Productive Capital and Claim Capital

This paper develops the distinction between productive capital and claim capital as a balance-sheet approach to capital composition in monetary production economies. Productive capital is defined as capital that expands reproducible productive capacity. Claim capital is defined as capitalized claims on future output that do not necessarily expand the economy’s ability to produce that output. The paper situates this distinction within a broader line connecting Marxian and post-Keynesian concerns with reproduction, monetary production, effective demand, credit, financial instability and the heterogeneity of capital. It also shows why the framework can be made compatible with contemporary Chinese discussions of high-quality development and new quality productive forces, provided these terms are treated analytically rather than as substitutes for empirical validation. More broadly, the paper argues that capital theory should not remain Western-centric and should take East Asian economic thought seriously as a source of theoretical orientation and empirical questions. The argument is especially relevant for economies under persistent capital saturation, where high savings and accumulated capital exceed the productive sphere’s capacity for efficient absorption. In such economies, growth potential cannot be inferred from total capital alone. The paper proposes the productive capital share – the ratio of productive capital to total capital – as the primary structural indicator of growth potential under capital saturation, while treating claim-capital measures as complementary indicators of accumulated claims. The paper is conceptual and outlines a research programme rather than a fully formalized or empirically tested model.