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Profit from Crisis: Why Capitalists Do Not Want Recovery, and What That Means for America (Reprint)
No full textCan it be true that capitalists prefer crisis to growth? On the face of it, the idea sounds silly. According to Economics 101, everyone loves growth, especially capitalists. Profit and growth go hand in hand. When capitalists profit, real investment rises and the economy thrives, and when the economy booms the profits of capitalists soar. Growth is the very lifeline of capitalists.
Or is it
Political Economy of Capital Accumulation (YorkU, LAPS/POLS 4292 6.0, Undergraduate, Fall Term, 2014-15)
No full textCapital is the central power institution of capitalism: it is the main force underlying the relentless transformation of power relations in capitalist societies. The course explores the accumulation of capital from three interrelated perspectives: conceptual, historical and empirical. At the conceptual level, the course examines the evolution of different orthodox and critical theories of value and how these theories serve to explain and justify contending notions of accumulation. At the historical level, it traces the development of capital from its humble pre-capitalist origins to its present world dominance. At the empirical level, it studies and juxtaposes the qualitative and quantitative aspects of capital accumulation and study what they mean for the contemporary political economy. In parallel to these explorations, the course introduces students to the art and science of empirical research. By the end of the course, students are expected to be able to develop and integrate theoretical arguments with their own empirical work
Le capital comme pouvoir
No full textPour comprendre le monde qui est le nôtre, pour le critiquer et pour le transformer, il faut être en mesure de bien saisir ce qui en constitue la forme dominante. De l’âge d’or de l’économie classique anglaise à ses nombreuses critiques (marxiste, féministe, écologiste, etc.), tenter de bien cerner ce que peut bien être le capital a pris les allures d’un véritable travail sans fin. Et si le capital était en fait l’incarnation symbolique des relations sociales de pouvoirs?
En 2009, Jonathan Nitzan et Shimshon Bichler ont publié Le capital comme pouvoir : Une étude de l’ordre et du créordre. Traduit en 2012 chez Max Milo, il s’agit d’une contribution majeure à la réflexion critique contemporaine. La prémisse de base des auteurs peut se résumer ainsi : selon leur perspective, les théories libérales et marxistes ont le même défaut, soit d’être incapables d’expliquer ce qu’est le capital autrement qu’en recourant à des unités fictives (les « utiles » pour les libéraux et le « temps de travail abstrait » pour les marxistes). Dans chacune de ces conceptualisations du capital, le même problème, soit une incapacité de toucher concrètement au capital, d’en définir la forme et surtout d’en expliciter le processus d’accumulation
The Capitalist Algorithm. Reflections on Robert Harris' "The Fear Index"
No full textAlexander Hoffmann is a physicist-turned-financier, a refugee from the particle accelerator complex in CERN who now runs a $10-billion algorithmic hedge fund from nearby Geneva. The fund is managed by VIXAL, Hoffmann’s machine learning algorithm, and is incredibly successful. The company’s statistics boast a consistently huge Alfa – a measure indicating by how much the fund beats the average and exceeds the normal rate of return – and the world’s biggest oligarchs and financial institutions are salivating at the mere thought of being allowed to invest in it. Managing their money has made Hoffmann very rich. In just a few years, he has seen his net worth rise from nothing to over a billion dollars. He has acquired a huge mansion, complete with a beautiful wife and a library full of antique books. There is no limit to what he is set to achieve. But things are not exactly what they seem to be
Le capital comme pouvoir. Vers une nouvelle cosmologie du capitalisme
No full text[Traduit de l’anglais par Corentin Debailleul et Vincent Guillin]
Les théories conventionnelles du capitalisme sont embourbées dans une crise profonde : après des siècles de débat, elles sont toujours incapables de nous dire ce qu'est le capital. Les libéraux et les marxistes conçoivent le capital comme une entité économique qu’ils mesurent à l’aide de deux grandeurs universelles : l’utilité ou le travail abstrait, respectivement. Mais ces unités sont totalement fictives : elles ne peuvent être ni observées ni mesurées. Elles n'existent pas. Et puisque le libéralisme et le marxisme ont besoin de ces unités qui pourtant n’existent pas, leurs théories flottent dans le vide. Elles ne peuvent pas expliquer le processus qui importe le plus – l’accumulation du capital.
Cet échec n'est pas accidentel. Chaque mode de pouvoir évolue de concert avec ses théories et ses idéologies dominantes. Dans le capitalisme, ces théories et idéologies appartenaient initialement à l'étude de l'économie politique – la première science mécanique de la société. Mais le mode de pouvoir capitaliste n’a cessé de changer, et à mesure que le pouvoir au fondement du capital est devenu de plus en plus visible, la science de l'économie politique s’est désintégrée. À la fin du XIXe siècle, le capital dominant s’étant imposé, l'économie politique s’est scindée en deux sphères distinctes : l'économie et la politique. Et au XXe siècle, alors que la logique de pouvoir du capital avait déjà pénétré tous les recoins de la société, les différentes sciences sociales se sont arraché ce qui restait de l'économie politique. Aujourd'hui, le capital règne en maître – mais les théoriciens manquent d’un cadre cohérent pour en rendre compte.
La théorie du capital comme pouvoir offre une alternative unifiée à cette dispersion. Elle soutient que le capital n'est pas une simple entité économique, mais une quantification symbolique du pouvoir. Le capital a peu à voir avec l'utilité ou le travail abstrait, et il s'étend bien au-delà des machines et des lignes de production. De façon plus générale, il représente le pouvoir organisé des groupes de capital dominant pour remodeler – ou créordonner – leur société.
Cette conception conduit à une autre cosmologie du capitalisme. Elle offre un nouveau cadre théorique pour le capital, fondé sur les notions jumelles de capital dominant et d’accumulation différentielle, une nouvelle conception de l'État du capital et une nouvelle histoire du mode de pouvoir capitaliste. Elle introduit également de nouvelles méthodes de recherche empiriques – y compris de nouvelles catégories ; de nouvelles façons de concevoir, de lier et de présenter les données ; de nouvelles estimations et de nouvelles mesures ; et, enfin, les prémisses d'une nouvelle comptabilité désagrégée (disaggragate accounting) qui révèle la dynamique conflictuelle de la société
El aspecto empírico de la teoría del valor: respuesta a Nitzan y Bichler
Get PDFLa teoría del valor trabajo, originada en los clásicos y reformulada por Marx, ha encontrado apoyo empírico en numerosos trabajos en los últimos treinta años. En diversas economías los sectores en términos monetarios están altamente correlacionados con los mismos en términos de valor trabajo. En su libro Capital as Power (2009), y en una subsecuente discusión en línea, Jonathan Nitzan y Shimshon Bichler afirman que tales resultados son inválidos porque los cálculos no obtienen resultados en valor trabajo, sino que se han correlacionado dos variables monetarias. También arguyen Nitzan y Bichler que las correlaciones son espurias por la presencia de una tercera variable. En este artículo se refutan ambas críticas y, consecuentemente, se refuerza el soporte empírico a la teoría del valor trabajo.
[For the original exchange, see: "Testing the Labour Theory of Value: An Exchange" here: http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/308/
The Enlightened Capitalist (Reprint)
No full textOn April 16, 2014, we published a short article in the Indian fortnightly Frontline, titled 'Profit from Crisis'. Scarcely had a day passed from the article’s publication that we got an angry email from an asset manager whom we'll call 'Mr. X'. Mr. X is an enlightened capitalist, and reading our piece had set him on fire. Our article, he protested, was 'terribly flawed'. It 'failed miserably' in understanding capitalism, and its allegation that capitalists do not want recovery is doing 'tremendous harm'. This note deconstructs Mr. X's protestations in the context of the current capitalist angst
Global Capital: Political Economy of Capitalist Power (YorkU, GS/POLS 6285 3.0, Graduate, Fall Term, 2014-15)
No full textWhat 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. But the silence cannot last for long. As crisis and social strife intensify, the questions are bound to resurface. The accumulation of capital is the central process of capitalism, and unless we can clarify what that process means, we’ll remain unable to understand our world, let alone to 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 final part offers an alternative approach – the theory of capital as power – and illustrates how this approach can shed light on conflict-ridden processes such as corporate merger, stagflation, imperialism and Middle East wars.
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
Energy Conflicts and Differential Profits: An Update
No full textDuring the late 1980s and early 1990s, we identified a new phenomenon that we called ‘energy conflicts’ and showed that these conflicts were intimately linked to the differential profitability of the leading oil companies. This link remains as true today as it was in the early 1970s. Like earlier energy conflicts, the ‘Arab Spring’, the outsourced wars that followed and the third Gulf War against ISIS continue to march to the drum beat of differential profits
The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coaltion: Still About Oil? (Reprint)
No full textDuring the late 1980s and early 1990s, we identified a new Middle East phenomenon that we called 'energy conflicts' and argued that these conflicts were intimately linked with the global processes of capital accumulation. This paper outlines the theoretical framework we have developed over the years and brings our empirical research up to date. It shows that the key stylized patterns we discovered more than twenty years ago – along with other regularities we have uncovered since then – remain pretty much unchanged: (1) conflict in the region continues to correlate tightly with the differential profits of the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition, particularly the oil companies; (2) dominant capital continues to depend on stagflation to substitute for declining corporate amalgamation; and (3) capitalists the world over now need inflation to offset the spectre of debt deflation. The convergence of these interests bodes ill for the Middle East and beyond: all of these groups stand to benefit from higher oil prices, and oil prices rarely if ever rise without there being an energy conflict in the Middle East