Jonathan Nitzan is Professor of Political Economy at
York University
York University (french: Université York), also known as YorkU or simply YU, is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,000 faculty and staf ...
, Toronto, Canada.
Work
Nitzan is the co-author (with
Shimshon Bichler
Shimshon Bichler is an educator who teaches political economy at colleges and universities in Israel. Along with Jonathan Nitzan, Bichler has created a power theory of capitalism and theory of differential accumulation in their analysis of the po ...
) of ''Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder'', published 2009. Their writings focus of the nature of
capital in capitalism and provide an alternative view to that of
Marxian and
neoclassical economics
Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...
. In their theory, capital is the quantification of
power. According to their
power theory of value
A theory of value is any economic theory that attempts to explain the exchange value or price of goods and services. Key questions in economic theory include why goods and services are priced as they are, how the value of goods and services c ...
, in capitalism, power is the governing principle as rooted in the centrality of private ownership. Private ownership is wholly and only an act of institutionalized exclusion, and institutionalized exclusion is a matter of organized power.
Central to this theory is the concept of
differential accumulation where firms strive to profit more by beating the average profit level.
Nitzan and Bichler share an intellectual legacy with
institutional political economists such as
Thorstein Veblen. In particular, they share Veblen's explanation that business exists with the end of pecuniary (monetary) gain and not the accumulation of goods of consumption or of physical machines.
Major works
* Nitzan, Jonathan and Shimshon Bichler – ''Global Political Economy of Israel'' – 2002
* Nitzan, Jonathan and Shimshon Bichler – ''Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder'' – 2009
References
External links
The Bichler and Nitzan Archives* Video
Jonathan Nitzan speaks on the political economy of the Iraq invasion Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States.
Each class ...
, March 18, 2008
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Institutional economists
York University faculty
Living people
20th-century Canadian economists
20th-century Canadian male writers
Canadian male non-fiction writers
Year of birth missing (living people)