The Bichler and Nitzan Archives
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Capitalist Income and Hierarchical Power: A Gradient Hypothesis
Get PDFThis paper offers a new approach to the study of capitalist income. Building on the ‘capital as power’ framework, I propose that capitalists earn their income not from any productive asset, but from the legal right to command a corporate hierarchy. In short, I hypothesize that capitalist income stems from hierarchical power. Based on this thinking, I hypothesize that the capitalist fraction of an individual’s income is a gradient function of hierarchical power (which I define as the number of subordinates under one’s control). Using data from US CEOs, I find evidence that this is true. Furthermore, a hierarchical model of the United States that generalizes this data accurately reproduces many aspects of the US distribution of capitalist income, including the relation between income size and capitalist income fraction. This evidence suggests that the ownership structure of US society is closely linked to the hierarchical structure of firms. This has important implications for the study of income distribution
Una teoría de la acumulación realmente existente
Get PDFLos autores se han tomado el salomónico cuidado de rivalizar por partes iguales con las dos tradiciones que compiten por la última palabra en el viejo debate sobre la acumulación de capital: la economía neoclásica y la teoría marxista. Semejante desatino autopublicitario puede disminuir la predisposición del auditorio hacia sus ideas, y en el peor de los casos granjearse cierta animadversión a manera de acto reflejo. Y sin embargo, estimo que El capital como poder (Eccp) de Shimshon Bichler y Jonathan Nitzan, puede sobrevivir a su deliberado exilio del mundo de los marcos teóricos célebres y, con la complicidad del lector proclive a la heterodoxias, ofrecer una novedosa interpretación del objeto en cuestión. En una era de publicaciones dominadas por el formato del paper y el género de la exégesis, pocos libros se imponen el desafío de realizar una contribución original a un debate sobre el que han corrido ríos de tinta. Mucho menos poseen consistencia suficiente para llevar a buen puerto una empresa de tal envergadura. En las líneas siguientes expongo algunas razones que, a mi juicio, colocan a Eccp en esta selecta minoría de textos
Can Capitalists Afford Recovery? A Closer Look
Get PDFOur RWER blog post, ‘Can capitalists afford recovery: A 2018 update’, showed U.S. unemployment to be a highly reliable leading indicator for the capitalist share of domestic income three years later.
An observant commentator, though, suggested otherwise (first comment by jayarava). Although true for much of the postwar period, this association no longer holds, s/he argued. ‘Something changed after the global financial crisis to decouple unemployment from income shares’, s/he posited, pointing to the ‘new power of globalized capital to force down wages even in times of [low] unemployment’ (or rather, that during an expansion, capitalists can raise prices faster than wages, thereby augmenting their income share, which is the conventional view.
This post assesses this claim more closely, by examining the correlation between (1) absolute levels of unemployment and the capitalist share of income, and (2) their respective rates of change
The Trouble with Human Capital Theory
Get PDFHuman capital theory is the dominant approach for understanding personal income distribution. According to this theory, individual income is the result of “human capital”. The idea is that human capital makes people more productive, which leads to higher income. But is this really the case? This paper takes a critical look at human capital theory and its explanation of personal income distribution. I find that human capital theory’s claims are dubious at best. In most cases, the theory is either not supported by evidence, is so vague that it is untestable, or is based on circular reasoning. In short, human capital theory is a barrier to the scientific study of income distribution.
[Data and analysis for this paper are available at the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/m9gpc/
La théorie du capital humain, c’est du baratin!
No full textMême si vous n’êtes pas économiste, vous avez entendu parler de la théorie du capital humain: plus on fait des études, plus on est productif et mieux on est payé. Dans une contribution décapante, l’économiste Blair Fix remet en cause ces liens de causalité et invite à se débarrasser de cette théorie
Energy, Hierarchy and the Origin of Inequality
Get PDFWhere should we look to understand the origin of inequality? Most research focuses on three windows of evidence: (1) the archaeological record; (2) existing traditional societies; and (3) the historical record. I propose a fourth window of evidence — modern society itself. I hypothesize that we can infer the origin of inequality from the modern relation between energy use, hierarchy, and in- equality. To do this, I create a large-scale numerical model that is informed by modern evidence. I then use this model to project modern trends into the past. The results are promising. The model predicts an explosion of inequality with the transition to agrarian levels of energy use. Subsequent increases in energy use are predicted to have little effect on inequality. The results are broadly consistent with the available evidence. This suggests that the hierarchical structure of modern societies may provide a window into the origin of inequality
Call for Papers for a Special Issue: 'Accumulation and Politics: Approaches and Concepts'
Get PDFThis call for papers aims to encourage wide-ranging debate over the approaches, and therefore concepts and methods, which are best equipped to grasp the accumulation of capital as the product of power relations which are political, and which highlight the explanatory capacity of the processes they study.
Papers can be submitted in English or French
Deadline: February 15, 2019
The CasP Project: Past, Present, Future
Get PDFThe study of capital as power (CasP) began when we were students in the 1980s and has since expanded into a broader project involving a growing number of researchers and new areas of inquiry. This paper provides a bird’s-eye view of the CasP journey. It explores what we have learned so far, reviews ongoing research, and suggests future trajectories – including the coevolution of Concepts of Power–Modes of Power (COP-MOPs); the origins of capitalized power; the state of capital; finance as the symbolic creordering of capitalism; the role of labour, production and waste; the capitalized environment; and the need for post-capitalist accounting
트럼프의 무역 전쟁이 미국의 해외 투자를 위협하고 있다 (Trump’s Trade Wars Threaten US Foreign Investment)
Get PDF최근 트럼프가 시작한 무역전쟁에 관해 말들이 무성하지만, 이 말잔치에 중요한 포인트가 빠졌다. 여기서의 핵심이슈는 해외 무역이 아니라 해외 투자다
El capital como poder. Un estudio del orden y el creorden
Get PDFLas teorías convencionales del capitalismo están sumidas en una profunda crisis: tras siglos de debates todavía son incapaces de decirnos qué es el capital. Tanto liberales como marxistas se refieren al capital como una entidad ‘económica’ que puede ser contabilizada en unidades universales de ‘utilidad’ o de ‘trabajo abstracto’. Pero estas unidades son totalmente ficticias. Nadie ha sido capaz de observarlas ni medirlas, y esto por una buena razón: no existen. Y dado que liberalismo y marxismo dependen de estas unidades inexistentes, sus teorías están suspendidas en el aire. No pueden explicar el proceso que más importa: la acumulación de capital.
Este libro ofrece una alternativa radical. De acuerdo con los autores, el capital no es una entidad económica estrechamente identificable, sino una cuantificación simbólica del poder. Tiene poco que ver con la utilidad o el trabajo abstracto, y se extiende más allá de las máquinas y las líneas de producción. El capital, afirman Bichler y Nitzan, representa el poder organizado de los grupos del capital dominante para reconfigurar –o creordenar– su sociedad.
Escrito en un lenguaje simple, accesible a lectores neófitos y expertos, este libro desarrolla una economía política novedosa. Conduce al lector a través de la historia, los supuestos y las limitaciones de la economía dominante y sus teorías políticas asociadas, examina la evolución del pensamiento marxista sobre la acumulación y el Estado, y articula una innovadora teoría del ‘capital como poder’, así como una nueva historia del ‘modo de poder capitalista’