We analyze the effect of state visits by the Catholic pope on human rights in the host country to illustrate how a small theocracy like the Vatican can exert significant political influence in international politics. Our theoretical model of the strategic interaction between the Catholic Church...

Anarchists have generally rejected the idea that there is or ought to be a pure or inherently revolutionary strategy or tactic. In this chapter we make use of the capital-as-power theory of value and capital in a way that informs and supports the ad hoc perspective on struggle and fighting to...

We analyze the effect of state visits by the Catholic pope on human rights in the host country to understand how a small theocracy like the Vatican can exert disproportionate political influence in international politics. Our theoretical model of the strategic interaction between the Catholic...

This note contextualizes the ongoing U.S. policy shift toward greater ‘regulation’ of large corporations. Cory Doctorow and Blair Fix are optimistic about this shift. We doubt it.

According to neoclassical economics, the most efficient way to organize human activity is to use the free market. By stoking self interest, the theory claims, individuals can benefit society. This idea, however, conflicts with the evolutionary theory of multilevel selection, which proposes that...

For more than a century, political economists have sought to understand the nature of capital. The prevailing wisdom is that there must be something ‘real’ – some productive capacity – that underpins capitalized values. This thinking, I argue, is a mistake. Building on Jonathan Nitzan...

The capital as power framework, developed by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler, argues that the aim of business is not ‘profit maximization’ but the differential accumulation of social power. Using this framework as a theoretical starting point, I analyze the differential accumulation...

In 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...

This article examines the role of the Big Three asset management firms – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – in corporate environmental governance. Specifically, it charts the Big Three's relationships with the publicly-owned Carbon Majors: a small group of fossil fuels, cement and mining...

While research in constitutional economics has made important progress in recent decades, the factors determining whether a constitution is complied with have only received scant attention. We contribute to that narrow literature by studying how personal traits of political leaders are...