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Corporate Power and the Future of U.S. Capitalism
No full textCorporate power in the United States has risen to unprecedented levels, but the rate at which this power has grown is decelerating. Both facts have important implications for the future of U.S. capitalism
Commodity Traders in a Storm: Financialization, Corporate Power and Ecological Crisis
Full text linkCommodity trading firms occupy a central position in global supply chains and their activities have been associated with financial instability, social upheaval and manifold forms of ecological devastation. This paper examines these companies in the context of debates regarding corporate financialization. We find that since the 2003–2011 commodity boom, trading firms have become less financialized in terms of the source of their profits as they have shifted away from financial activities. However, they have become more financialized in terms of the destination of profits, with dividend and share repurchase commitments reaching new heights after 2015. In view of this finding, we inquire into whether trading firms’ growing commitment to shareholder payouts will encourage them to continue to prioritize short-term returns, or whether instead these firms’ linkages to financial markets will lend clout to financial activists concerned by the long-term environmental and social consequences of their operations. Ultimately, we find several sources of commodity trader resilience which insulate them from shareholder resolutions and divestment campaigns aimed at curbing ecological destruction and human rights abuses in their supply chains. We accordingly suggest that pressures from activist investors must be complemented with more wide-ranging efforts to defend living systems across the planet
The Capitalist Degree of Immortality
Full text linkThis note offers some speculative ideas worth considering. One of the key features of all hierarchical civilizations is their rulers’ fear of death. This fear was famously narrated in the ancient myth of Gilgamesh – the Sumerian king who realized that, like all other humans, he too was destined to die and embarked on a desperate quest to annul his mortality . According to Lewis Mumford, this quest for immortality is the main reason why society’s rulers are forever obsessed with building and fortifying power hierarchies – or ‘megamachines’, as he called them. Controlling these megamachines, Mumford argued, is the rulers’ way of playing God, a futile yet all-possessive effort to conquer the future and live forever. In capitalism, the rulers finally figured out how to do it – sort of
El poder de las grandes empresas y el futuro del capitalismo en EEUU
No full textEl poder corporativo en los Estados Unidos ha crecido a niveles sin precedentes, pero el ritmo al que ha crecido este poder se está desacelerando. Ambos hechos tienen importantes implicaciones para el futuro del capitalismo estadounidense
'Soft-wars': The Differential Trajectories of Google and Microsoft -- A Capital as Power Analysis
Full text linkFROM THE ARTICLE: According to the capital as power framework, pecuniary earnings, or profits, are a symbolic representation of the struggle for power between different capitalist groups. In this struggle, capitalists measure their own power differentially – that is, relative to other capitalist entities. The focus on differential power, expressed in differential earnings, leads firms to try to beat an average rate of return. In order for the profits of one firm to beat the average, others must be prevented from accessing the same earnings.
In an environment with hundreds, thousands or even millions of similar sized firms, it would be difficult if not impossible to empirically isolate the relationship between shifts in power between any two firms. However, in most industries, only a handful of firms dominate, theoretically making the microanalysis of such a relationship much more feasible. It is my contention that this is largely true for the computer technology industry in the US.
Within the computer technology industry, Microsoft and Google stand out as two of the most profitable and most powerful firms. As such, it is logical to assume that in differential power terms, Google’s rapid rise poses a direct threat to Microsoft’s dominance. Moreover, in recent years both companies have expanded beyond their respective core profitable businesses, coming into more and more direct competition. [. . .] The purpose of this paper is to show that, despite the fact that Google and Microsoft currently derive the majority of their profits from separate businesses, competition between them can be empirically observed in the way each firm pursues the differential accumulation of power
How Dominant are Big US Corporations?
No full textI recently had a lively Twitter debate with Jonathan Nitzan, Shimshon Bichler and Cory Doctorow about the future of big corporations in the United States. The debate was prompted by Doctorow’s piece ‘End of the line for Reaganomics’, which I reposted on capitalaspower.com. Doctorow argues that we may be witnessing a sea change in the way governments treat big corporations. Since the Reagan era, the US government has taken most of the teeth out of antitrust enforcement [...] Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler then entered the Twitter debate backed by their own research on corporate power. For their part, Nitzan and Bichler are less optimistic that the US government will seriously challenge the power of big corporations [...] Here’s where I enter the debate. I am more optimistic than Bichler and Nitzan that the US government will challenge corporate power. The reason is that the COVID crisis has forced a drastic change in government policy. Let’s have a look
Unbridgeable: Why Political Economists Cannot Accept Capital as Power
Full text linkThe theory of capital as power (CasP) is radically different from conventional political economy.
In the conventional view, mainstream as well as heterodox, capital is seen a ‘real’ economic entity engaged in the production of goods and services, and capitalism is thought of as a mode of production and consumption. Finance in this approach is either a mere reflection/lubricant of the real economy (the mainstream view), or a parasitic fiction (the heterodox perspective).
CasP rejects this framework. Capital, it argues, is not a productive economic entity, but a symbolic representation of organized societal power writ large, and capitalism should be analysed not as a mode of production and consumption, but as a mode of power. In this approach, finance is neither a reflection nor a fiction, but the symbolic language that organizes and creorders – or creates the order of – capitalized power.
These are foundational claims. They go to the very heart of political economy, and they have far-reaching implications. So far-reaching, in fact, that if we accept them, we must rewrite, often from scratch, much of the theory, history and possible futures of the capitalist order.
Many have complained about CasP being aloof. Our approach, they have argued, insists on being ‘right’ – to the exclusion of all others. It shows no interest in ‘building bridges’. It dismisses neoclassical liberalism altogether, and although sometimes sympathetic to Marx, it aims not to revise Marxism, but to discard it altogether.
In this research note – excerpted and revised from our 2020 invited-then-rejected interview with Revue de la regulation – we explain the basis for these complaints and why CasP and conventional political economy cannot be easily bridged. Stated briefly, the problem is not unwillingness but built-in barriers. As it stands, political economy cannot accept capital as power. Its very foundations prevent it from doing so
With Great Power Comes Great Fear
No full textHere are three stories about how the stock market works. The first story says that the stock market reflects the productivity of the underlying economy. When stocks go up, the thinking goes, everyone should celebrate because the tide of productivity is rising. This is the story that neoclassical economists believe. The second story is that the stock market is actually disconnected from the ‘real’ economy, fluctuating in ways that have nothing to do with actual productivity. Stock prices represent ‘fictitious capital’. This is the story Marxists believe. The third story is that stock prices are neither about productivity nor are they ‘fictitious’. They are about power. This is the hypothesis proposed by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler. The basic idea is that what capitalists really care about is not productivity. They care about income. Capitalists look at their income and then, through the ritual of capitalization, turn it into a lump sum — the capitalized value.
[...]
If great (capitalist) power does bring great fear, the systemic fear index ought to rise and fall with the power index — Bichler and Nitzan’s measure of capitalist power. Looking at the United States, Bichler and Nitzan find that this is exactly what has happened.
[...]
Impressed by Bichler and Nitzan’s findings, political economists Joseph Baines and Sandy Hager wanted to know if the results generalized beyond the United States. They assembled data to calculate both the power index and the index of systemic fear in France, Germany, Great Britain and Japan. Their results poured cold water on the concept of ‘systemic fear’.
[...]
Intrigued by Baines and Hager’s results, James McMahon (who cut his empirical teeth researching Hollywood) recently took another look at the idea of ‘systemic fear’. He was able to assemble a dataset that was both wider in scope (including 12 countries) and had greater historical depth than anything used before. With this more expansive dataset, McMahon subjected the idea of systemic fear to a bevy of tests
Red Giant
Full text linkIn 2012, we published a paper in the Journal of Critical Globalization Studies titled ‘Imperialism and Financialism: The Story of a Nexus’. Our topic was the chameleon-like Marxist notion of imperialism and how its different theories related to finance. Here is the article’s summary:
Over the past century, the nexus of imperialism and financialism has become a major axis of Marxist theory and praxis. Many Marxists consider this nexus to be a prime cause of our worldly ills, but the historical role they ascribe to it has changed dramatically over time. The key change concerns the nature and direction of surplus and liquidity flows. The first incarnation of the nexus, articulated at the turn of the twentieth century, explained the imperialist scramble for colonies to which finance capital could export its excessive surplus. The next version posited a neo-imperial world of monopoly capitalism where the core's surplus is absorbed domestically, sucked into a black hole of military spending and financial intermediation. The third script postulated a World System where surplus is imported from the dependent periphery into the financial core. And the most recent edition explains the hollowing out of the U.S. core, a red giant that has already burned much of its own productive fuel and is now trying to financialize the rest of the world in order to use the system's external liquidity. The paper outlines this chameleon-like transformation, assesses what is left of the nexus and asks whether it is worth keeping. (p. 42)
In the second part of the paper, we looked a little closer at the red-giant argument. Specifically, we wanted to gauge the degree to which U.S. capital had declined and examine whether this decline indeed forced the rest of the world to financialize. And what we found surprised us: the ‘financial sector’ did seem to become more important everywhere, but its rise was led not by the United States, but by the rest of the world!
Our article was published almost a decade ago, so we though it would be interesting to update our figures and see what has changed, if anything
GameStop Capitalism. Wall Street vs. The Reddit Rally (Part I)
Full text linkReflections on leveraging finance against finance