January 8, 2019
Originally published at Real World Economics Review Blog. from Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan A new, capitalism-denying book is on the shelves, and it makes a stunning discovery: ‘Capitalism without competition is not capitalism’! Distortions: Capitalism Denied Capitalist crisis, like climate change, tends to breed ‘capitalism deniers’. The problem, argue the deniers, lies not in capitalism but in … Read more
2018 Capital as Power Essay Prize
November 30, 2018
2018 Capital as Power Essay Prize First Prize $1000 Second Prize $500 Third Prize $300 http://www.recasp.com/essay-prize The Review of Capital as Power (RECASP) announces an annual essay prize on the subject of capital as power. The best paper will receive a prize of $1000. A prize of $500 will be awarded to the second best contribution, while … Read more
Francis’ Updated Buy-to-Build Indicator
September 5, 2018
Joe Francis, who written on the buy-to-build indicator before, has updated his data for the USA and the UK. Below is his post entitled ‘An Open Source Update of the Buy-to-Build Indicator’: The tendency toward buying other companies more than building new productive capacity continues in the United States In a past life I had … Read more
March 21, 2018
This post was written by Tim DiMuzio and originally appeared on the website for Review of African Political Economy. Despite the fact that the ‘capital as power’ approach to critical political economy has been around for some time now, it is not very widely used and/or understood. Part of the reason for this, I believe, … Read more
Podcast Interview with Blair Fix on Capitalism, Hierarchy, and Energy
February 9, 2018
Blair Fix, whose publications are available on this site, was interviewed by Post-Scarcity Anarchism. The interview covers his research on energy use and the relationship between hierarchy and personal income. Worth the listen!
Profit warning: there will be blood
December 12, 2017
The following research note by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan first appeared on Real World Economics Review Blog. We have just updated the charts in our 2014 RWER paper ‘Still About Oil?’, and the picture they portray reads like a capitalist call for arms. Beginning in the late 1980s, we suggested that, since the late … Read more
Comment on Can Capitalists Afford a Trumped Recovery?
May 12, 2017
The following commentary on Nitzan and Bichler’s piece ‘Can Capitalist Afford a Trumped Recovery?’ first appeared on the blog Pension Pulse, written by Leo Kolivakis. Earlier this week, I hooked up for a lunch with George Archer and Jonathan Nitzan, two friends of mine who also had previous stints working at BCA Research. I enjoyed our lunch … Read more
Did the Market Punish United Airlines?
April 19, 2017
In the days following the wide-spread distribution of a video depicting Chicago transportation police officers violently removing Dr. David Dao from a United Airlines flight, there was celebration as the market pummelled the airlines shares (UAL). Or did it? Although the incident generated a great deal of outrage on Twitter, and early in the trading … Read more
Spiegel Online Analysis of Deutsche Bank’s Differential Misfortune
January 2, 2017
Deutsche Bank was a central figure of the 2008 global financial crisis. While some of its compatriots, such as Goldman Sachs, have re-ascended to the commanding heights of global capital, Deutsche remains a shadow of its former self as seen in the graph below (screenshot from Yahoo! Finance). A comparison of Deutsche Bank (DB) with … Read more
Trump, US Public Debt, and the Future of Global Financial Power
December 16, 2016
The following post is based loosely on my presentation at the first annual Thammasat University-Conference for Asia Pacific Studies in Phuket, Thailand (8-9 December 2016). What a difference a few months makes. This past summer I published a piece in the European Journal of International Relations on the role of US Treasury securities as the … Read more
Logics AND the Logic of Accumulation
September 1, 2016
The presiding logic of capitalism is that of accumulation. CasP re-emphasizes and re-theorizes accumulation as ‘Moses & the Prophets’ of capitalism. However, Nitzan and Bichler’s theorization severs the link between accumulation and productivity that grounds both mainstream and critical value theory. Instead, they emphasize the meaning of the nominal quantities of capital as a translation … Read more
Protecting the Game from the Players
June 7, 2016
In certain circles, Charlie Munger is a demi-god. He is the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company controlled by the god of markets himself, or rather, Warren Buffett. The words spoken and written by both Buffett and Munger are treated as divine insights on the way the world works or ought to work. Recently, Munger … Read more