Abstract

In this article, we emphasize the relevance of the concept of capital in order to describe the mode of organizing socio-economic relations that has become globally dominant since the industrial revolution. Capital, we suggest, is neither a physical thing nor a mere idea – but a concrete process, in which a variety of agents (human and nonhuman alike) are dynamically enrolled, legally reframed as assets, and subjected to a pecuniary valuation. Insofar as it relates the actual value of these assets to their expected income-yielding capacity, capital thus instantiates a temporal strategy that gives consistency to the future in order to preempt and sell its potentialities in the present. Relations of production and exchange are thus entirely organized in order to deliver these future promises, and their spatialization appears mostly to be a by-product, entirely constrained by the temporal demands of investment. Propelled by the consumption of fossil fuels, the unfolding of capital has become a phenomenon of planetary proportions – thus pushing the entire Earth system to the brink.