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Open Access
A CasP Model of the Stock Market
(2016) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
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 capitalized power. The model demonstrates that (1) the valuation of equities represents capitalized power; (2) capitalized power is dialectically intertwined with systemic fear; and (3) systemic fear and capitalized power are mediated through strategic sabotage. This triangular model, we posit, can offer a basis for examining the asymptotes, or limits, of capitalized power and the ways in which these asymptotes relate to the historical and ongoing transformation of the capitalist mode of power.
Open Access
A CasP Model of the Stock Market
(2016) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
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 capitalized power. The model demonstrates that (1) the valuation of equities represents capitalized power; (2) capitalized power is dialectically intertwined with systemic fear; and (3) systemic fear and capitalized power are mediated through strategic sabotage. This triangular model, we posit, can offer a basis for examining the asymptotes, or limits, of capitalized power and the ways in which these asymptotes relate to the historical and ongoing transformation of the capitalist mode of power.
Open Access
A CasP Model of the Stock Market -- Video and Chartbook
(2016) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
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 capitalized power. The model demonstrates that (1) the valuation of equities represents capitalized power; (2) capitalized power is dialectically intertwined with systemic fear; and (3) the connection between capitalized power and systemic fear is mediated by strategic sabotage. This triangular model, we posit, can offer a basis for examining the asymptotes, or limits, of capitalized power and the ways in which these asymptotes relate to the historical and ongoing transformation of the capitalist mode of power. Video duration: 1:53 hours WHERE: Room 280N in York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University WHEN: Thursday, September 29, 2016, 2:15-4:00 pm
Open Access
Accumulation through Crisis: Global Stagflation and the New Wars
(2008) Nitzan, Jonathan
A lecture on the capitalist hologram and the new patterns of mergers, stagflation and war. Video duration: 1 hour 45 minutes.
Open Access
Acumulación de capital: ficción y realidad
(2015) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
¿Qué quieren decir los economistas cuando hablan de “acumulación de capital'? La respuesta es todo, menos clara. La opinión convencional es que hay dos tipos de capital: real y financiero, que deben guardar correspondencia y que, infortunadamente, la mayoría de las veces no se corresponden, pues el crecimiento del capital financiero tiende a desajustarse y a distorsionar la acumulación de capital real. El artículo muestra que esta “tesis del desajuste” y, por tanto, la capacidad de los economistas para explicar la acumulación, se construyó sobre bases deleznables. Argumenta que no pueden medir el capital real y que las proxies que elaboran con ese propósito los enreda en circularidades lógicas e imposibilidades empíricas.
Open Access
Aki and Friends
(2013) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
Aki, a man enamoured with life and enchanted by animals – including humans of different varieties – pays a visit to his friend, the veterinarian. The vet tells him of two seniors who suffer from depression, and Aki is quick to raise their spirits and warm up their aching bodies. He hangs the boa constrictor on his neck and places the hairy tarantula on his head. There is no need to worry, he assures us. After all, why would two elderly creatures hurt an empathetic being so eager to help them? This view was typical of Aki. That is how he viewed the world, its history and conflicts – as well as the solutions for those conflicts. 'Just think about it logically', he says. 'Why would a Palestinian suddenly turn into a "terrorist"? What reason does he have to oppose "peace"? Why should he be eager to fight the "only democracy in the Middle East"? Is it his culture, religion or race? Is it "in his nature", as the Zionist propaganda machine reiterates?' Of course not, he answers. For more than a century, the Palestinians have confronted a Zionist movement whose colonial policies have gradually deprived them of their life, land and autonomy. As often happens with occupiers, the Israelis have preferred to blame their victim. Their fancy academic theories, spiced up with ideologies of culture, religion and race, prove, at least to themselves, that there can be no 'political solution'. The 'Arabs', they say, cannot be trusted. Like the boa constrictor and tarantula, it is 'their nature' to bite and strangle. Nowadays, these explanations have no traction. Most sensible observers around the world have come to accept Aki’s logic and reject the official Israeli line as self-serving, if not ludicrous. But that wasn’t always the case. Half a century ago, when Aki and his friends started their hazardous journey to explore the underlying logic of the conflict, they were considered illogical, if not weird, and branded as 'traitors' (although it was never clear exactly what or who they had 'betrayed').
Open Access
Aki and Friends (עקי וחברים)
(2013) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
On Akiva (Aki) Orr, 1931-2013 על עקיבא (עקי) אור, 2013-1931
Open Access
An 18th-Century Story. Review of Naomi Klein’s "No Logo" (זה כבר מהמאה ה-18. ספרה של נעמי קליין נו לוגו)
(2002) Nitzan, Jonathan
בווקום הביקורתי של תחילת המאה העשרים ואחת, "נו לוגו" נמכר כחדשנות רדיקלית
Open Access
Arms and Oil in the Middle East: A Biography of Research
(2018) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
This essay interweaves two stories—one theoretical and empirical, the other autobiographical. The first story embeds the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the broader political economy of the Middle East and the global accumulation of “capital as power.” The second story narrates the authors’ personal journey to uncover, theorize, and research this enfoldment. The essay explores and contextualizes the misleading duality of politics and economics; the link between military spending, finance, and stagflation; the concepts of “dominant capital” and “differential accumulation” and their evolution through “breadth” and “depth”; the manner in which these concepts and processes inform the political economy of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and the ways in which they help identify the key role of the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition and predict the periodic eruption of Middle East “energy conflicts.” In their explorations, the authors have encountered numerous gatekeepers who tried to derail their research as well as a few open-minded editors who sought to promote it, and it is probably fair to say that, dialectically, they have benefited from both. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2018.1534436
Open Access
Arms and Oil in the Middle East: A Biography of Research
(2017) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
FROM THE ARTICLE: 'During the late 1980s, we printed a series of working papers, offering a new approach to the political economy of Israel and wars in the Middle East. Our approach in these papers rested on three new concepts. It started by identifying the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition – an alliance of armament firms, oil companies and financial institutions based mostly in the United States – whose interests, we posited, converged in the Middle East. It continued by arguing that the interests of this coalition were best measured by its differential accumulation – i.e., by its performance relative to other large firms. And it concluded by showing that variations in differential accumulation predicted subsequent Middle East energy conflicts (our term). At the time, the papers seemed unpublishable. They were politically unaligned (neither neoclassical nor Marxist). They were non-disciplinary (belonging to neither economics nor politics – or any other social science, for that matter). And they were written in non-academic language (i.e., simply, clearly and to the point). But they made a scientific prediction: the Middle East, they argued, was ripe for another round of military hostilities and oil crisis. And when the 1990-91 Gulf War broke out, their theoretical frame-work suddenly sounded very relevant’.
Open Access
Asian Equities: Not for the Fainthearted. Special Report
(1998) Nitzan, Jonathan
Analysis of Asian equities six months after the Asian crisis.
Open Access
Back to Basics: Earnings Growth and the Relative Performance of Emerging Markets (Special Report)
(1997) Nitzan, Jonathan
A long-term study of the prospects of emerging markets based on differential earning growth.
Open Access
Back to Conflict and Crisis (חזרה לעידן הקונפליקטים והמשברים)
(2002) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
The terror attacks, the invasion of Afghanistan, the re-occupation of the Palestinian territories, the tensions in central Asian, the threats against the “axis of evil” and the planned attack on Iraq, together herald the coming of a new era, an era of capital accumulation through conflict and crisis.
Open Access
Back to Conflict and Crisis (חזרה לעידן הקונפליקטים והמשברים)
(2003) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
מאז ה-11 בספטמבר 2001, נעלם 'הסדר העולמי החדש' של שנות התשעים ואיתו נעלמים זן שלם של מושגים והסברים 'פוסט-מודרניסטיים ורב תרבותיים. 'הביטחון הלאומי' מזמן המלחמה הקרה חוזר לשלוט בכיפת השיח הבינלאומי. האם מדובר בהערכות מדינית של המעצמות שנועדה לפלס דרך להמשך התהליך של 'הגלובליזציה' הכלכלית? ואולי מדובר בשינוי מהותי ביחסי הכוח שמניעים את המשטר הקפיטליסטי, כלומר בתוך הקבוצות הדומיננטיות ששולטות בעולם?
Open Access
Back to the Stagflation Era (חזרה אל עידן הסטגפלציה)
(2002) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
הסטגפלציה היא צירוף של שתי מחלות: סטגנציה (מיתון) ואינפלציה (עליית מחירים). המילה נטבעה בתחילת שנות השבעים בארה"ב, שם התגלו לראשונה הסימפטומים של המחלה. כך מכל מקום, טענו כוהני הדת של 'מדע הכלכלה' וכך גם כתוב בכל ספרי הפולחן .כל אדם שעיניו פקוחות, יודע שבישראל שוררת סטגפלציה.
Open Access
Blood and Oil in the Orient, Redux
(2017) Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan
This research note updates selected charts from three previous papers. The new data present a rather startling picture, suggesting that the Middle East – and the global political economy more generally – might face an important crossroads. Our assessment here rests on the analysis of capital as power, or CasP. Beginning in the late 1980s, we suggested that, since the late 1960s, the Middle East was greatly influenced by the capitalized power of a Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition – a loose coalition comprising the leading oil companies, the OPEC cartel, armament contractors, engineering firms and large financial institutions – whose differential accumulation benefitted from and in turn helped fuel and sustain Middle East ‘energy conflicts’. These conflicts, we argued, reverberated far beyond the region: they affected the ups and downs of global growth, the gyrations of inflation and, in some important respects, the very evolution of the capitalist mode of power. And this impact, it seems to us, is now being called into question.
Open Access
Breaking Out of Stagflation: Some Regional Comparisons
(1995) Nakhjavani, Mehran; Nitzan, Jonathan
Stagflation has been a fact of life in regional economies, although this is now changing as a result of structural reform and deregulation. During the transition, faster growth does not necessarily imply higher inflation, or vice versa.
Open Access
Call for papers on the subject of "Capital as Power"
(2009) Nitzan, Jonathan; Bichler, Shimshon
A call for papers for the "Capital as Power" section of the Rethinking Marxism Conference (New Marxian Times), UMASS Amherst, November 5-8, 2009. Internal deadline for abstract submission: JUNE 30, 2009.
Open Access
Call for papers on the subject of "Capital as Power"
(2013) Nitzan, Jonathan; Bichler, Shimshon; Muzio, Tim Di
A call for papers for the "Capital as Power" section of the Eighth Rethinking Marxism Conference, UMASS Amherst, September 19-22, 2013. Internal deadline for abstract submission: May 15, 2013
Open Access
Call for Papers: "Capital as Power: Broadening the Vista"
(2014) Germain, Randall; Nitzan, Jonathan
The theory of capital as power (CasP) offers a radical alternative to mainstream and Marxist theories of capitalism. It argues that capital symbolizes and quantifies not utility or labour but organized power writ large, and that capitalism is best understood and challenged not as a mode of consumption and production, but as a mode of power. Over the past decade, the Forum on Capital as Power has organized many lectures, speaker series and conferences. Our most recent international gatherings include "Capitalizing Power: The Qualities and Quantities of Accumulation” (2012), "The Capitalist Mode of Power: Past, Present and Future" (2011), and "Crisis of Capital, Crisis of Theory" (2010). The 2015 conference seeks to broaden the vista. We are looking for papers that extend and deepen CasP research, compare CasP with other approaches and critique CasP’s methods and findings. Articles could be general or specific, theoretical or empirical, analytical or historical. The conference is open to everyone, with submissions vetted entirely on merit. We accept applications from established and new researchers, in and outside academia. However, we are particularly interested in submissions from young researchers of all ages, including MA and PhD students, private and public employees and free spirits. If you have an interest in the subject and something important – or potentially important – to say, please apply. Financial assistance: we may be able to assist presenters by partly covering the cost of travel and accommodation. This possibility is still tentative; it is conditional on ability to secure sufficient funding. Deadline for abstract submissions: March 20, 2015.