Capitalism As a Mode of Power. Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Interviewed by Piotr Dutkiewicz
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66, 13 January 2014
sanity, humanity and science probably the world’s most read economics journal real-world economics review - Subscribers: 23,924 Subscribe here Blog ISSN 1755-9472 - A journal of the World Economics Association (WEA) 12,557 members, join here - Sister open-access journals: Economic Thought and World Economic Review - back issues at www.paecon.net recent issues: 65 64 63 62 61 60 59 58 57 56 Issue no. 66, 13 January 2014 In this issue: Secular stagnation and endogenous money 2 Steve Keen Micro versus Macro 12 Lars Pålsson Syll On facts and values: a critique of the fact value dichotomy 30 Joseph Noko Modern Money Theory and New Currency Theory: A comparative discussion 38 Joseph Huber Fama-Shiller, the Prize Committee and the “Efficient Markets Hypothesis” 58 Bernard Guerrien and Ozgur Gun How capitalists learned to stop worrying and love the crisis 65 Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Two approaches to global competition: A historical review 74 M. Shahid Alam Dimensions of real-world competition – a critical realist perspective 80 Hubert Buch-Hansen Information economics as mainstream economics and the limits of reform 95 Jamie Morgan and Brendan Sheehan The ℵ capability matrix: GDP and the economics of human development 109 Jorge Buzaglo Open access vs. academic power 127 C P Chandrasekhar Interview with Edward Fullbrook on New Paradigm Economics vs. Old Paradigm Economics 131 Book review of The Great Eurozone Disaster: From Crisis to Global New Deal by Heikki Patomäki 144 Comment: Romar Correa on “A Copernican Turn in Banking Union”, by Thomas Mayer 147 Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions and etc. -
Rising Corporate Concentration, Declining Trade Union Power, and the Growing Income Gap: American Prosperity in Historical Perspective Jordan Brennan
Rising Corporate Concentration, Declining Trade Union Power, and the Growing Income Gap: American Prosperity in Historical Perspective Jordan Brennan February 2016 Rising Corporate Concentration, Declining Trade Union Power, and the Growing Income Gap: American Prosperity in Historical Perspective Jordan Brennan* March 2016 *Jordan Brennan is an economist with Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector labor union, and a research associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.jordanbrennan.org. Contents Executive Summary 2 Acknowledgments 4 List of Figures 5 Part I: Corporate Concentration, Secular Stagnation, and the Growing Income Gap 6 Part II: Labor Unions, Inflation, and the Making of an Inclusive Prosperity 24 Appendix 48 References 51 1 Executive Summary The rise of income inequality amidst the deceleration of GDP growth must rank as two of the most perplexing and challenging problems in contemporary American capitalism. Comparing 1935–80 with 1980–2013—that is, the Keynesian-inspired welfare regime and, later, neoliberal globalization—the average annual rate of GDP growth was more than halved and income inequality went from a postwar low in 1976 to a postwar high in 2012. How do we account for this double-sided phenomenon? The conventional explanations of secular stagnation and elevated inequality are inadequate, largely because mainstream (“neoclassical”) economics rejects the notion that the amassment and exercise of institutional power play a role in the normal functioning of markets and business. This analytical inadequacy has left important causal elements outside the purview of researchers, policymakers, and the public at large. This two-part analysis investigates some of the causes and consequences of income inequality and secular stagnation in the United States. -
The Buy-To-Build Indicator New Estimates and Comment
The Buy-to-Build Indicator New Estimates and Comment Joseph Francis, Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan1 London, Jerusalem and Montreal March-April 2013 Creative Commons The first part of the exchange is a short article by Joseph Francis. The article provides new estimates and an assessment of the buy-to-build indicator for the United States and Britain. The second part offers commentary by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan. 1 Joseph Francis is a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics ([email protected]; http://www.joefrancis.info/). Shimshon Bichler teaches political economy at colleges and universities in Israel ([email protected]; http://bnarchives.net). Jonathan Nitzan teaches political economy at York University in Toronto ([email protected]; http://bnarchives.net). The Buy-to-Build Indicator: New Estimates for Britain and the United States Joseph Francis* London School of Economics www.joefrancis.info March 2013 This note presents new long-term estimates of what Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler (2002: 53-4, 82-3; 2009: Ch.15) have named the ‘buy-to-build indicator’, which is calculated as the value of mergers and acquisitions as a percentage of gross capital form- ation. Estimating the buy-to-build indicators is not simple, principally due to the absence of consistent series for expenditure on mergers and acquisitions. Nevertheless, as this note describes, it has proven possible to calculate them for both Britain and the United States. For Britain, the new estimates build principally on the research of the Leslie Hannah, as well as official government statistics, while for the United States, they repres- ent significant revisions of Nitzan and Bichler’s own original estimates. -
Casp's 'Differential Accumulation Versus Veblen's '
WORKING PAPERS ON CAPITAL AS POWER No. 2018/08 CasP’s ‘Differential Accumulation versus Veblen’s ‘Differential Advantage’ Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan November 2018 http://www.capitalaspower.com/?p=2557 CasP’s ‘Differential Accumulation’ versus Veblen’s ‘Differential Advantage’ Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan1 Jerusalem and Montreal November 2018 bnarchives.net / Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) 1. Introduction This paper clarifies a common misrepresentation of our theory of capital as power, or CasP. Many observers tend to box CasP as an ‘institutionalist’ theory, tracing its central process of ‘differential ac- cumulation’ to Thorstein Veblen’s notion of ‘differential advantage’ (Cf. 1904, 1923). This view, we argue, betrays a misunderstanding of CasP, Veblen or both. As we show below, CasP’s notion of dif- ferential accumulation is not only different from, but also diametrically opposed to Veblen’s differential advantage. Our argument is articulated in several steps. Section 2 outlines the key claims of CasP, contrasting them with those of received theory and articulating the way in which they relate and lead to our concept of differential accumulation. Sections 3 and 4 examine Veblen’s twin concepts of strategic sabotage and differential advantage, showing that the latter is concerned not with differential profit, but with the earning of profit as such. Section 5 develops this claim further, demonstrating that Veblen’s analysis of accumulation, hostage to neoclassical absolutes, understood capitalists as seeking not differential profit, but maximum profit. Section 6 examines the historical context in which Veblen was writing, suggesting that this backdrop made it practically impossible for him to conceive – let alone theorize and measure – differential accumulation, even if he had wanted to. -
An Invited-Then-Rejected Interview with Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, Working Papers on Capital As Power, No
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan Working Paper The Capital as Power Aproach: An Invited-then- Rejected Interview with Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan Working Papers on Capital as Power, No. 2020/02 Provided in Cooperation with: The Bichler & Nitzan Archives Suggested Citation: Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan (2020) : The Capital as Power Aproach: An Invited-then-Rejected Interview with Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, Working Papers on Capital as Power, No. 2020/02, Forum on Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, s.l., https://capitalaspower.com/?p=3925 , http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/640/ This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/218867 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. -
The Contours of the Future in the Context of the World's
RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ST. PETERSBURG INTELLIGENTSIA CONGRESS ST. PETERSBURG UNIVERSITY OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES under the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation THE CONTOURS OF THE FUTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE WORLD’S CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT The 18th International Likhachov Scientific Conference May 17–19, 2018 The conference, originally called ‘The Days of Sci - The Conference is held in accordance with en ce in St. Petersburg University of the Humanities the Decree of President of Russia V. V. Putin and Social Sciences’ is the 26th in number ‘On perpetuating the memory and the 18th in the status of the International of Dmitry Sergeyevich Likhachov’ Likhachov Scientific Conference No 587, dated from May 23, 2001 In 2018 the socially important project ‘The 18th International Likhachov Scientific Conference’ was realized with the help of the Grant of the President of the Russian Federation for civil society development provided by the President’s Grants Fund in accordance with the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of April 3, 2017 No 93-rp St. Petersburg 2018 ББК 72 К65 Scientific editor A. S. Zapesotsky, Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the International Likhachov Scientific Conference, President of St. Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences, correspon ding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Educa tion, Dr. Sc. (Cultural Studies), Professor, Scientist Emeritus of the Russian Federation, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Congress of St. Petersburg Intelligentsia Recommended to be published by the Editorial and Publishing Council of St. -
Casp's 'Differential Accumulation Versus Veblen's '
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan Working Paper CasP's 'Differential Accumulation' versus Veblen's 'Differential Advantage' Working Papers on Capital as Power, No. 2018/08 Provided in Cooperation with: The Bichler & Nitzan Archives Suggested Citation: Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan (2018) : CasP's 'Differential Accumulation' versus Veblen's 'Differential Advantage', Working Papers on Capital as Power, No. 2018/08, Forum on Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, s.l., http://www.capitalaspower.com/?p=2557 This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/189830 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ www.econstor.eu WORKING PAPERS ON CAPITAL AS POWER No. -
Castoriadis, Veblen and the 'Power Theory of Capital'
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Bichler & Nitzan Archives THE ‘POWER THEORY OF CAPITAL’ Castoriadis, Veblen, and the ‘Power Theory of Capital’ D. T. Cochrane In Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” a group of adults sit around a table, drinking gin and telling stories of love. It is apparent that none of them can adequately express what love really is.1 One woman describes the abuse she experienced at the hands of her ex-husband. She insists that his actions, although terrible, were, in their own way, a manifestation of love. Her current husband insists that this cannot be so for love would never provoke someone to violence. Ultimately they agree to disagree. Despite the importance of love in their lives and their assertions that they feel love and loved, they could not provide an exact meaning for the word; a precise understanding of what ‘love’ signifi es – either in form or content – escapes everyone at the table. Like the characters in Carver’s story who have diffi culty in knowing how to talk about love, academics experience similar diffi culties when speaking of ‘capital.’ Economists, political scientists, even literary theorists, freely employ the concept, yet few can say what the word ‘capital’ truly signifi es. Either unaware of or unconcerned by the serious problems with both the Marxist labor theory of value (LToV) and the neoclassical utility 1. Thanks to the participants of the 2008 Great Lakes Political Economy Conference who provided feedback on this paper. -
The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition
This document is free for all non-commercial reuse, reprint and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere The Global Political Economy of Israel Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler Pluto P Press LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA First published 2002 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166–2012, USA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler 2002 The right of Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7453 1676 X hardback ISBN 0 7453 1675 1 paperback 5 The Weapondollar–Petrodollar Coalition I warn you, that when the princes of this world start loving you, it means they’re going to grind you up into battle sausage. – Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night Although economically isolated from its neighbours in terms of trade and investment, Israel’s political economy has nevertheless been deeply embedded in the larger saga of the Middle East. The twentieth century, with its endless thirst for energy, made the region crucial for its oil exports. Since the 1960s, however, oil outflows have been complemented by the newer and more precarious movement of arms imports. And as the ‘petrodollar’ earnings from oil and ‘weapondollar’ profits from arms grew increasingly intertwined, there emerged in the region a pattern of ‘energy conflicts’, a series of oil-related wars and revolutions which again and again rocked the Middle East, sending shock waves throughout the world. -
Theory and Praxis, Theory and Practice, Practical Theory
Theory and Praxis, Theory and Practice, Practical Theory Suggested citation: Debailleul, Corentin, Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan (2018), ‘Theory and Praxis, Theory and Practice, Practical Theory’, Review of Capital as Power, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 40-57. Theory and Praxis, Theory and Practice, Practical Theory CORENTIN DEBAILLEUL, SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN1 Questions to Bichler and Nitzan by Corentin Debailleul n their most recent contribution to the Working Papers on Capital as Power, ‘The CasP Project: Past, Present and Future’ (2015 now published in Vol. 1, No. 3 in this journal), I Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan invite readers to engage critically with their theoretical framework, known as capital as power (CasP). This call for further research, reactions and critiques is the perfect occasion to raise a few questions that have grown in my mind in reading Nitzan and Bichler’s work. In their book Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder (2009), Nitzan and Bichler reject both neoclassical and Marxist perspectives in political economy, and they dedicate two full chapters to a critique of Marxism. The critique focuses mainly on the labour theory of value, as the authors identify it as the core foundation of Marx’s work. And indeed, the concept of exploitation – so central for many political parties, unions and activists – is built on this very theory. Hence calling into question the labour theory of value shakes not only the ground on which all Marxist economics rests, but also all Marxist praxis, for the two go hand in hand. 1 Corentin Debailleul resides in Brussels. -
83 20 March 2018
sanity, humanity and science probably the world's most read economics journal real-world economics review Please click here to support this journal and the WEA - Subscribers: 26,369 subscribe RWER Blog ISSN 1755-9472 - A journal of the World Economics Association (WEA) 14,468 members, join - Sister open access journals: Economic Thought and World Social and Economic Review back issues Issue no. 83 20 March 2018 Ten years after the crisis: a lost decade? 2 Steven Pressman and Robert Scott The great marginalization: why twentieth century economists neglected inequality 20 Eli Cook Game Theory On the current state of game theory 35 Bernard Guerrien Why game theory never will be anything but a footnote in the history of social science 45 Lars Pålsson Syll Employment The creation of jobs 65 Michael Joffe Employment in a just economy 87 John Komlos Business Studies Managing the engines of value-creation 99 J.-C. Spender The effect of academic business studies in Germany and America in the 116 modern era Robert R. Locke Does the maximization principle break down during recessions? 138 Philip George From Bologna to Athens: the political economy of reforms in Europe 147 Yiannis Kokkinakis Book review essay The Vienna school of ecological economics 163 Katharine N. Farrell Board of Editors, past contributors, submissions, etc. 170 support this journal and the WEA visit the RWER Blog real-world economics review, issue no. 83 subscribe for free Ten years after the crisis: a lost decade? Steven Pressman and Robert Scott [Colorado State University and Monmouth University, USA] Copyright: Steven Pressman and Robert Scott 2018 You may post comments on this paper at https://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-83/ Abstract The Great Recession was the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. -
The Crypt of Art, the Decryption of Money, the Encrypted Common and the Problem with Cryptocurrencies
PERFORMING FUTURE FINANCE 121 THE CRYPT OF ART, THE DECRYPTION OF MONEY, THE ENCRYPTED COMMON AND THE PROBLEM WITH CRYPTOCURRENCIES MAX HAIVEN 122 MONEYLAA B READER 2 THE CRYPT OF ART, THE DECRYPTION OF MONEY, THE ENCRYPTED COMMON AND THE PROBLEM WITH CRYPTOCURRENCIES MAX HAIVEN As I have argued in the frst Moneylab Reader, money is a medium of the imagina- tion.1 While it is often presumed to be a banal and basic substance marked by its fungibility, ease of use, widespread acceptance and legal status, money also has a dramatic impact on what and who we imagine is valuable. Conversely, money de- pends on individuals’ and society’s constant imaginative labors to reafrm its power, especially in an age of immaterial and fat currencies devoid of any possible use- value outside of capitalist exchange. By extension, I argued that we need to reassess and deepen our aspirations for currency reform: at some level all schemes for ‘fxing’ money, no matter how technocratic, have encrypted within them deep ideological and philosophical assumptions which, if we fail to disinter them, usually lead us to reproduce or re-inscribe the ills of the current system in our plans and protagonism for a new one. With that in mind I want to, here, return to these questions of value, the imagination, currency and power by undertaking what might at frst seem like a curious question: what can the fate of art today, in an age of its rapid and dramatic fnancialization, teach us about the pitfalls lying before those using the latest technological tools to develop supposedly ‘autonomous’ crypto-currencies? At stake here is, once again, to question the very relationship of value and imagination that so vexes anyone looking deeply into today’s capitalist economic system with an eye to change (or abolish) it.2 To ap- proach an answer, however, we will have to exit the complex, if seductive, cathedral of monetary theory and philosophy for a moment and descend into the crypt, where the bodies are buried.