Abstract
This article presents a theory of radical materialism and of money capital found in selected writings by Henry James and in Honoré de Balzac's novel work, Eugénie Grandet. The theory argued for here presents an understanding of materialism and of capital that would be most radical when predicated on something that builds on the life-asserting notions of 'un-power' or 'non-power', so that in their most significant and substantial form, materialism and capital are about assuming their own symbolic non-existences or basis in nothing.
As such, writings by James and Balzac give us the creative opportunity to think afresh the category of wealth and of how it may be redefined in a new understanding of its form and content for the twenty first century.