The 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...

Political economy, radical as well as conservative, remains anchored in Newtonian cosmology. This cosmology, liberating as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, has become a fetter on understanding present-day society.

An analysis of the political economy of Israel during the 1990s.

The unravelling of the Middle-East peace process continues to baffle the pundits. The early optimism of the Oslo peace accord has now turned into despair. Prime minister Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist. The Palestinians have embarked on a new Intifada. And Israel has re-occupied...

This article was commissioned by the French newspaper Le Monde. The newspaper was one of several sponsors of an International Conference on Global Regulation, held at the University of Sussex on May 29-31, 2003, where we presented a plenary paper. As part of its sponsorship, Le Monde agreed to...

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 mimeograph is to address this mismatch. Using a...

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...

Many observers of the Israeli scene have been perplexed by the country’s apparent resilience to bad political news. The headlines of late seem uniformly dreadful. While the country is still licking its wounds from a botched, if not humiliating war with Hezbollah, the Palestinian territories...

Over the past decade, soaring commodity prices have had a relatively minor impact on the overall level of prices, at least by historical standards. Whereas oil is twelve times more expensive now that it was in 1999, consumer prices in industrialized countries are only 20 per cent higher. This...

Over the past century, Marxism has been radically transformed in line with circumstances and fashion. Theses that once looked solid have depreciated and fallen by the sideline; concepts that once were deemed crucial have been abandoned; slogans that once sounded clear and meaningful have become...