The Bichler and Nitzan Archives
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Let There Be Light: Casting Away the Shadow of the Asymptote
No full textIs Singapore approaching the asymptotes of power
Investment Bank Power and Neoliberal Regulation: From the Volcker Shock to the Volcker Rule (Preprint)
No full textThe power of investment banks has played a pivotal role in the monopoly capital school’s analyses of US capitalist development. However this paper suggests that monopoly capital’s explanation of the changing nature of this power is severely limited. These limitations can be traced to the school’s logically circular and empirically inoperable theory of capital accumulation. The paper goes on to offer an alternative theoretical-empirical account of the power of investment banks since the early 1980s. Based on the notion of capital as power, the research suggests, contrary to the monopoly capital account, that investment banks have experienced a rapid resurgence in their power over this period. This resurgence must be understood with reference to the unique ways that investment banks have maneuvered within neoliberal regulation
No Way Out: Crime, Punishment and the Limits to Power (Reprint)
No full textThe United States is often hailed as the world's largest 'free market'. But this 'free market' is also the world's largest penal colony. It holds over seven million adults – roughly five per cent of the labour force – in jail, in prison, on parole and on probation. Is this an anomaly, or does the 'free market' require massive state punishment? Why did the correctional population start to rise in the 1980s, together with the onset of neoliberalism? How is this increase related to the upward redistribution of income and the capitalization of power? Can soaring incarceration sustain the unprecedented power of dominant capital, or is there a reversal in the offing
Fight to Win! Tools for Confronting Capital
No full textAnarchists have generally rejected the idea that there is or ought to be a pure or inherently revolutionary strategy or tactic. In this chapter we make use of the capital-as-power theory of value and capital in a way that informs and supports the ad hoc perspective on struggle and fighting to win. Our primary purpose is to propose a method based on this theory as a means for social justice activists to assess political-economic disruption campaigns (PEDCs). Such an analysis is a needed component of an anarchist economics
'Capital as Power' - Notiz zu einem neuen Forschungsansatz und einer Konferenz ('Capital as Power' - notice on a new research approach and a conference)
No full textDer Text weist auf den Forschungsansatz von "Capital as Power" und die Konferenz „Capitalizing Power: The Qualities and Quantities of Accumulation“ hin, die vom 28. bis 30. September 2012 an der York University in Toronto stattfand. Außerdem wird der Inhalt des Konferenzbeitrages von Harald Wolf umrissen.
The text alludes to the research approach of "Capital as Power" and the conference “Capitalizing Power: The Qualities and Quantities of Accumulation”, September 28-30 2012 at York University, Toronto. It also sketches the content of Harald Wolf's conference contribution
The Asymptotes of Power
No full textFROM THE CLOSING COMMENTS BY JONATHAN NITZAN:
Today’s talk has, like the one I gave at last year's conference on Capital as Power, presented my joint work with Bichler on the present crisis. Last year, I argued that this crisis is a systemic one, and that capitalists were struck by systemic fear – a primordial consternation for the very existence of their system. My purpose today has been to explain why.
In order to do so, I have set aside the liberal-democratic façade that economists label 'the economy' and instead concentrated on the nested hierarchies of organized power. The nominal quantity of capital, I’ve argued, represents not material consumption and production, but commodified power. In modern capitalism, the quantities of capitalist power are expressed distributionally, as differential ratios of nominal dollar magnitudes. And the key to understanding capital as power is to decipher the connection between the qualitative processes of power on the one hand, and the nominal distributional quantities that these processes engender on the other.
I have dissected, step by step, the national income accounts of the United States, from the most general categories down to the net profits of the country’s largest corporations. I have shown that, from the viewpoint of the leading corporations, most of the redistributional processes – from the aggregate to the disaggregate – are close to being exhausted. By the end of the twentieth century, the largest U.S. corporations, approximated by the top 0.01%, have reached an unprecedented situation: their net profit share of national income hovers around record highs, and it seems that this share cannot be increased much further under the current political-economic regime.
This asymptotic situation, Bichler and I believe, explains why leading capitalists have been struck by systemic fear. Peering into the future, they realize that the only way to further increase their distributional power is to apply an even greater dose of violence. Yet, given the high level of force already being exerted, and given that the exertion of even greater force may bring about heightened resistance, capitalists are increasingly fearful of the backlash they are about to unleash. The closer they get to the asymptote, the bleaker the future they see.
It is of course true that no one knows exactly where the asymptote lies, at least not before the ramifications of approaching it become apparent. But the fact that, over the past decade, capitalists have been pricing down their assets while their profit share of income hovers around record highs suggests that, in their minds, the asymptote is nigh
Rethinking Capital (Two-Part Radio Interview with Jonathan Nitzan)
No full textFROM THE PROGRAM PAGE: "If capital accumulation is the single most important process of capitalism, then what is capital? We all might assume capital is an economic entity rooted in production and consumption, but Jonathan Nitzan claims otherwise. In Part One of the interview he argues that capital is, instead, a mode of power. He also describes the separation of economics from politics and the bifurcation of the economy into the real and nominal spheres. In Part Two, Nitzan brings up corporate profit-taking, the sabotage by capitalists of industry, and conflicts over energy. He also contends that the concept of the economy as a distinct, objective category needs to be discarded."
Part One: 52 minutes
Part Two: 32 minute
Profit by Fiat
No full textIf there is no objective value, how can fraud ‘distort’ prices, profit and the normal rate of return
The 1%, Exploitation and Wealth: Tim Di Muzio interviews Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan (Reprint)
No full textRethinking resistance, power and production
Political Economy of Capital Accumulation (YorkU, LAPS/POLS 4292 6.0, Undergraduate, Fall Term, 2012-13)
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