6/3/2023 0 Comments Pistor the code of capital![]() Law, in this story is not a “sideshow ” it is the “very cloth from which capital is cut” (p.4). In conceptualizing capital as a legal quality, Pistor does not rebut the Marxian notion of capital as a social relation but instead attempts to show that the legal coding of capital is constitutive of that relation. The nature of the coding varies over time and space, affecting assets and the social relations that take shape around them. An asset (which may be tangible or intangible) turns into capital when the legal code bestows certain qualities to it. ![]() The first question (discussed extensively in the first chapter) is theoretical: what is capital? Pistor argues, quite convincingly, that “capital is not a thing” but rather a legal construct (p.10). In these chapters, the author masterfully tackles a number of big questions. In Pistor’s telling, the story unfolds in nine chapters. This is a story that is at once locally-specific and globally-relevant historically-dependent and yet still evolving and politically fraught as well as consequential-one that we surely must know more about if we are to get a better understanding of both the formation of wealth and its distribution. Email: Pistor’s new book, THE CODE OF CAPITAL: HOW THE LAW CREATES WEALTH AND INEQUALITY, “tells the story of the legal coding of capital” (p. ![]() Reviewed by Basak Kus, Department of Government, Wesleyan University. ![]() THE CODE OF CAPITAL: HOW THE LAW CREATES WEALTH AND INEQUALITY, by Katharina Pistor. ![]()
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