Abstract הקפיטליזם שולט בעולם. דיונים סוערים מתנהלים בין המלומדים הממסדיים לבין “הביקורתיים” על טיבו של הקפיטליזם הגלובלי. הבעיה היא שטיבו של המוסד המרכזי בקפיטליזם — ההון — אינו ידוע. לאחר יותר ממאתיים שנה של התפתחות קפיטליסטית נמרצת לא קיימת תיאוריית הון הגיונית אמפירית — לא במדע הכלכלה, לא בכלכלה הפוליטית המרקסיסטית ולא במדעי החברה בכלל, […]
Continue ReadingBichler & Nitzan, ‘The Business of Strategic Sabotage’
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 the United States is unpersuasive, if not deliberately misleading. Specifically, he argues that we cherry-pick specific data definitions and smoothing […]
Continue ReadingBichler & Nitzan, ‘Book Review: Steve Keen (2021) The New Economics: A Manifesto’
Abstract Steve Keen’s book, The New Economics: A Manifesto (2021), offers a new path for economics, and for good reason. In his view, neoclassicism, the paradigm that rules modern-day economics, has become a serious menace: “I regard Neoclassical economics as not merely a bad methodology for economic analysis, but as an existential threat to the […]
Continue ReadingBichler & Nitzan, ‘The Business of Strategic Sabotage’
Abstract Marxists love to hate the theory of capital as power, or CasP for short. And they have two good reasons. First, CasP criticizes the logical and empirical validity of the labour theory of value on which Marxism rests. And second, it offers the young at heart a radical, non-Marxist alternative with which to research, […]
Continue Reading2021/07: Bichler & Nitzan, ‘Steve Keen’s The New Economics: A Manifesto’
Abstract Neoclassical economics is the official scientific underpinning of capitalism as well as its main ideological defence, and according to Keen, it fails in both tasks. Contrary to received opinion, neoclassicism cannot explain capitalism – either in detail or in the aggregate – and the policies it prescribes do not support but undermine the very […]
Continue Reading2021/06: Bichler & Nitzan, ‘The Capitalist Degree of Immortality’
Abstract This note offers some speculative ideas worth considering. One of the key features of all hierarchical civilizations is their rulers’ fear of death. This fear was famously narrated in the ancient myth of Gilgamesh – the Sumerian king who realized that, like all other humans, he too was destined to die and embarked on […]
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