Ceresa, Robert M.

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International Social Science Review 
Volume 96 Issue 1 Article 10 
Book Review: The Politics of Operations: Excavating 
Contemporary Capitalism by Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson 
Robert M. Ceresa 
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Ceresa, Robert M. () "Book Review: The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism by 
Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson," International Social Science Review: Vol. 96 : Iss. 1 , Article 10. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/issr/vol96/iss1/10 
This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository. It has 
been accepted for inclusion in International Social Science Review by an authorized editor of Nighthawks Open 
Institutional Repository. 
Mezzadra, Sandro and Neilson, Brett. The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary 
Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019. 312 pages. Paperback, $27.95.   
 
 
This book offers a rich analytical framework for understanding radical politics 
geographically across time and space.  The research covers a vast expanse, including the major 
areas and the margins of the world economy.  The authors develop their framework with a set of 
related definitions and concepts that come largely from Marx, but also pull from case studies of 
business operations in extraction, logistics, and finance.  The model, simply put: capitalist 
operations cause disruption as they expand to areas not yet integrated, only marginally 
integrated, and areas to be reintegrated anew under different circumstance into the world 
economy.  The disruption causes political challenge as displaced peoples are pushed to action. 
The understanding shows the relevance of capitalist operations in diverse locales across a vast 
expanse around the world.  
A brief review of a few key concepts involved in so ambitious an endeavor as the authors 
offer is worthwhile.  Operations of capital, aggregate capital, and exploitation are key concepts 
the authors define and develop. These concepts highlight how anti-capitalist politics emerge 
from disruptions capitalist operations involve.   
Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson define the concept of operations of capital as the 
internal and external interactions of space and time that are in and part of a cause and effect 
relationship (pg. 5), the sometimes (today increasingly often) technical cause and effect 
relationships at the heart of business, which business firms think about and exploit, ultimately, if 
they can, by organizing activities (in extraction, logistics, and finance) to bring such knowledge 
(i.e., the technical knowledge that a business operation involves) to market.  The idea of external 
interactions involved in business operations is important. With it the whole world (of existing 
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Ceresa: Book Review: The Politics of Operations
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social, legal, and political institutions, and natural environments) and the history that reside 
outside of “business,” narrowly defined, come into focus as a fundamental aspect of “business” 
broadly defined.     
     Aggregate capital is the term the authors use for the cultural orientation (i.e., the values 
and beliefs) that drives capitalism as a political culture.  Capitalism for the authors is a society 
whole and intact, wherein a logic, commitment, or culture holds of creating boundaries for the 
purpose of exploiting them.  The logic is an informal cultural institution that structures capitalist 
relations generally.  Aggregate capital builds on Marx’s idea of movement capital. The concept 
highlights the general nature of capitalism as a social system that is “structurally oriented” to an 
outside to exploit (pg. 7).  The authors define “outside” as the boundaries that capitalist 
operations inevitably create, the point beyond which private enterprise becomes difficult due to 
the limits of the infrastructure (social and political) that private enterprise necessitates.  Not 
everything everywhere is market ready, privatized, or commodified, at least not yet anyway, the 
research points out. However, capitalist logic is self-fulling, so nothing and nowhere are off 
limits. 
     A revision of Marx’s concept of exploitation is another key concept the authors 
develop.  The revision draws attention to the exercise of political power evident in the dense 
material relations that exploitation (based on domination) involves.  The material relations of 
capitalism, which make way for exploitation, take shape from business operations past, present, 
and future, for the authors. What subjectivity is apparent in the political power evident in the 
material relations that exploitation involves?  “Master and slave” perhaps, wherein domination is 
operative. The revision enables the authors to imagine and discuss, within the general framework 
of Marx, important transformations of capitalism within history as politics and society change 
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and evolve.  Transformations across history (i.e., from capitalism to communism) is subject 
matter associated with Marx by contrast.  The change (political and social), which makes way for 
methods of capitalist exploitation to take root as they evolve, is subject matter the book’s authors 
care about.  The revision rescues exploitation from the economism that has long prevailed in 
Marxism, the authors say (pg. 7). 
Mezzadra and Neilson accomplish a great deal in The Politics of Operations.  They 
operationalize a set of definitions and concepts (many more than are described here) that 
contribute to understanding radical politics geographically.  The insights are important, relevant, 
and exciting.   
Why Marx, however, is a question I am left with having read the book.  Why couch a 
study of the politics of economics with Marx, when Marx studies the economics of politics?  
The authors’ study of anti-capitalist politics starts with economics, with the operations of capital 
in the tradition of historical materialism, aka Marxism.  However, then the authors develop an 
understanding of capitalist exploitation that makes political subjectivity (not profit, not 
economics) fundamental. In other words, culture comes first.   
The departure shifts the focus of the study in fundamental ways, or at least the thinking 
should.  The culture that drives people in business and politics to make domination operative is 
subject matter to ask questions about to understand radical politics in the cultural definition of 
the research, which I am arguing should be operative, not business models in isolation (the 
model, exploitation based on domination).  How or why is exploitation the subjectivity that 
drives the exercise of power in so many places around the world and thus development of the 
material relations of society “on the ground”?    
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The Marxist metatheory the authors embrace leads them to ask questions that seem out of 
place in a study with a focus on capitalist discourses and practices over the past half-decade, a 
period in which “the infectious rhetoric of big data and algorithms” grips observers (pg. 4).  This 
is another problem with the study. Whether reform or revolution is the more effective social 
change strategy, is a question the authors ask.  
This book is interesting and important, and worth reading for a description of the 
disruptions that result as geographies are made ready (and/or ready again) for private 
enterprise.  For understanding processes of cultural change and formation that illuminate 
alternatives to exploitation as the culture of capitalism, however, another literature is needed—
like research from practical democratic theory, which highlights the way the world takes shape in 
communities from the contributions of common ordinary everyday people.  Literature like this 
would be a good place to start to understand culture formation, change processes, and is worth 
reading in tandem with literature from other sources.  
 
 
Robert M. Ceresa, PhD 
Associate Professor of Political Science 
Huston-Tillotson University  
Austin, Texas 
 
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Book Review: The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism by Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson

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Book Review: The Politics of Operations: Excavating Contemporary Capitalism by Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Neilson

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