This golden age for Western governing elites nevertheless bred potential problems for their class rule. First, the very transformation of asset wealth on which the new elite floated threatened to fracture the internal coherence of the ruling classes, for whom wealth, power and territory had traditionally gone hand in hand. The effects of economic globalization—bringing foreign-institutional ownership of national assets and the dilution of local capitalist classes, amid the swirl of international funds—has also broken the previous links of kinship and culture between state elites and asset-owners.

On the hori​zontal plane, meanwhile, the governing classes struggle to craft cohesion between different fractions of capital and help asset owners articulate interests across sectoral or geographic lines. This in turn renders strategic coherence difficult—something evident in the geo-economic tumult of the past year, from the tariff bonanza to the destruction of Gulf oil-and-gas infrastructure and terrorization of the low-wage migrant workforce. [...]

First, the reading proposed does not imply elite control over the social surplus has somehow diminished; there are good grounds to say it has increased. Yet the political unmooring of Western elites has widened the gaps between different fractions of capital and made long-term planning across them more difficult. Hence Krastev’s wonder over Trump’s ‘revolutionary sense of temporality’—an actor who has mercilessly seized on the apertures left by vanishing elite integrators, whose smash-and-grab politics at least promises direct gain. As the model hyperpolitician, Trump seems to offer easy rewards in the sordid struggle over rents. [...]

This golden age for Western governing elites nevertheless bred potential problems for their class rule. First, the very transformation of asset wealth on which the new elite floated threatened to fracture the internal coherence of the ruling classes, for whom wealth, power and territory had traditionally gone hand in hand. The effects of economic globalization—bringing foreign-institutional ownership of national assets and the dilution of local capitalist classes, amid the swirl of international funds—has also broken the previous links of kinship and culture between state elites and asset-owners.

exactly what i mean: if the german material consumption per capita (calculated to include the material cost of imports) has been stable for 50 years, clearly there has been a certain amount of dematerialization of the economy, considering the german economy has grown (massively, in fact) since then.

Pineaults book has very good data on material consumption and the metabolic perspective on the economy is very good and new, you really don't usually think about the earth system in such a way, but quite often i can't help but disagree with the way the details are put together.

and finally, the book's primary argument about the metabolic functioning of capitalism seems unnecessarily roundabout. the core of the idea is that capitalism requires growth and growth requires growing material throughputs (i don't think dematerialization has been properly disproven in the book either, it's just assumed not to exist. i don't actually put much value in the concept either, but disproving it seems necessary for the argument), so far so good. but the way he gets there is via a theory of monopoly capital, but we don't need all that! saying monopoly capitalism requires growth because of this or that mechanic is a tautology – all capitalism needs growth to function! it's the one thing pretty much everyone thinking about economics, heterodox and orthodox, can agree on!