ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the properties of materials and materials transformations in critical political economic analyses, framed by a Marxian conception of the production process. It considers an epistemological dilemma in seeking to understand why critical political economy has generally remained blind to the central role of the first set of processes of material transformations in economic activities. The long history of various strands of critical political economy can be traced back to Marx's seminal analyses of capitalist development. Knowledge of the properties of materials and of how to manipulate transformative processes to produce materials with desired properties has long been the domain of natural, physical and material scientists. The automobile industry remains the largest consumer of strip steel, the predominant material for structural components. Automotive steels account for 25 per cent of Acelor Mittals annual R&D budget of US$250m. There have been important innovations in engineering steels, especially following the development of isothermal transformation (ITT) diagrams in the 1930's.
