Revolutionary Accounting? Methods and Possibilities in Critical Strategy

ABSTRACT

Money markets, finance, credit instruments, and other markers of what Lenin called “the highest stage of capitalism” are the mechanism through which global inequalities are maintained, expanded, and determined. Accounting practices like double-entry bookkeeping and cost accounting have long determined what is thinkable within this realm. Scholars and political actors have also employed the term “authoritarian neoliberalism” to signal the particular ideological constellation and subsequent subjectivities that are salient in the present moment. This paper posits a theoretical framework for delineating accounting as a political tactic for changing the mode of production of knowledge and supporting revolutionary accounting subjects. Consulting the literature on critical accounting theory, this paper engages ideas such as “citizen public debt audits” and “emancipatory accounting” in order to investigate the dynamics of tactical resistance that have emerged around issues of finance and accounting within a radical democratic and Marxist tradition of theorizing political strategy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Globalizations 16:3 (2019) .

² Ian Bruff and Cemal Burak Tansel, “Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Trajectories of Knowledge Production and Praxis,” Globalizations 16:13 (2019), p. 233.

³ Hannah Arendt, “Understanding and Politics/The Difficulties in Understanding,” in Essays in Understanding 1930–1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1994), pp. 307–27.

⁴ I am intentionally articulating a strategy outside of the centrality of the party as the revolutionary subject in this case, though there are also significant reasons to forego this line of thinking and focus instead on developing a party. See Jodi Dean, Crowds and Parties (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2018).

⁵ Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon (New York, NY: Verso 2018); Costas Douzinas and Slavoj Zizek (eds), The Idea of Communism (Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2010).

⁶ Dankwart Rustow, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2:3 (1970), p. 344; Claus Offe, “Capitalism by Democratic Design? Democratic Theory facing the Triple Transition in East Central Europe,” Social Research, 58:4 (1991), p. 887.

⁷ Saskia Sassen, “A Savage Sorting of Winners and Losers: Contemporary Versions of Primitive Accumulation,” Globalizations 7:1 (2010), pp. 23–50.

⁸ Bruff and Tansel, “Authoritarian Neoliberalism,” p. 235.

⁹ Ibid., 237.

¹⁰ See Etienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas (London, UK: Routledge, 1994).

¹¹ Antonio Gramsci, Karl Kautsky, VI Lenin, and Rosa Luxemburg all wrote insightfully of these relationships from a revolutionary perspective. For a contemporary formulation see Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton, Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

¹² Salah Mostafa Ali, “Chapter 1: Egypt,” in Gary Previts, Peter Walton, and Peter Wolnizer (eds), A Global History of Accounting, Financial Reporting and Public Policy: Eurasaia, the Middle East and Africa (Bingley, UK: Howard House, 2012), p. 3.

¹³ Jane Gleeson-White, Six Capitals, or Can Accountants save the Planet? Rethinking Capitalism for the Twenty-First Century (New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014).

¹⁴ Richard K. Fleishman, “A Review of Critical Histories of Accounting,” in Richard K. Fleishman, Warwick Funnell, and Stephen P. Walker (eds), Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era (New York, UK: Routledge, 2013), p. 16; see also Charles B. Baker and Mark Bettner, “Interpretive and Critical Research in Accounting: A Commentary on Its Absence from Mainstream Accounting Research” Critical Perspectives on Accounting 8 (1997), p. 305.

¹⁵ Sonja Gallhofer and Jim Haslam, “Accounting/Art and the Emancipatory Project: Some Reflections,” Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 9:5 (1997), p. 82; Robin Roslender and Jesse F. Dillard, “Reflections on the Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Accounting Project,” Critical Perspectives on Accounting 14:3 (2003), p. 341.

¹⁶ Fleishman, “Review,” p. 43.

¹⁷ Ibid., 47.

¹⁸ Melissa Walters, “Alternative Accounting Thought and the Prison-house of Metaphor,” Accounting, Organizations and Society 29 (2004), pp. 157–187. Historiography of accounting relevant to this line of thinking is indebted to the work of Nietzsche and Foucault.

¹⁹ Warwick Funnell and Stephen Walker, “Introduction,” in Richard K. Fleishman, Warwick Funnell, and Stephen P. Walker (eds), Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), p. 3.

²⁰ Stephen P. Walker, “Accounting and Pauperism,” in Richard K. Fleishman, Warwick Funnell, and Stephen P. Walker (eds), Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), p. 106.

²¹ See Peter Miller and Ted O’Leary, “Accounting and the Construction of the Governable Person,” Accounting, Organizations and Society 12:3 (1987), pp. 235–65. For how this governable person literature that emerges in accounting can be helpful for theories of democracy and capitalism, see Mindy Peden, “‘Democratic Taxation’ and Quantifiable Action: Scientizing Dilemmas,” Contemporary Political Theory 7:3 (2008).

²² Cameron Graham and Dean Neu, “Accounting and Canada’s First Nations,” in Richard K. Fleishman, Warwick Funnell, and Stephen P. Walker (eds), Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), p. 95.

²³ Funnell and Walker, “Introduction,” p. 5.

²⁴ Warwick Funnell, “Accounting for the Holocaust,” in Richard K. Fleishman, Warwick Funnell, and Stephen P. Walker (eds), Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), p. 67.

²⁵ Ellen Lippmann and Paula A. Wilson, “Accountants and the Holocaust,” in Richard K. Fleishman, Warwick Funnell, and Stephen P. Walker (eds), Critical Histories of Accounting: Sinister Inscriptions in the Modern Era (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013), p. 71.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ Furnell and Walker, “Introduction,” p. 8, referencing Richard K. Fleischman, David Oldroyd, and Thomas N. Tyson, “Monetising Human Life: Slave Valuations on US and British West Indian Plantations,” Accounting History 9:2 (2004), pp. 35–62.

²⁸ Funnell and Walker, “Introduction,” p. 9.

²⁹ Etienne Balibar, “Politics of Debt,” Postmodern Culture 23:3 (2013).

³⁰ Chandana Alawattage and Danture Wickramasinghe, “Weapons of the Weak: Subalterns’ Emancipatory Accounting in Ceylon Tea,” Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 22:3 (2009), pp. 379–404.

³¹ Soren Ambrose, “Social Movements and the Politics of Debt Cancellation,” Chicago Journal of International Law 6:1 (2005).

³² Sonja Gallhofer and Andrew Chew, “Introduction: Accounting and Indigenous Peoples,” Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 13:3 (2000).

³³ Stuart Ogden and Philip Bougen, “A Radical Perspective on the Disclosure of Accounting Information to Trade Unions,” Accounting, Organizations and Society 10:2 (1985), pp. 211–24.

³⁴ Alawattage and Wickramasinghe, “Weapons,” p. 383.

³⁵ Ibid., 386.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Walters, “Alternative Accounting.”

³⁸ Antonio Gramsci, “The Modern Prince,” in Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (eds and trans) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York, NY: International Publishers, 1971). See also Chantal Mouffe, Gramsci and Marxist Theory (London, UK: Routledge, 1979) especially chapters by Mouffe and Christine Buci-Glucksmann.

³⁹ Though Hegel and Marx understood this, the conceptual formulation here relies on specifically de-colonial and psychological insight into the production of subjectivities from Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2004). See also George Ciccariello-Maher, Decolonizing Dialectics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017).

⁴⁰ Sonja Gallhofer, Jim Haslam and Akira Yonekura, “Accounting as Differentiated Universal for Emancipatory Praxis: Accounting Delineation and Mobilization for Emancipation(s) Recognizing Democracy and Difference” Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 28:5 (2015), p. 848.

⁴¹ Gallhofer, Haslam, and Yonekura, “Accounting Differentiated Universal,” pp. 847, 849.

⁴² Bruff and Tansel, “Authoritarian Neoliberalism,” pp. 233–44.

⁴³ Ibid., 234.

⁴⁴ Gallhofer, Haslam, and Yonekura, “Accounting Differentiated Universal,” p. 855.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 847.

⁴⁶ Tim DiMuzio and Richard H. Robbins, Debt as Power (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016).

⁴⁷ Kwame Nkruhmah, Neo-colonialization: The Last Stage of Capitalism (Bedford, UK: Panaf Books Ltd., 1987).

⁴⁸ Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale: A Critique of the Theory of Underdevelopment (New York, NY: Monthly Review, 1974).

⁴⁹ Ambrose, “Social Movements.”

⁵⁰ Walt Whitman Rostow, The Theory of Economic Growth: A Noncommunist Manifesto (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

⁵¹ Ambrose, “Social Movements,” p. 268.

⁵² Bruce G. Carruthers, “From Uncertainty Toward Risk: The Case of Credit Ratings,” Socio-Economic Review 11 (2013), pp. 525–51.

⁵³ Carruthers, “Uncertainty,” p. 546.

⁵⁴ Eric Toussaint and Damien Millet, “Citizen Debt Audits: How and Why?” Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt(January 4, 2012), available online at: www.cadtm.org/Citizen-debt-audits-how-and-why.

⁵⁵ Yvonne Wong, Sovereign Finance and the Poverty of Nations: Odious Debt in International Law (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 2012).

⁵⁶ Iceland’s “Pots and Pans” revolution resulted in unprecedented and still not emulated incarceration of parties found to be responsible for financial collapse. This included politicians, bureaucrats, and business people. In that context, the power exerted by the Icelandic people continued to seek ways to prevent future collapse and recognize the significance of creating processes of deliberation and participation. See David Carrillo (ed.), The Icelandic Federalist Papers (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Public Policy Press, 2018).

⁵⁷ David M. Farrell, Jane Suiter, and Clodagh Harris, “’Systematizing’ Constitutional Deliberation: The 2016–18 Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland,” Irish Political Studies 34:1 (2019), pp. 113–123.

⁵⁸ Hall quoted in Bruff and Tansel, “Authoritarian Neoliberalism,” p. 238.

⁵⁹ Ali, Al-Aali, and Al-Owaihan, “Islamic Perspectives.”

⁶⁰ Mumtaz Hussain, Asghar Shahmoradi, and Rima Turk, “An Overview of Islamic Finance,” IMF Working Paper 15:120 (Zeine Zeidane, 2015).

⁶¹ Roberto Unger, False Necessity: Anti-necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (New York, NY: Verso, 2004), p. 508.

⁶² Chantal Mouffe, “Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern,” in Andrew Ross (ed.), Universal Abandon? The Politics of Postmodernism (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 1988) pp. 31–45; Gallhofer, p. 850.

⁶³ Gallhofer, Haslam, and Yonekura, “Accounting Differentiated Universal,” p. 854.

⁶⁴ Ibid.; see also Anthony Hopwood, “Wither Accounting Research?” The Accounting Review 82:5 (2007), pp. 1365–74.

⁶⁵ Marcia Annisette and Alan John Richardson, “Justification and Accounting: Applying Sociology of Worth to Accounting Research,” Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal 24:2 (2011), pp. 229–49.

⁶⁶ Gallhofer, Haslam, and Yonekura, “Accounting Differentiated Universal,” p. 863.

⁶⁷ Walters, “Alternative Accounting.”

⁶⁸ Garrett Keizer, “Nihilist Nation: The Empty Core of the Trump Mystique,” The New Republic (October 25, 2018), available online at: https://newrepublic.com/article/151603/nihilist-nation-empty-core-trump-mystique.

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Mindy Peden

Mindy Peden is Associate Professor of Political Science and Department Chair at John Carroll University.