# BIOPOLITICAL ECONOMY AND ARBITRARY POWER One of the key questions that has guided my work - and is also behind the ECSA-project - is the mutation of capitalism and the necessity to create new concepts for understanding economy and its organization. Significant part of my research has traced the mutation of economic formation of value and the capitalist form of production both historically and logically. I have developed concepts such as *arbitrary power*, *semiocapital* and *biopolitical economy* in order to rethink and conceptualize economy and its organization from the same premise that has led political philosophy to speak of *biopolitics*. Why? Because if this premise is the absolute condition for thinking politics today (as Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Hannah Arendt for example have stated), it must be so also for thinking economy - since what is at stake in this premise is the general dissolution of the boundaries between economy and other areas of life. RELATED PUBLICATIONS Virtanen Akseli (2006) Biopoliittisen talouden kritiikki. Modernin talouden loppu ja mielivallan synty [A Critique of Biopolical Economy. The End of Modern Economy and the Birth of Arbitrary Power]. Tutkijaliitto, Polemos-series, Helsinki. 278 pages. The book is published in English as Arbitrary power. Towards a Critique of Biopolitical Economy and in Portuguese as Crítica da Economia Biopolitica by n-1 Edições. Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**General Intellect**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/HkdzRAE0s) Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**Oikos, polis, nomos**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/B10RPOCV2) Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**General Intellect**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/HkdzRAE0s) Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**Sign machines**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/ryfHa1aLh) Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**Modulation**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/rytPIeTL3) Virtanen Akseli (2006) [**What is a statement (énoncé)?**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/SyTKlxjd2) Virtanen Akseli (2010) Immaterial as Material, TkH: Journal for the Theory of Performing Arts, 4/2010. Berardi Franco & Akseli Virtanen (2010) Mielivallasta morfogeneesiin / [**From Arbitrary Power to Morphogenesis**](https://hackmd.io/@econaut6/B133TY0N2?utm_source=preview-mode&utm_medium=rec). Niin & näin, 3/2010. Virtanen Akseli (2008) Arbitrary Power. Or on Organization without End. In The Swedish Dance History. Inpex, Stockholm. pp 177-195. Vähämäki Jussi & Akseli Virtanen (2006) Deleuze, change, history. In Fuglsang & Sorenssen (eds.) Gilles Deleuze and the Social: Towards a New Social Analytic. Edinburgh University Press. Virtanen Akseli (2006), Entries “Taloudellinen elämä [Economic life]” pp. 125-129, “Markkinatunnelma [Market sentiment]” pp. 213-220, “Biopoliittinen talous [Biopolitical economy]” pp. 221-234, and “Mielivalta [Arbitrary power]” pp. 465-481 in Uuden työn sanakirja [The Dictionary of New Work]. Tutkijaliitto, Helsinki. Virtanen Akseli ed. (2005) Permanent Transience: The Structure of Change. Special Issue. Framework. The Finnish Art Review 4/2005: 1-136. Virtanen Akseli & Steffen Böhm eds. (2005) Web of Capturing the Moving Mind. Issue X. Ephemera. Theory and Politics in Organization 5(X): 662-795. Virtanen Akseli & Jussi Vähämäki eds. (2004) Theory of the Multitude. Special issue. Ephemera. Theory and Politics in Organization 4(3): 177-308. Virtanen Akseli & Jussi Vähämäki (2005), Ontology. In Jones C. (ed.) Manifestos for the Business School of Tomorrow. Dvalin, Stockholm. pp.105-113. Virtanen Akseli (2004), General Economy. The Entrance of Multitude into Production. Ephemera. Theory and Politics in Organization 4(3): 209-232. ![](https://i.imgur.com/2RcIf53.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/Ts0FEU9.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/0Wb3hJN.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/AipKJpR.png)![](https://i.imgur.com/hXDVjsl.png)
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AKSELI VIRTANEN

Co-Founder, Economic Space Agency, San FranciscoDSc(Econ.), Associate Professor (Docent), Aalto University, HelsinkiFamily with three boys@econaut6akseli@ecsa.ioakseli.eth

5/5/2024
POLEMOS BOOK SERIES (2006-2012)

We started the Polemos series to create a new language and sense to our experience of biopolitical economy to which the existing concepts and approaches did not seem to talk anymore. The concepts and openings introduced in the series looked at first perhaps exceptional or even extravagant. Yet concepts such as immaterial labor, multitude, mental ecology, precariat, basic income, semiocapitalism, feminization of work, attention economy, copoiesis, cognitariat, arbitrary power were mapping the already changed social and political territory on which we are standing. The series tried to find words for things which existed, but which were still lacking them. It tried to build a new language and sense to our experience. Polemos (Gr. war, battle) is a means of creation. It is a creator of ideas and cooperation, their father and king, as Herakleitos said, others it makes Gods and others men, others it makes slaves, others free. The titles in the series include:

4/26/2024
CRYPTOECONOMIC SYSTEMS, SYNTHETIC FINANCE, NETWORK DERIVATIVES

Cryptoeconomy is not just another tech sector. It is a different way of doing the economy. The economic space we need to discuss in relation to the cryptoeconomy is nothing short of imaging and engineering an alternative, post-capitalist mode of organizing and calculating that sits in parallel with the conventionally-conceived economy. That’s a big claim. It announces new economic possibilities that, while not entirely novel in their vision, are wildly new in the conception of their reach and mode of organization. The rise of joint stock company and stock markets in 1840s transformed capitalism. A whole new mode of production, capture and distribution of value was born. I think we are now at a turning point of similar significance. The new network technologies will produce a radically different economy. How value is created, captured and distributed, what is money, how people relate to production, are changing as radically as the first generation internet changed the way we communicate and relate to the presence of others in our social communication. Here is some of our recent thinking:

4/12/2024
Statement (énoncé)

Akseli Virtanen

8/15/2023
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