Seit einigen Jahrzehnten verschiebt sich das Kräfteverhältnis zwischen Finanz- und Realwirtschaft zugunsten der Finanzwirtschaft. Angesichts der finanzwirtschaftlichen Krisen des 21. Jahrhunderts wird die Dominanz dieses Wirtschaftssektors aber problematisiert. Stimmen aus Politik, Theologie...

The Hard Steps model is applied to argue that the Industrial Revolution (IR) heralded a terminal phase of human existence. Assuming six hard steps, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov method is used to pinpoint the start of the IR to ≈ year 1700. Once these hard steps were cleared, the global economy...

This paper investigates the timing of labour strikes in Hollywood. The occurrence of strikes, such as the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, can make sense when we have the hindsight to piece together the historical details of what created rifts between labour and management. But why do strikes...

This paper develops a functional and historical appraisal of finance. We start by proposing a taxonomy of three core, theory-driven functions of the financial system - intermediation, entrepreneurial, and accumulative - that coevolve throughout the history of capitalism. We build an empirical...

The various social and economic crises triggered by COVID-19 have revealed and reflected the many forms of contradictions, interdependencies and power asymmetries that underpin our current form of globalised capitalism. While Comparative Capitalisms approaches can provide useful insights into...

On December 3, 2024, Michael Hudson met with capital-as-power researchers Jonathan Nitzan, Tim Di Muzio, and Blair Fix to discuss the intersections between their two lines of research. What follows is a transcript of the conversation.

In this paper, I extend the Hein and Stockhammer model of distribution and inflation by incorporating structural trends of financialization through three Kaleckian channels: (1) sectoral recomposition, (2) financial overhead costs and rentiers' profit claims, and (3) the bargaining power of...

We collect observations on how power constitutes itself in decentralized digital platform constellations that position themselves as alternatives to platforms operated by big tech (which we coin "hyperledgers"). We then compare these forms of power to the incumbent structures, the so called...

Background and Objective: This paper posits that market-oriented economies foster narcissistic behavior due to their focus on profit, private ownership, competition, and free markets. The research presented demonstrates that while overall levels of narcissism remain stable, certain political...

This paper examines the potential for automation and artificial intelligence (AI) to induce a broader economic decline, impacting not only labor but also the owners of capital and advanced technology. While automation has traditionally favored skilled over unskilled workers, recent advancements...

This paper proposes a theory of the mark-up that is embedded in a circuit model of the capitalist mode of production. The model and the theory are built on Keynes's principle of effective demand, Graziani's monetary theory of production and Pivetti's monetary theory of distribution. The...

This paper presents new compelling evidence on the company-level ownership structure of military firms detained by asset managers. Employing a unique firm-level interlinked dataset, connecting publicly listed firms in the aerospace and defense industry, and their corresponding structure of...

To understand the capitalist state, often labeled as the "modern state," it is imperative to analyze the relations of dialectical unification between the class nature of the state and its public character with the perspective of historical materialism. From the narrative logic of Capital ,...

We examine how political capitalism can develop within modern states that typically have many types of checks and balances. We first discuss how this can occur through various influence channels: government executive and regulatory agencies, legislators, litigation, the press, and the public...

According to the economics Nobel laureate, Kenneth Arrow, "… capitalism is a flawed system. It probably has the same virtues as Churchill attributed to democracy: It’s the worst system except for any other." Thus, capitalism is a necessary evil, but it is not inherently bad. I argue that...

Economic systems face critical challenges, including widening income inequality, unemployment driven by automation, mounting public debt, and environmental degradation. This study introduces Economocracy as a transformative framework aimed at addressing these systemic issues by integrating...

This paper experimentally examines Max Weber's thesis on the influence of religious narratives - particularly the Protestant Ethic - on attitudes toward wealth redistribution. Weber argued that the Protestant Reformation fostered the belief that economic success signals divine favour, thereby...

Economic development under capitalism is uneven, both socially and spatially. The existing literature, both mainstream social sciences and Marxist political economy, generally separates social inequality (inequality among classes and class-fractions) from spatial inequality. It also pays...

To progress beyond the orthodoxy vs. skepticism divide, Marxist value theory must endorse both qualitative research into the social relations underlying economic phenomena and careful quantitative modeling. It must also accept scientific conclusions, wherever they may lead. New investigations...

The main point of this article is that inflation is a "real phenomenon" whose essence lies in the sphere of production. The article uses the Marxian Reproduction Schemes as its point of reference, assuming an economy based solely on commodity money, where one unit of commodity money is...

Western societies face unprecedented interconnected crises - climate change, democratic instability, rising inequality, and growing science scepticism - that demand fundamental socio-ecological transformation within a compressed timeframe. However, current university systems, shaped by...

The literature on policy-making in public health academia portrays the interests of many industries as being implacably opposed to the public interest. Suspicion of large, transnational corporations has evolved into disapproval of a wide range of 'commercial entities' who are depicted as the...