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The Origins of Fossil Capital: From Water to Steam in the British Cotton Industry

Malm, Andreas·2013·Historical Materialism

Abstract

The process commonly referred to as business-as-usual has given rise to dangerous climate change, but its social history remains strangely unexplored. A key moment in its onset was the transition to steam power as a source of rotary motion in commodity production, in Britain and, first of all, in its cotton industry. This article tries to approach the dynamics of the fossil economy by examining the causes of the transition from water to steam in the British cotton industry in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Common perceptions of the shift as driven by scarcity are refuted, and it is shown that the choice of steam was motivated by a rather different concern: power over labour. Turning away from standard interpretations of the role of energy in the industrial revolution, this article opens a dialogue with Marx on matters of carbon and outlines a theory of fossil capital, better suited for understanding the drivers of business-as-usual as it continues to this day.

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  • Andreas Malm (2013) set out a new 'general formula' of 'fossil capital': increasing quantities of CO2 are a necessary part of capital accumulation, materially indispensable for value creation; fossil capital is self-expanding value passing through the metamorphosis of fossil fuels into CO2.

    “Andreas Malm (2013) has elaborated it amidst considerable theoretical magic works, setting out a new”

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Authors
Malm, A.
Affiliations
Human Ecology Division/LUCID, Lund University
Venue
Historical Materialism
Published
2013
Volume
21
Issue
1
Pages
15-68
ISSN
  • 1465-4466
  • 1569-206X
Cited by
120
References
3

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