Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler In 1989, we applied for a Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation grant to investigate the funding of fascist and Neo-Nazi movements in Israel. The Foundation did not find the topic important enough, and the application was ceremonially rejected. Here is what we wanted to do. Research plan The emergence of ultra […]
Continue Reading
Abstract A recent New Political Economy article by Baines and Hager (2020) critiqued Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan’s capital-as-power (CasP) model of the stock market (Bichler & Nitzan, 2016). Bichler and Nitzan’s model of the stock market seeks to explain how financial crises are tied to the (upper) limits of redistributing income through power. Bichler […]
Continue Reading
Abstract Most explanations of stock market booms and busts are based on contrasting the underlying ‘fundamental’ logic of the economy with the exogenous, non-economic factors that presumably distort it. Our paper offers a radically different model, examining the stock market not from the mechanical viewpoint of a distorted economy, but from the dialectical perspective of […]
Continue Reading
Abstract Most explanations of stock market booms and busts are based on contrasting the underlying ‘fundamental’ logic of the economy with the exogenous, non-economic factors that presumably distort it. Our paper offers a radically different model, examining the stock market not from the mechanical viewpoint of a distorted economy, but from the dialectical perspective of […]
Continue Reading
Frederick H. Pitts Resonance and dissonance in the rhythms of freelance creative work In the last blog, I applied some of Nitzan and Bichler’s ideas to freelance work in the creative industries. I utilised their conceptualisation of the distinction between creativity and power, and of the sabotage of the former by the latter. Nitzan and […]
Continue Reading
Frederick H. Pitts Creativity, sabotage and the management of risk and responsibility in freelance creative work Nitzan and Bichler theorise a dissonant relation of sabotage between power and creativity, business and industry. What they show is that the control of creative processes of production is not antithetical to their success. Rather, it is constitutive of […]
Continue Reading
Frederick H. Pitts Capital as Power, risk-aversion and the avoidance of uncertainty Mainstream critiques of contemporary capitalism conducted in the wake of the Great Recession tend to indict a number of factors. Perceived short-termism. The dangerous compulsion to speculate. An attraction to growth for growth’s sake. The propensity towards the greedy and rapid accumulation of […]
Continue Reading
Frederick H. Pitts Rhythms of Risk and Responsibility in Freelance Creative Work This series of blogs applies Nitzan and Bichler’s theory of capital as power to the empirical concern of freelance work in the creative industries. It reports some findings from a research project I conducted earlier this year. The research was part of a […]
Continue Reading
Abstract Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists think of capital as an economic entity that they count in universal units of utils and abstract labour, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious: they can […]
Continue Reading
Abstract Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis: after centuries of debate, they are still unable to tell us what capital is. Liberals and Marxists both think of capital as an ‘economic’ entity that they count in universal units of ‘utils’ or ‘abstract labour’, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious. Nobody […]
Continue Reading
Abstract The thesis offers a new framework for inflation as a process of restructuring. Contrary to existing theories of inflation, which tend to take structure and institutions as given for the purpose of analysis, we argue that inflation could be understood only in terms of ongoing structural and institutional change. In the modern context of […]
Continue Reading