capitalism in the age of electronics -- is the emergence of speculation as a dominant, defining kind of economic activity. A section of the capitalist class, the speculative capitalists, emerge as the dominant sector of the class. This class looks at the phenomenon of speculative capital in more detail. The goal of this class is to understand better speculative capital, where it comes, its role in the overall economy, and its objective and subjective side (that is, its political expression, and its broader social expression.) Discussion units: Unit One: About capitalism Unit Two: Yesterday and today Unit Three: The role of speculation Unit Four: The subjective side of speculation Online study group on speculation General Readings New: Speculative Capital, 2002. (pdf file, requires Adobe Reader. 71k) Also 1. Millman, Gregory. 1995. The vandals' crown, "The secret life of the Fortune 500". New York: The Free Press (excerpt) 2. Henwood, Doug. 1997. Wall Street. "Capital unbound." London: Verso. 3. Marx, Karl. Capital, Vol. III, Chapters 29 and 30 ("Banking capital's component parts" and "Money capital and real capital"). Penguin has a readable (although some of the translation is a bit questionable) paperback edition. International Publishers has also released Volume III as part of the collected works of Marx and Engels (volume 37 of the Collected Works (hardcover only) 4. Bass, Thomas. 1996. "The Future of Money" (interview with Walter Wriston). Wired, 4.10, October, 1996) 5. Harris, Jerry. The Politics of Globalization. A further development of the ideas in this article was published in Robinson, William and Jerry Harris (2000) “Towards a Ruling Class: Globalization and the Transnational Capitalist Class” Science and Society 64:1. 6. Dobson, James. 1999. "Summary Statement by Commissioner". National Gambling Impact Study Commission Final Report. 7. Fuerbringer, Jonathan. "Why the Asian Markets Tumbled So Quickly." New York Times.12/10/1997. 8. National Gambling Impact Study Commission Final Report. (part I, PDF file). Miscellaneous excerpts appear on the page for each section of this study program. [Note: All Marx quotes and page references are from the Penguin edition of Capital, Volume III, translated by David Fernbach, 1981, unless otherwise noted.]