The Bichler and Nitzan Archives
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Blood for Oil?
Get PDFIn this article, authors Boal, Clark, Matthews and Watts advance a supposedly new explanation for the wars in the Middle East.
Much of their explanation – including both theory and fact – is plagiarized. It is cut and pasted, almost ‘as is,’ from Nitzan and Bichler’s work. The primary source is ‘The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition,’ a 71 page chapter in THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ISRAEL (Pluto 2002). The authors also seem inspired, incognito, by Nitzan and Bichler’s more recent papers, including ‘It’s All About Oil’ (2003), ‘Clash of Civilization or Capital Accumulation?’ (2004), ‘Beyond Neoliberalism’ (2004) and ‘Dominant Capital and the New Wars’ (2004).
For a detailed analysis of this plagiarism and the larger reasons behind it, see Nitzan and Bichler (2005) “The Scientist and the Church” (for a direct link, click on the Commentary/Response Thread at the bottom of this page)
We Said It All Along. Reply to Baruch Kimmerling's Review of "The Global Political Economy of Israel"
Get PDFThere is a famous quote – attributed in various versions to Arthur C. Clarke, William James, Arthur Schopenhauer, Leo Szilard and Sidney Webb, among others – that goes like this: "Every new truth passes through three stages. In the beginning the experts ridicule it as 'nonsense.' Then they dismiss it as 'trivial.' And in the end we learn that they 'said it all along.'" In his recent review of our book The Global Political Economy of Israel, Baruch Kimmerling seems unsure as to whether our work is nonsense or something he has been saying all along
How Does 'Power' Become a 'Goose that Lays Golden Eggs'? Reply to Seoung-Ho Park. ('권력'은 어떻게 '황금알을 낳는 거위´가 되는가?)
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지난 7월24일 에 실린 (심숀 비클러ㆍ조나단 닛잔. 홍기빈 옮김, 삼인, 2004)에 대한 박승호 박사의 서평은 책의 논지와 내용을 충실하고 깊이있게 추적한 글이었다고 생각한다. 이렇게 진지하고 성실한 서평을 읽게되는 것이야말로 책을 준비한 사람들에게 그 동안의 피로를 잊게 하는 가장 큰 보상임은 말할 것도 없다. 이 서평에 대해 전해 들은 저자들은 물론, 책의 번역자인 필자도 박승호 박사에게 깊이 감사드린다 ...
New Imperialism or New Capitalism?
Get PDFOver the past century, the institution of 'capital' and the process of its 'accumulation' have been fundamentally transformed. By contrast, the theories that explain this institution and process have remained largely unchanged. The purpose of this mimeograph is to address this mismatch. Using a broad brush, we outline a new, power theory of capital and accumulation. We use this theory to assess the changing meaning of the corporation and the capitalist state, the new ways in which capital gets accumulated and the specific historical trajectory of twentieth-century capitalism up to the present
Capitalism Without Empire (Radio interview with Jonathan Nitzan)
Get PDFThe issue is not 'imperialism' or 'globalism' but the very nature of capitalism. Capitalism has changed. It’s time to change our theories.
From the KPFA website:
"Since September 11th and the unleashing of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, many progressives have concluded that we’re in a new political era – an age of empire. Radical thinker Jonathan Nitzan, however, has a different take on how war and instability are profitable for capitalism.
Dominant Capital and the New Wars
No full textoai:bnarchives.net:1The recent shift from ‘global villageism’ to the ‘new wars’ revealed a deep crisis in heterodox political economy. The popular belief in neoliberal globalization, peace dividends, fiscal conservatism and sound finance that dominated the 1980s and 1990s suddenly collapsed. The early 2000s brought rising xenophobia, growing military budgets and policy profligacy. Radicals were the first to identify this transition, but their attempts to explain it have been bogged down by two major hurdles: (1) most writers continue to apply nineteenth century theories and concepts to twenty-first century realities; and (2) few seem to bother with empirical analysis.
This paper offers a radical alternative that is both theoretically new and empirically grounded. We use the ‘new wars’ as a stepping stone to understand a triple transformation that altered the nature of capital, the accumulation of capital and the unit of capital. Specifically, our argument builds on a power understanding of capital that emphasizes differential accumulation by dominant capital groups. Accumulation, we argue, has little to do with the amassment of material things measured in ‘utils’ or ‘dead labour.’ Instead, accumulation, or ‘capitalization,’ represents a commodification of power by leading groups in society. Over the past century, this power has been re-structured and concentrated through two distinct regimes of differential accumulation – ‘breadth’ and ‘depth.’ A breadth regime relies on proletarianization, on green-field investment and, particularly, on mergers and acquisitions. A depth regime builds on redistribution through stagflation – that is, on differential inflation in the midst of stagnation. In contrast to breadth which presupposes some measure of growth and stability, depth thrives on ‘accumulation through crisis.’
The past twenty years were dominated by breadth, buttressed by neoliberal rhetoric, globalization and capital mobility. This regime started to run into mounting difficulties in the late 1990s, and eventually collapsed in 2000. For differential accumulation to continue, dominant capital now needs inflation, and inflation requires instability and social crisis. It is within this broader dynamics of power accumulation that the new wars need to be understood
Israel's Global Capitalism
No full textThe flaring up of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the early 2000s caught most experts by surprise. The 1990s euphoria of the Oslo ‘peace process’ suddenly dissipated, replaced by a second intifada; the newspeak of ‘peace dividends’ gave way to debates about ‘imperialism’; and instead of ‘global villageism’ there is now much talk about the ‘war on terrorism.’
Interestingly, most analysts, popular as well as academic, seem to view this dramatic change largely as a ‘chance occurrence.’ In a world dominated by postmodern ‘narrative’ and ‘discourse,’ nothing is truly ‘real’ – or alternatively, the only ‘reality’ is what we see on television and read in the newspapers. According to the media, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, like all conflicts, is a matter of ethnicity, religion and culture, and these sentiments have their ups and downs. The prime agitators of such sentiments are ‘leaders’ of various kinds – state officials, army generals, spiritual figures and religious icons – whose clashing urges produce different outcomes. In the present conjunction, the shift from peace to war was triggered by Israel’s far right, which, led by Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, decided to derail the fragile Oslo Accord in order to continue the settlement of Greater Israel.
Unfortunately, so far there has been little attempt to go beyond these immediate appearances. History certainly is open-ended, but it is not random. And while ethnicity, religion and culture are real features of our capitalist world, they cannot adequately explain its development. Israel is a capitalist country in a capitalist world, and therefore its history – including its conflict with the Palestinians – needs to be situated within the broader processes of capitalist development, local and global. Focusing on the 1990s, the purpose of this paper is to identify several key developments in global capitalism, examine how these processes altered the political economy of Israel and speculate on what they may mean for the future
Rockefeller's Profitable Investment. Review of Ben-Bassat (ed.) "From Government Intervention to Market Economics" (ההשקעה המשתלמת של רוקפלר)
Get PDFהספר "ממעורבות ממשלתית לכלכלת שוק", אלבום הניצחון של השיטה הכלכלית-פוליטית השלטת, הפך למרכיב מרכזי בדיאטה של פרחי בתי הספר לכלכלה
The book "From Government Intervention to Market Economics," is a standard staple in the diet of Israeli economics students. A victory album for the dominant economic ideology, it rewrites history as Rockefeller would have liked it
The Rockefeller Boys. Review of Ben-Bassat (ed.) "The Israeli Economy, 1985-1998"
Get PDFThis review was commissioned in August 2003 by the Journal of Cold War Studies. Following our explicit inquiry, the journal confirmed that our text would be published “as is.” With this assurance, we submitted the paper in January 2004. The paper was longer than the journal’s standard review. We drew attention to the extra length and explained why it was necessary given the subject matter. The journal accepted the review and scheduled its publication to the Fall of 2004.
But then the editor, Mark Kramer, had a change of heart. Having read our paper, he must have realized he had made a big mistake. This type of criticism had no place in his respectable journal. He began evasive actions. Without notice, our paper was postponed to the next issue, and then to the following one. We protested the censorship. Kramer assured us there was none. There was simply a long backlog of reviews, he said. Our paper would be published, and without editorial intervention.
Finally, in April 2005, the truth came out. We were notified that the paper could not be published as is.
It was simply too long.
We could, if we wanted to, cut it half. . . . Or, alternatively, we could enlarge it into a review essay and re-submit it to the journal’s referees. . . . Then they would re-consider it. . .
Review of Bichler and Nitzan's "Capital As Power"
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대부분의 연구자들은 복잡한 세상을 하나 혹은 소수의 키워드에 기대어 단순하게 설명하고픈 욕구에서 자유롭지 않다. 그러나 이 욕구를 충족시키는 것은 쉽지 않은 일이다. 어쩌면 '분과 학문 체계'는 바로 이 난제를 해결하기 위한 노력의 산물일지 모른다. 이런 체계는 '푸는 자가 소아시아의 왕이 될 수 있다'는 고디아스의 매듭(Gordian Knot)을 칼로 베어 풀어버린 알렉산더의 지혜처럼, 복잡한 세상을 단순하게 설명할 수 있는 길을 제공해 준다...