The April 21, 2005 issue of the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS carried a lead article titled ‘Blood for Oil?’ The paper is attributed to a group of writers and activists – Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts – who identify themselves by the collective name ‘Retort.’ In...

An exchange between Andrew Kliman and Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan. 1. Andrew Kliman: 'Value and Crisis: Bichler and Nitzan versus Marx' EDITORS' NOTE: In the first article, Andrew Kliman responds to Bichler and Nitzan's recent paper on 'Systemic Fear, Modern Finance and the Future of...

Do capitalists really want a recovery? Can they afford it? On the face of it, the question sounds silly: of course capitalists want a recovery; how else can they prosper? According to the textbooks, both mainstream and heterodox, capital accumulation and economic growth are two sides of the same...

Over the past century, Israel has been transformed from an agricultural colony, to a welfare-warfare state, to a globally integrated “market economy” characterised by great income disparities. What lies behind this transformation? Why the shift in emphasis from “war profits” to “peace...

It is popular these days to talk about the "discontent" of neoliberal globalization. This "discontent" is no longer the prerogative of intellectuals. Increasingly, it comes from below, with opposition from the grassroots. But there may be another type of discontent lurking behind the scenes....

This chapter outlines the main problems of capital theory, key issues which need to be resolved, and the way in which an alternative concept of capital may affect the future evolution of IPE. Briefly, existing theories of capital can be classified into three groups, based on their relationship...

The purpose of this article is to offer an alternative analytical framework for understanding the long term transformation in Israel. First, we argue against the conventional separation between the “political system” and the “economic system.” This separationist approach has been popular...

A theoretical and historical account of the global political economy of oil, armament and capital accumulation in the Middel East.

Over 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 paper is to address this mismatch. Using a broad...