Periodising Capitalism: Considering a \'Semi-Peripheral\' Temporality

Periodising the Capital Relation: Considering a 'Semi-Peripheral' Temporality Dimitra Kotouza Paper presented at: Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent, Canterbury, 10 December 2013.

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of the periodisation of capitalism and the class relation, and the place of Greek capitalism within such a history. The purpose of this periodisation is not to formulate an economic history but to understand historical shifts in the class relation in Greece, which I attempt to locate within the history of capitalism, not as an ‘exception’ but as a constitutive differentiation. I consider debates around Eurocentrism and historicism, as well as— briefly—the concepts of ‘subsumption’ and ‘primitive accumulation’. I argue that differential temporalities ought to be understood as becoming constitutively related to one another as global capitalism comes into being. Seeking a subject of resistance in a temporality ‘external’ to capitalism is flawed. The focus must then be the mutual constitution of the ‘model’ temporality of Western Europe and the USA, and Greece’s differential temporality, not only in terms of the development of the productive forces and cycles of accumulation, but also in terms of the dynamic of the power relations between classes as internal to those processes.