IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/esprep/157855.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Capitalists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Bichler, Shimshon
  • Nitzan, Jonathan

Abstract

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 process. Accumulation generates growth and growth fuels accumulation, so it seems bootless to ask whether capitalists want growth. Growth is their lifeline, and the more of it, the better it is. Or is it? In the United States, rising unemployment – which hammers the well-being of workers, unincorporated businesses and the unemployed – serves not to undermine but to boost the overall income share of capitalists. And as employment growth decelerates, the income share of the Top 1% – which includes the capitalists as well as their protective power belt – soars. Under these circumstances, what reason do capitalists have to ‘get the economy going’? Why worry about rising unemployment and zero job growth when these very processes serve to boost their income-share-read-power?

Suggested Citation

  • Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2013. "How Capitalists Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crisis," EconStor Preprints 157855, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esprep:157855
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/157855/1/bna-387_20131100_bn_how_capitalists_learned_to_stop_worrying.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2012. "The Asymptotes of Power," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 60, pages 18-53.
    2. repec:ilo:ilowps:470934 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Lavoie, M. & Stockhammer, Engelbert,, 2012. "Wage-led growth : concepts, theories and policies," ILO Working Papers 994709363402676, International Labour Organization.
    4. Nicola GIAMMARIOLI & Julian MESSINA & Thomas STEINBERGER & Chiara STROZZI, 2002. "European Labor Share Dynamics: An Institutional Perspective," Economics Working Papers ECO2002/13, European University Institute.
    5. Kliman, Andrew & Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2011. "Systemic Crisis, Systemic Fear: An Exchange," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 4, pages 61-118.
    6. van Treeck, Till. & Sturn, Simon., 2012. "Income inequality as a cause of the Great Recession? : A survey of current debates," ILO Working Papers 994709343402676, International Labour Organization.
    7. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2009. "Capital as Power. A Study of Order and Creorder," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157973, September.
    8. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2013. "Can Capitalists Afford Recovery? Economic Policy When Capital is Power," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2013/01, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    9. Jon Bakija & Adam Cole & Bradley Heim, 2008. "Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data," Department of Economics Working Papers 2010-22, Department of Economics, Williams College, revised Jan 2012.
    10. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2010. "Systemic Fear, Modern Finance and the Future of Capitalism," EconStor Preprints 157830, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    11. Schneider, Dorothee, 2011. "The labor share: A review of theory and evidence," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2011-069, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hyeng-Joon Park, 2016. "Korea’s Post-1997 Restructuring," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 48(2), pages 287-309, May.
    2. Park, Hyeng-Joon, 2016. "Korea’s Post-1997 Restructuring: An Analysis of Capital as Power (Postprint)," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, pages 287-309.
    3. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "Growing through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(5), pages 1-78.
    4. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2014. "The Enlightened Capitalist," EconStor Preprints 157839, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2014. "Can Capitalists Afford Recovery? Three Views on Economic Policy in Times of Crisis," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(1), pages 110-155.
    2. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2018. "With their Back to the Future: Will Past Earnings Trigger the Next Crisis," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 18, pages 41-56.
    3. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2013. "Can Capitalists Afford Recovery? Economic Policy When Capital is Power," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2013/01, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    4. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2014. "The Enlightened Capitalist," EconStor Preprints 157839, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    5. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2014. "No Way Out: Crime, Punishment and the Capitalization of Power," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 61(3), pages 251-271.
    6. Christian A Belabed & Thomas Theobald & Till van Treeck, 2018. "Income distribution and current account imbalances [Notes on capacity utilisation, distribution and accumulation]," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 42(1), pages 47-94.
    7. McMahon, James, 2018. "Is Hollywood a Risky Business? A Political Economic Analysis of Risk and Creativity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue Online Fi, pages 1-24.
    8. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2018. "The CasP Project: Past, Present, Future," Review of Capital as Power, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism, vol. 1(3), pages 1-39.
    9. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2016. "A CasP Model of the Stock Market," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 77, pages 119-154.
    10. Jan Behringer & Till van Treeck, 2013. "Income distribution and current account: A sectoral perspective," IMK Working Paper 125-2013, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    11. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2019. "The Harder They Fall," EconStor Preprints 191311, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    12. McMahon, James, 2015. "What Makes Hollywood Run? Capitalist Power, Risk and the Control of Social Creativity," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157994, September.
    13. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2012. "The Asymptotes of Power," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 60, pages 18-53.
    14. Eckhard Hein, 2017. "Post-Keynesian macroeconomics since the mid 1990s: main developments," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 14(2), pages 131-172, September.
    15. McMahon, James, 2020. "Reconsidering systemic fear and the stock market: A reply to Baines and Hager," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2020/04, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.
    16. Jan Behringer & Till van Treeck, 2017. "Varieties of capitalism and growth regimes," FMM Working Paper 09-2017, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    17. Julien Vastenaekels, 2024. "Degrowth and capitalist power: A step towards a theory of change," Post-Print hal-04584989, HAL.
    18. Eckhard Hein & Walter Paternesi Meloni & Pasquale Tridico, 2021. "Welfare models and demand-led growth regimes before and after the financial and economic crisis," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(5), pages 1196-1223, October.
    19. Jan Behringer & Till van Treeck, 2018. "Varieties of capitalism and growth regimes: the role of income distribution," IMK Working Paper 194-2018, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    20. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2020. "The Limits of Capitalized Power. A 2020 U.S. Update," Working Papers on Capital as Power 2020/06, Capital As Power - Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:esprep:157855. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zbwkide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.