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 university, public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's fourth-largest university, and it has approximately 55,700 students, 7,0 ...
, 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
Power most often refers to:
* Power (physics), meaning "rate of doing work"
** Engine power, the power put out by an engine
** Electric power
* Power (social and political), the ability to influence people or events
** Abusive power
Power may a ...
. 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 comes ...
, 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 Differential accumulation is an approach for analysing capitalist development and crisis, tying together mergers and acquisitions, stagflation and globalization as integral facets of accumulation. The concept has been developed by Jonathan Nitzan an ...
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
Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism.
In his best-known book, ''The Theory of the Leisure Class'' ...
. 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, March 18, 2008
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nitzan, Jonathan
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)