If you have a publication on the subject of Capital as Power, we would happily consider posting it in this section. You can email us either the actual publication or its preprint, in line with your publisher/copyright permission. Kindly indicate “Publication” in the subject line.
The 1% and the Rest of Us: A Political Economy of Dominant Ownership
January 24, 2015
One of the major accomplishments of the Occupy movement has been to draw global attention to the massive disparity of income, wealth, and privilege concentrated in one percent of the world’s population. In The 1% and the Rest of Us, Tim Di Muzio offers the first empirical and theoretical study of the culture, politics, built … Read more
Rethinking Economic Growth Theory From a Biophysical Perspective
December 29, 2014
Neoclassical growth theory is the dominant perspective for explaining economic growth. At its core are four implicit assumptions: 1) economic output can become decoupled from energy consumption; 2) economic distribution is unrelated to growth; 3) large institutions are not important for growth; and 4) labor force structure is not important for growth. Drawing on a … Read more
Encumbered Behemoth: Wal-Mart, Differential Accumulation and International Retail Restructuring
December 3, 2014
This chapter draws on, and develops, some aspects of the capital as power framework so as to provide the first clear quantitative explication of the company’s power trajectory to date. After rapid growth in the first four decades of its existence, the power of Wal-Mart appears to be flat-lining relative to dominant capital as a … Read more
Francis, Bichler and Nitzan on The Buy-to-Build Indicator: An Exchange
October 3, 2014
The first part of the exchange is a short article by Joe Francis. The article provides new long-term estimates and an assessment of the buy-to-build indicator for the United States and Britain, going back to the end of the 19th century. The second part offers commentary by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan. Citation: The Buy-to-Build … Read more
How Capitalists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crisis
June 8, 2014
Do capitalists really want a recovery? Can they afford it? On the face of it, the question sounds silly: of course capitalists want a recovery; how else can they prosper? According to the textbooks, both mainstream and heterodox, capital accumulation and economic growth are two sides of the same process. Accumulation generates growth and growth … Read more
Wal-Mart’s Power Trajectory: A Contribution to the Political Economy of the Firm
March 16, 2014
This article offers a power theory of value analysis of Wal-Mart’s contested expansion in the retail business. More specifically, it draws on, and develops, some aspects of the capital as power framework so as to provide the first clear quantitative explication of the company’s power trajectory to date. After rapid growth in the first four … Read more
No Way Out: Crime, Punishment and the Capitalization of Power
January 14, 2014
The United States is often hailed as the world’s largest ‘free market’. But this ‘free market’ is also the world’s largest penal colony. It holds over seven million adults – roughly five per cent of the labour force – in jail, in prison, on parole and on probation. Is this an anomaly, or does the … Read more
The Capitalist Mode of Power: Critical Engagements with the Power Theory of Value
August 26, 2013
This edited volume offers the first critical engagement with one of the most provocative and controversial theories in political economy: the thesis that capital can be theorized as power and that capital is finance and only finance. The book also includes a detailed introduction to this novel thesis first put forward by Nitzan and Bichler … Read more