The interaction of oil exports from the Middle East in the 1970s with arms imports to this region has drawn attention from several researchers. The existing literature, however, is seriously flawed for it ignores the large corporate players whose actions synchronize the two flows of income and,...

The present essay is the second in a series of four papers in which examine the political economy of armaments in recent decades. In this paper we focus on the ‘armament core’ of large military producers which recently emerged as a powerful bloc within the big economy of the United States....

This is the third paper in a series of four essays that deal with recent developments affecting the political economy of armaments. It begins by identifying the ‘military bias paradox’ of divergent behaviour, whereby the large armament corporations experienced an almost uninterrupted growth...

This is the final paper in a series of four essays that deal with the political economy of armament and oil. Since the 1980s, military imports to the Middle East increased while revenues from oil exports declined substantially. These disparities highlight structural changes which affect the...

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...

The relationship between sabotage and redistribution is inherently nonlinear. This research note illustrates aspects of this nolinearity in the case of the United States.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, we identified a new phenomenon that we called ‘energy conflicts’ and showed that these conflicts were intimately linked to the differential profitability of the leading oil companies. This link remains as true today as it was in the early 1970s. Like...

In his 2014 article, 'Food Price Inflation as Redistribution', Joseph Baines shows the intimate correspondence between differential profit and world hunger. But the capitalization of food is a dialectical process. As Michael Harrington noted more than half a century ago in his seminal book 'The...

The presidential election of Donald Trump has rekindled hopes for a U.S. recovery. The new president promises to ‘make America great again’, partly by creating many millions of new jobs for U.S. workers, and judging by the rising stock market, capitalists seem to love his narrative. But if...

Economic, financial and social commentators from all directions and persuasion are obsessed with the prospect of recovery. The world remains mired in a deep, prolonged crisis, and the key question seems to be how to get out of it. The purpose of our paper is to ask a very different question that...