The Entropy of Capitalism -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Figures -- Introduction -- 1. Understanding the Limits and Decay of the Capitalist Mode of Production -- Introduction and Core Hypothesis of the Argument -- Contribution of the Systems Perspective -- The Entropy Question within Marxism -- The Significance of Human Capacity -- A Trend towards Absolute Poverty -- Imperialism and the Entropy Question -- 2. Capitalism as an Adaptive System -- Simplicty and Complexity -- The Critique of Modernism -- Issues of Structuralism and Evolution -- The Role of Agency -- Phase Transitions and Acquired Momentum in Capitalist Development -- The Adaptive Problem Faced by Imperialism -- Why Capitalism Can't Adapt to become More Green -- 3. The 'Systemic Turn' in Capitalist Political Economy -- Defining the 'Systemic Turn' -- Capitalism Learns to Act with Systemic Processes -- Fundamental Contradictions Still Drive Capitalism -- Basic Principles of the Systemic Turn in Management -- Systemic Consciousness and the Issue of Development -- A Critique of Evolutionism -- A Largely Phoney 'Empowerment' of Workers -- Knowledge as a Basis for Selective Diffusion -- The North-South Issue within the New Management Models -- The Notion of 'Embedding' and Its Contradictions -- The Political Equivalent of Network Capitalism and Its Limitations -- Dissenting Networks and Why the Dominant Order Fears Them -- 4. The Era of Feedback from Entropy -- Information and the Possibility of a Change of Course -- Managing the Social Contradictions of Capitalism through Negative Energy Flows -- The Core-Periphery Dimension -- Payback for Earlier 'Export to the Future' -- The Information from Social Degradation -- Energy and Identity -- The Peak Oil Debate -- A New Regime of Nature -- The Approaching Food Crisis -- The Era of Complexity and Capitalism's Failure.

The Role of Finance Capital in Profiting from, and Accentuating, Disorder -- The Political Dimension and the Plunge into Militarism -- The 'Colonisation' of Security -- 5. Militarism and State Terrorism as a Response to Crisis -- Introduction: Chaos and Order -- Networks, and a 'Diffused' Form of Chaotic Repression -- Justifying Real Terrorism from Above by Manufactured 'Terrorism' from Below: Historical Antecedents and Contemporary Forms -- The Destructive Impulse Takes Over -- The Self-Propagating Chaotic Machine -- The Auto-cannibalism of Capitalist Democracy -- The Hollowed-Out Core and the 'Great Reversal' -- 6. Organisation of the Twenty-First Century International System -- The Scope and Limitations of a Non-Eurocentric Capitalist Mode of Production -- Authoritarian versus Systemic Power in International Relations -- Rejection of a Rules-Based System -- Dominating Information about the Future -- Reinventing the Federation of the Western States -- 7. Contradictions in the Contemporary Phase of Imperialist Governance, and the Forces for Change within It -- Maintaining a System's Core Features through Adaptation -- The Spectre of 'Cold' Imperialism, and the Ruling Order's Attempt to Conjure It -- Spheres of Exergy, Spheres of Predictability -- The Futile Quest to Rebuild 'Soft' Power -- A New International Power Balance Premised on Scarcity? -- An Inter-dependent Exploitative System Held Together by the Core -- Towards a Regulation Premised on Addressing Intra-core Entropy? -- The Human Response to Scarcity and Restriction -- Struggling to Contain the Forces of Informality and Human Adaptation -- The Historic Battle over Commons Regimes -- Food as an Example for the Low-Input Economy -- The Left's Role in the Struggle for a New Mode of Production.

Implications of Cybernetic Theory for Combating Capitalism's Hegemonic Pull over the Network Debate -- Principles of the Emergent Mode of Production, and Found Objects, which May Be Incorporated -- The New Epoch of History -- References -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects.