This essay interweaves two stories - one theoretical and empirical, the other autobiographical. The first story embeds the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the broader political economy of the Middle East and the global accumulation of "capital as power." The second story narrates the authors'...

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, we identified a new Middle East phenomenon that we called "energy conflicts" and argued that these conflicts were intimately linked with the global processes of capital accumulation. This paper outlines the theoretical framework we have developed over the...

This research note updates selected charts from three previous papers. The new data present a rather startling picture, suggesting that the Middle East - and the global political economy more generally - might face an important crossroads. Our assessment here rests on the analysis of capital as...

The 2023 war between Hamas and Israel elicits many different explanations. As with previous regional hostilities, here too, the pundits and commentators have numerous overlapping processes to draw on - from the struggle between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements, to the deep...

FROM THE ARTICLE: "During the late 1980s, we printed a series of working papers, offering a new approach to the political economy of Israel and wars in the Middle East. Our approach in these papers rested on three new concepts. It started by identifying the Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition -...

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...

The 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...

The paper offers a new theoretical framework for linking inflation and accumulation, with the Israeli experience as a case study. The focal point is the process of differential accumulation by the largest core firms. The theory of differential accumulation suggests that the relative power of...