The Social Ontology of Capitalism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. The Social Ontology of Capitalism: An Introduction

   • Daniel Krier, Mark P. Worrell

   Pages 1-11

3. Abstract

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. Social Ontology and Social Critique: Toward a New Paradigm for Critical Theory

      • Michael J. Thompson

      Pages 15-45

   3. Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century: The Logic of Capital Between Classical Social Theory, the Early Frankfurt School Critique of Political Economy and the Prospect of Artifice

      • Harry F. Dahms

      Pages 47-74

   4. The Sacred and the Profane in the General Formula for Capital: The Octagonal Structure of the Commodity and Saving Marx’s Sociological Realism from Professional Marxology

      • Mark P. Worrell

      Pages 75-119

   5. Social Form and the ‘Purely Social’: On the Kind of Sociality Involved in Value

      • Patrick Murray, Jeanne Schuler

      Pages 121-141

4. Concrete

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 143-143

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   2. Debt in the Global Economy

      • Tony Smith

      Pages 145-172

   3. Representing Capital: Mimesis, Realism, and Contemporary Photography

      • Christian Lotz

      Pages 173-193

   4. Demand the Impossible: Greece, the Eurozone Crisis, and the Failure of the Utopian Imagination

      • David Norman Smith

      Pages 195-234

   5. The Constellation of Social Ontology: Walter Benjamin, Eduard Fuchs, and the Body of History

      • Kevin S. Amidon, Daniel Krier

      Pages 235-262

   6. The Body Ontology of Capitalism

      • Daniel Krier, Kevin S. Amidon

      Pages 263-276

   7. The Morality of Misery

      • Tony A. Feldmann

      Pages 277-290

5. Back Matter

   Pages 291-300

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This book addresses core questions about the nature and structure of contemporary capitalism and the social dynamics and countervailing forces that shape modern life. From a robust and self-consciously sociological framework, it analyzes and interrogates such issues as the nature of the social, the power of the sacred, the nature of authority, the problem of representation, reification, alienation, utopia, and collective resistance. Historical materialism reveals that the scope of productive functions is broader than the crude realism of economism. Marx’s critical theory of the commodity and his analysis of the capitalist regime of accumulation remain as vital as ever and serve as a guiding light for the continued exploration of the philosophical underpinnings of critical inquiry and praxis.  

• social ontology
• capitalism
• Marxism
• Durkheim
• immanent critique
• realism
• materialism
• historical materialism
• critical theory
• sociology
• philosophy
• political economy
• political psychology
• democracy

• Iowa State University Sociology, Ames, USA

  Daniel Krier

• SUNY Cortland, Cortland, USA

  Mark P. Worrell

Dan Krier is Associate Professor of Sociology at Iowa State University, USA. He is the author of Speculative Management:  Stock Market Power and Corporate Change (2005), NASCAR, Sturgis and the New Economy of Spectacle (with Bill Swart, 2016), the editor of Capitalism’s Future: Alienation, Emancipation and Critique (with Mark P. Worrell, 2016) and has published academic articles in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Critical Sociology, and Fast Capitalism.


Mark P. Worrell, Associate Professor at SUNY Cortland, USA, has published widely in critical social theory journals including Telos, Rethinking Marxism, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Fast Capitalism, Logos, and Critical Sociology, where he also serves as an Associate Editor. His books include Terror: Social, Political, and Economic Perspectives (2013), and the edited volume Capitalism’s Future: Alienation, Emancipation and Critique (with Dan Krier, 2016).

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