What’s New
Abstract One of the most important and recurring debates in the field of International Political Economy and international affairs are the links between capitalism, fossil fuel energy and climate change. In these debates, the origins …
Coda to the 6-part series Alberta’s Rockefeller Coups Regan Boychuk Since a small and relatively weak people living alongside a great and powerful people necessarily devotes much time to study and observation of its large …
Abstract Our recent article on ‘The Road to Gaza’ examined the history of the three supreme-God churches and the growing role of their militias in armed conflicts and wars around the world. The present paper …
Abstract Much of the economic analysis of banking crises focuses on the interplay between concentration and stability. A common theory is that concentration is associated with greater stability, whereas competition is associated with instability. In …
Abstract Hager’s project examines the historical development of US public debt ownership and its political implications. His main innovation is to approach the topic from the perspective of disaggregated social class and frame questions of …
Abstract The war that started in 2023 between Hamas and Israel is driven by various long-lasting processes, but it also brings to the fore a new cause that hitherto seemed marginal: the armed militias of …
Review of Capital as Power (RECASP)
Manuscripts Don’t Burn SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN September 2023 Keywords censorship, ideology, marxism, neoliberalilsm, peer review, plagiarism Citation Bichler, Shimshon, and Nitzan, Jonathan. 2023. ‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’. Review of Capital as Power, Vol. 2, …
The Capital as Power Approach An Invited-then-Rejected Interview with Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN September 2023 Keywords capital accumulation, capitalization, interview, Marxism, modes of power, stagflation, systemic fear, value theory …
The Business of Strategic Sabotage SHIMSHON BICHLER and JONATHAN NITZAN January 2023 Abstract In a recent article, Nicolas D. Villarreal claims that our empirical analysis of the relation between business power and industrial sabotage in …
Pensions and Power The Political and Market Dynamics of Public Pension Plans ERALD KOLASI June 2022 Abstract This paper uses the theory of ‘capital as power’ to analyze the struggle over public pensions in the …
Costly Efficiencies Healthcare Spending, COVID-19, and the Public/Private Healthcare Debate CHRIS MOURÉ May 2022 Abstract Proponents of private healthcare often claim that the private sector is more ‘efficient’ at delivering healthcare services. This paper tests …
Hype The Capitalist Degree of Induced Participation YURI DI LIBERTO April 2022 Abstract Power is usually considered as either a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ construct, as in the power to force action versus the power to …
Blog
Coda to the 6-part series Alberta’s Rockefeller Coups Regan Boychuk Since a small and relatively weak people living alongside a great and powerful people necessarily devotes much time to study and observation of its large …
Originally published at sbhager.com Sandy Brian Hager Reading in the latest FT Weekend about NovoNordisk’s recent moves to corner the market for weight loss drugs, I was reminded of an eye-opening article from Rana Foroohar …
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon This paper investigates the timing of labour strikes in Hollywood. The occurrence of strikes, such as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, can make sense when …
Regan Boychuk Author’s Note: John D. Rockefeller Sr. had the last laugh about American anti-trust law and the muck-raking media before descending to Dante’s 9th Circle in May 1937. The oil industry’s center of gravity had …
Originally published at Economics from the Top Down Blair Fix A few months ago I received an intriguing email from researcher and activist Regan Boychuk. For the past 15 years, Boychuk has been studying the …
Originally published at notes on cinema James McMahon Around the time of this post, SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) produced a tentative agreement in their 2023 negotiations. The SAG-AFTRA …
Publications
Abstract One of the most important and recurring debates in the field of International Political Economy and international affairs are the links between capitalism, fossil fuel energy and climate change. In these debates, the origins …
Abstract Political economists, both mainstream and Marxist, find it difficult to reconcile the «real» and «financial» appearances of capital. The conventional view is that «real» capital is an objective productive entity; that «finance» merely reflects …
Abstract This chapter examines the political economy of biopharmaceutical innovation, focusing primarily on vaccines in the Covid-19 pandemic. This analysis aims to make visible the deep entanglements that entrench an extractive and dysfunctional innovation ecosystem, …
Abstract This essay opposes the idea that contemporary critical events like pandemics, global warming, environmental deterioration, et cetera, are to be considered as affecting humanity in a uniform way. Instead of seeing these phenomena like …
Abstract Este artículo intenta sentar las bases para una comprensión de los precios radicalmente diferente a como los entiende el pensamiento económico tradicional. Tras revisar algunos aspectos relevantes de la crítica a la teoría del …
Abstract This paper builds an empirical and theoretical model to analyze how the financial goal of risk reduction changed the insides of Hollywood’s star system. For the moviegoer looking at Hollywood cinema from the outside, …
Working Papers on Capital as Power
Abstract Our recent article on ‘The Road to Gaza’ examined the history of the three supreme-God churches and the growing role of their militias in armed conflicts and wars around the world. The present paper …
Abstract Much of the economic analysis of banking crises focuses on the interplay between concentration and stability. A common theory is that concentration is associated with greater stability, whereas competition is associated with instability. In …
Abstract Hager’s project examines the historical development of US public debt ownership and its political implications. His main innovation is to approach the topic from the perspective of disaggregated social class and frame questions of …
Abstract The war that started in 2023 between Hamas and Israel is driven by various long-lasting processes, but it also brings to the fore a new cause that hitherto seemed marginal: the armed militias of …
Abstract The 2023 war between Hamas and Israel elicits many different explanations. As with previous regional hostilities, here too, the pundits and commentators have numerous overlapping processes to draw on – from the struggle between …
Abstract Israel’s ongoing crisis – or ‘judicial coup’ in popular parlance – has elicited two opposite responses. The first comes from global rating agencies, economists and investment strategists who see Israel’s country risk rising. The …
Forum
jmc
To clarify, I am using a physics metaphor to illustrate the problem a theory will have with observable and unobservable phenomena. I will let others decide what dark matter means in contemporary physics. It is …
Scot Griffin
First, what is the motivation to incorporate a physics metaphor into CasP theory? For example, if “the quantum of capital exists as finance, and only as finance,” why are you looking to physics–and not accounting– …
Jonathan Nitzan
The ‘dark-matter’ syndrome is inherent to scientific modelling. All scientific models are wrong to some extent – either because the modellers exclude important elements and misrepresent or omit relevant relations, or because they over-simplify. The …
Pieter de Beer
While in physics, dark matter cannot be observed directly, it is studied through its effects on the broader system with which it exists. Similarly, we could use resource flows around unobserved or unobservable capital. …
jmc
I’m trying not to overthink how I am applying a concept of physics to the methods of CasP, but I have recently been wondering where and why a picture of capitalist power is filled with …
Jonathan Nitzan
Svetlana Alexievich’s Secondhand Time chronicles the transition from the Soviet mode of power to Russia’s new capitalist mode of power. And it is unique because it is written not from the top, but from the …
Bichler & Nitzan Archives
- Measuring Hierarchyon October 15, 2024
Measuring Hierarchy Carbonell-Nicolau, Oriol. (2024). Department of Economics. Rutgers University. 15 October. pp. 1-42. (Article - Monograph; English).
- הדרך לעזה: על משטרי הכוח וכנסיות האל העליון היחיד (The Road to Gaza: On Modes of Power and Supreme-God Churches)on October 10, 2024
הדרך לעזה: על משטרי הכוח וכנסיות האל העליון היחיד (The Road to Gaza: On Modes of Power and Supreme-God Churches). Nitzan, Jonathan and Bichler, Shimshon (2024). Montreal and Jerusalem. The Bichler & Nitzan Archives, pp. 1-193. (Book; Hebrew).
- Tracking the Fortunes of Corporate Psychedeliaon October 9, 2024
Tracking the Fortunes of Corporate Psychedelia Hager, Sandy Brian. (2024). City Political Economy Research Centre Working Paper Series (CITYPERC). No. 02. September. pp. 1-22. (Article - Working Paper; English).
- Re-Considering the Origins of the Climate Emergency: War, Finance, and the Stateon September 2, 2024
Re-Considering the Origins of the Climate Emergency: War, Finance, and the State Di Muzio, Tim and Dow, Matt. (2023). London Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Sciences. Vol. 23. No. 22. pp. 1-19. (Article - Journal; English).
- Ontology of Finance Reduxon August 31, 2024
Ontology of Finance Redux Breitling, Dustin. (2017). &&&. 19 February. pp. 1-25. (Article - Magazine; English).
- From Commodity to Asset: The Truth Behind Rising House Priceson August 23, 2024
From Commodity to Asset: The Truth Behind Rising House Prices Fix, Blair. (2024). Economics from the Top Down. 22 August. pp. 1-30. (Article - Magazine; English).