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Israel's Roaring Economy
Get PDFMany observers of the Israeli scene have been perplexed by the country’s apparent resilience to bad political news. The headlines of late seem uniformly dreadful. While the country is still licking its wounds from a botched, if not humiliating war with Hezbollah, the Palestinian territories again slide into turmoil, and the experts rumour yet another conflict with Syria. The U.S. entanglement is Iraq and Afghanistan is only getting deeper, and many speak of an imminent attack on Iran with untold regional consequences. Israeli politicians and public officials – from the president, through the prime minister, to the chief of staff, to the justice minister – have been embroiled in corruption and other scandals. The courageous capitalist media routinely expose government officials as incompetent crooks and the Israelis Parliament as an irrelevant institution.
And yet, none of these headlines seem to impact the economy. It’s roaring.
Many commentators have been trying to make sense of this apparent puzzle. But their explanations, whether plausible or not, all fall into the same trap: they believe the capitalist media. They rush to explain why the Israeli economy is roaring without ever stopping to ask whether it is roaring
Global Capital: Political Economy of Capitalist Power (YorkU, GS/POLS 6285 3.0, Graduate)
Get PDFWhat is capital? Is capital the same as machines, or is it merely a financial asset? Is it material or social? Is it static or dynamic? Surprisingly, these questions have no clear answers. The form of capital, its existence as monetary wealth, is hardly in doubt. The problem is with the content, the ‘stuff’ which 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 ‘on its own,’ or does it need non-capitalist institutions such as the state? Can capital grow by undermining production and efficiency? What exactly is being accumulated? Does the value of capital represent a tangible ‘thing,’ ‘abstract labour’ or perhaps something totally different? What units should we use to measure its accumulation? Despite centuries of debate, none of these questions has a clear answer. Yet they have to have answers. The accumulation of capital is the central process of capitalism, and unless we can clarify what that means, our theories remain ‘bagel theories,’ with a big hole in the middle.
The seminar examines such questions theoretically and historically. The first part explores basic conceptions of capital. It begins by studying three approaches to capital: one based on utility, a second based on labour value and a third based on power. The discussion then broadens to examine these three approaches in relation to technology, the corporation and the state. The second part of the seminar deals with transformations of capital. This part introduces the twin concepts of dominant capital and differential accumulation. Using these concepts, the seminar explores the historical processes of corporate mergers, globalization, stagflation, imperialism and the new wars of the twenty-first century.
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Israel's Roaring Economy (Reprint)
Get PDFMany observers of the Israeli scene have been perplexed by the country’s apparent resilience to bad political news. The headlines of late seem uniformly dreadful. While the country is still licking its wounds from a botched, if not humiliating war with Hezbollah, the Palestinian territories again slide into turmoil, and the experts rumour yet another conflict with Syria. The U.S. entanglement is Iraq and Afghanistan is only getting deeper, and many speak of an imminent attack on Iran with untold regional consequences. Israeli politicians and public officials – from the president, through the prime minister, to the chief of staff, to the justice minister – have been embroiled in corruption and other scandals. The courageous capitalist media routinely expose government officials as incompetent crooks and the Israelis Parliament as an irrelevant institution.
And yet, none of these headlines seem to impact the economy. It’s roaring.
Many commentators have been trying to make sense of this apparent puzzle. But their explanations, whether plausible or not, all fall into the same trap: they believe the capitalist media. They rush to explain why the Israeli economy is roaring without ever stopping to ask whether it is roaring
Global Political Economy II: Issues and Problems Since 1945 (YorkU, AS/POLS 3275 3.0, Undergraduate)
Get PDFThe course examines the global political economy as it developed since the end of Second World War. It deals with the general themes of power and production, order and disorder, finance, the international monetary system, international trade and the transnational corporation. It also explores various facets of capitalist expansion and crisis, including North-South relationships, development and underdevelopment, the impact of financial flows, the new wars and the future of the global political economy
Israel's Roaring Economy
Get PDFMany observers of the Israeli scene have been perplexed by the country’s apparent resilience to bad political news. The headlines of late seem uniformly dreadful. While the country is still licking its wounds from a botched, if not humiliating war with Hezbollah, the Palestinian territories again slide into turmoil, and the experts rumour yet another conflict with Syria. The U.S. entanglement is Iraq and Afghanistan is only getting deeper, and many speak of an imminent attack on Iran with untold regional consequences. Israeli politicians and public officials – from the president, through the prime minister, to the chief of staff, to the justice minister – have been embroiled in corruption and other scandals. The courageous capitalist media routinely expose government officials as incompetent crooks and the Israelis Parliament as an irrelevant institution.
And yet, none of these headlines seem to impact the economy. It’s roaring.
Many commentators have been trying to make sense of this apparent puzzle. But their explanations, whether plausible or not, all fall into the same trap: they believe the capitalist media. They rush to explain why the Israeli economy is roaring without ever stopping to ask whether it is roaring
Israel's Roaring Economy (Reprint)
Get PDFMany observers of the Israeli scene have been perplexed by the country’s apparent resilience to bad political news. The headlines of late seem uniformly dreadful. While the country is still licking its wounds from a botched, if not humiliating war with Hezbollah, the Palestinian territories again slide into turmoil, and the experts rumour yet another conflict with Syria. The U.S. entanglement is Iraq and Afghanistan is only getting deeper, and many speak of an imminent attack on Iran with untold regional consequences. Israeli politicians and public officials – from the president, through the prime minister, to the chief of staff, to the justice minister – have been embroiled in corruption and other scandals. The courageous capitalist media routinely expose government officials as incompetent crooks and the Israelis Parliament as an irrelevant institution.
And yet, none of these headlines seem to impact the economy. It’s roaring.
Many commentators have been trying to make sense of this apparent puzzle. But their explanations, whether plausible or not, all fall into the same trap: they believe the capitalist media. They rush to explain why the Israeli economy is roaring without ever stopping to ask whether it is roaring
L'economia d'oro Israeliana
Get PDFMolti osservatori dello scenario israeliano sono rimasti perplessi di fronte all’evidente resistenza del paese alle cattive notizie. I recenti titoli di testa sembrano uniformemente terribili. Mentre il paese si sta ancora riprendendo da una guerra rovinata, se non umiliante, con Hezbollah, i territori palestinesi scivolano ancora nel fermento e gli esperti parlano di un ennesimo conflitto con la Siria. Il coinvolgimento degli USA in Iraq e in Afghanistan si sta accrescendo e in molti parlano di un imminente attacco sull’Iran con gravi conseguenze regionali. I politici e i pubblici ufficiali israeliani - dal presidente al primo ministro, dal capo di stato maggiore al ministro della giustizia, sono stati trascinati nella corruzione e in altri scandali. I coraggiosi media capitalistici presentano consuetamente gli ufficiali del governo come truffatori incompetenti e il parlamento Israeliano come un’istituzione di nessuna rilevanza.
E tuttavia nessuna di queste notizie sembra avere alcun impatto sull’economia. Che va alla grande.
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Traduzione per www.comedonchisciotte.org a cura di MICAELA MARRI
The 'Art' of Colonisation: Capitalising Sovereign Power and the Ongoing Nature of Primitive Accumulation
Get PDFFROM THE ARTICLE: . . . what many critics of the war on terror or US imperialism have so far failed to appreciate is how this project would be impossible without the capitalisation of the state. In this article, I therefore want to suggest that Marx’s re-theorisation of the concept of primitive accumulation, combined with a non-Marxist theorisation of state power offered by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, can help us account for the intimate connection between ongoing primitive accumulation and the capitalisation of the US government. . . . I try to show that we can accept their novel theory of capital as a capitalised and commodified form of power, but argue that the concept of primitive accumulation still has considerable analytical value for theorising the extension and depth of capitalist social property relations within and across political jurisdictions
War Profits, Peace Dividends (רווחי מלחמה, דיבידנדים של שלום)
Get PDFהמהדורה הראשונה של הספר, בהוצאת 'כרמל' (2001), תיארה וניתחה את ההיסטוריה הישראלית מנקודת מבט חדשה
הניתוח הציב במרכז את תהליך הצבר ההון. במשטר הקפיטליסטי, הצבר ההון הוא התהליך המרכזי של התהוות יחסי הכוח. הספר בחן את התפתחות הקפיטליזם הישראלי. הוא סקר את השתלבותה של ישראל בתהליכי הצבר ההון-כוח, באזור ומחוצה לו. הוא תיאר את התמזגותו של המעמד השליט של ישראל בקפיטליזם העולמי
בבסיס הספר עומדת כלכלה-פוליטית חדשה: תאורית ההצבר הדיפרנציאלי
המהדורה השניה, בהוצאת 'פרדס' (2007), כוללת שני פרקים חדשים: הקדמה ואחרית. פרק האחרית בוחן את 'תאורית ההצבר הדיפרנציאלי' לאור ההתפתחיות במזה"ת ובעולם מאז 2001. האם מדובר בסוג חדש של 'מלחמות תרבות' שכה חביבות הן על הפרשנים שמטעם והן על הרדיקלים -- או שמה מדובר בתהליך הצבר הון-כוח על פי המתכונת של הכלכלה הפוליטית החדשה אשר מוצגת לאורך הספר
פרק ההקדמה ממקם את 'תאורית ההצבר הדיפרנציאלי' בתוך הקונטקסט הרחב של התפתחות הכלכלה-הפוליטית. הפרק מבהיר כמה מהיסודות התיאורטיים בהתפתחות ההון והמשטר המדיני של ההון -- יסודות אשר התגלו כחסרים לקוראים הישראלים
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The 2001 edition of the book described and analyzed Israeli history from a new perspective. It emphasized capital accumulation – the key process in the formation and transformation of power under capitalism. The book examined the evolution of Israeli capitalism, its integration with accumulation processes in and outside the region, and the transnationalization of the country’s ruling class.
The centrepiece of the book is a new political economy: the theory of differential accumulation.
The new edition further explores this theory with two additional chapters: a preface and an epilogue. The epilogue examines the regional and global developments since 2001. It questions the popular explanation of a ‘clash of civilizations’ -- showing that the new wars conform to the theory of differential accumulation and confirm its predictions.
The preface situates the theory of differential accumulation within the broader evolution of political economy. It clarifies key concepts in the development of capital and its political regime, providing background that is missing from the Israeli literature