The Bichler and Nitzan Archives
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Supply and Demand Deconstructed
Get PDFPrices are caused by supply and demand, right? So say neoclassical economists. If you’ve bought their fairy tale, I recommend you watch the video below. In it, Jonathan Nitzan demolishes the neoclassical theory of prices. It’s a master lesson in how to deconstruct a theory
Free Capital as Power Ebook
Get PDFBlair Fix reflects on Nitzan and Bichler's book 'Capital as Power' and how he came to render it as a CreativeCommons Ebook
Corporate Power and the Future of U.S. Capitalism
No full textCorporate power in the United States has risen to unprecedented levels, but the rate at which this power has grown is decelerating. Both facts have important implications for the future of U.S. capitalism
The Political Economy of the Corporation: Sahil Jai Duta Interviews Sandy Brian Hager
Get PDFPERC’s Sahil Jai Dutta is joined by Dr Sandy Brian Hager (City, University of London) to discuss the political economy of the corporation. He is the author of the book Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State (2016) published by University of California Press. The conversation spans across the topics of ownership and the politics of public debt, the power of large banks in the US, and his most recent work exploring what drives long-term shifts in the stock markets in the ‘advanced’ economies
Capitalismo de deuda. Una lectura crítica de la crisis mundial del endeudamiento
Get PDF‘Capitalismo de deuda’ es un esfuerzo por descifrar cómo la tecnología de la deuda se ha convertido en uno de los mayores obstáculos para las aspiraciones democráticas y racionales de la sociedad moderna.
Richard Robbins y Tim Di Muzio muestran que la deuda, entendida como una tecnología de poder, es un engranaje insertado en el corazón del capitalismo. En la deuda se anudan un mecanismo que transfiere riqueza desde los asalariados hacia los capitalistas, un instrumento de control político sobre las poblaciones de todo el mundo y un algoritmo que presiona a las economías a producir y consumir por encima de los límites físicos de la naturaleza. La deuda está en el origen del Estado moderno y en las innovaciones más recientes de los mercados financieros. Está implicada en las formas más descarnadas de violencia y control social y en las técnicas más refinadas de especulación financiera. Opera en las grandes transferencias de riqueza (como en los rescates bancarios) y en las transacciones ordinarias del día a día (pues bajo el vigente sistema monetario, el dinero es creado como deuda). La deuda es ubicua: es impagable y es uno de los motores del capitalismo contemporáneo.
¿Queda algo por hacer ante una tecnología social tan extendida y enraizada? ¿Es imaginable que al poder de la deuda pueda oponerse una lucha política fundada en el poder de los deudores? ‘Capitalismo de deuda’ es una excelente herramienta para adentrarse en la tarea de dar una respuesta a estas interrogantes
Global Capital: Political Economy of Capitalist Power (YorkU, GS/POLS 6285 3.0, Graduate, Fall Term, 2020-21)
Get PDFWhat is capital? Despite centuries of debate, there is no clear answer to this question – and for a good reason. Capital is a polemic term. The way we define it attests our theoretical biases, ideological disposition, view of politics, class consciousness, social position, and more.
Is capital the same as machines, or is it merely a financial asset? Is it a material article or a social process? Is it a static substance or a dynamic entity? The form of capital, its existence as monetary wealth, is hardly in doubt. The problem is with the content, the stuff that makes capital grow – and on this issue there is no agreement whatsoever. For example, does capital accumulate because it is productive, or due to the exploitation of workers? Does capital expand from within capitalism, or does it need non-capitalist institutions like the state and other external forces? Is accumulation synonymous with economic growth, or can capital expand by damaging production and undermining efficiency? What exactly is being accumulated? Does the value of capital represent utility, abstract labour – or perhaps something totally different, such as power or force? What units should we use to measure its accumulation?
Surprisingly, these questions remain unanswered; in fact, with the victory of liberalism, most of them are no longer being asked. However, the silence is incomplete. As crisis and social strife intensify, the questions resurface. The accumulation of capital is the central process of capitalism, and unless we can clarify what that process means, we remain unable to understand our world, let alone change it.
The seminar has two related goals: substantive and pedagogical. The substantive purpose is to tackle the question of capital head on. The course explores a spectrum of liberal and Marxist theories, ideologies and dogmas – as well as a radical alternative to these views. The argument is developed theoretically, historically and empirically. The first part of the seminar provides a critical overview of political economy, examining its historical emergence, triumph and eventual demise. The second part deals with the two ‘materialistic’ schools of capital – the liberal theory of utility and the Marxist theory of labour time – dissecting their structure, strengths and limitations. The third part brings power back in: it analyses the relation between accumulation and sabotage, studies the institutions of the corporation and the state and introduces a new framework – the capitalist mode of power. The fourth and final part offers an alternative approach – the theory of capital as power (or CasP for short) – and illustrates how this approach can shed light on conflict-ridden processes such as corporate merger, stagflation, imperialism and the new wars of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Pedagogically, the seminar seeks to prepare students toward conducting their own independent re-search. Students are introduced to various electronic data sources, instructed in different methods of analysis and tutored in developing their empirical research skills. As the seminar progresses, these skills are used both to assess various theories and to develop the students’ own theoretical/empirical research projects
Selling Hollywood to China
Get PDFFrom the 1980s to the present, Hollywood’s major distributors have been able to redistribute U.S. theatrical attendance to the advantage of their biggest blockbusters and franchises. At the global scale and during the same period, Hollywood has been leveraging U.S. foreign power to break ground in countries that have historically protected and supported their domestic film culture. For example, Hollywood’s major distributors have increased their power in such countries as Mexico, Canada, Australia and South Korea. This paper will analyze a pertinent test case’ for Hollywood’s global power: China and its film market. Not only does China have a film-quota policy that restricts the number of theatrical releases that have a foreign distributor (∼ 20 to 34 films per year), the Communist Party has helped the Chinese film business grow to have steady film releases and its own movie star system. Theoretically, China would be a prime example of a film market that would need to be opened with the assistance of the U.S. government. Empirically, however, the case of Chinese cinema might be a curious exception; we can investigate how a political economic strategy rooted in explicit power is reaching a limit. Hollywood is, potentially without any other option, taking a more friendly, collaborative approach with China’s censorship rules and its quota and film-production laws
Power and Capital
Get PDFFROM THE ARTICLE: I have always operated as if, since the originary hypothesis founds a new form of thinking that is essentially indigestible by the existing disciplines, and therefore necessarily at odds with those disciplines, it should be aligned with other marginal indigestibles in the field of knowledge. Hence, my attraction to thinkers like Wierzbicka who, if respected within the field of linguistics, does not seem to me to have had much impact on it; or Marcel Jousse, who takes the notion of mimesis too literally and thoroughly even for the mimetic theorists. Clearly, Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, of whose Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder I was previously aware, but which I actually sat down to read at the urging of Joel Davis, fits into this category. So, this post will “welcome” Nitzan and Bichler (perhaps without their consent, were they to be asked) into the anthropomorphics “fold,” and I would expect them to be a regular feature from here on in. Like Wierzbicka and Jousse and, of course, the originary hypothesis itself, Nitzan and Bichler have a very simple hypothesis with ramifications that cut down forests of disciplinary obfuscation. I don’t remember when or how I first came across their work, because I’m pretty sure it wasn’t from any website or publication, whether on the left or right, since as far as I can tell Capital as Power has had almost no impact on any discussions anywhere. If I were to try and prove myself wrong on this point, I would look to the kind of anarchist spaces where one might find discussions of the work of the recently and far too soon departed David Graeber, with whose work (and, I suspect, with whose politics) Nitzan’s and Bichler’s has affinities
Economic Development and the Death of the Free Market
Get PDFFree markets are, according to neoclassical economic theory, the most efficient way of organizing human activity. The claim is that individuals can benefit society by acting only in their self interest. In contrast, the evolutionary theory of multilevel selection proposes that groups must suppress the self interest of individuals. They often do so, the evidence suggests, by using hierarchical organization. To test these conflicting theories, I investigate how the ‘degree of hierarchy’ in societies changes with industrial development. I find that as energy use increases, governments tend to get larger and the relative number of managers tends to grow. Using a numerical model, I infer from this evidence that societies tend to become more hierarchical as energy use grows. This result is inconsistent with the neoclassical theory that individual self-interest is what benefits society. But it is consistent with the theory of multilevel selection, in which groups suppress the self-interest of their members
Manuscripts Don't Burn
Get PDFFROM THE ARTICLE: The French Revolution changed the world. In the new order, the masters no longer need Monsieur Fouche and the thought police. They don’t need guillotines to clip brains and scissors to censor pamphlets. They don’t need strategic-studies institutes to manage oppression and navigate conflict. Instead, they prefer to subsidize ‘cultural pluralism’ and ‘critical studies’, support centres for democracy and privatization, and promote civil-society networks and global NGOs. They are no longer afraid of words. Or so we are told...