Search

The conditions of detention of prisoners of war who are the citizens of the Russian Federation and are held in the institutions of the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine have been analyzed. The typical character of the behavior of servicemen of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from the moment they were captured was considered. Examples of the use of servicemen of the Russian Federation after returning from custody (exchange) in the interests of enemy's propaganda and re-engagement in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine are given. The prospects for the emergence of protest movements within the Russian Federation are considered in view of the examples of the past and the realities of the present. A number of special activities, which are expedient to carry out with prisoners of war of the Russian Federation during their custody in places of detention on the territory of Ukraine, are proposed for consideration. Historical, legal, information-propaganda, religious, social, political, and intelligence-recruitment activities are appropriate to be considered such measures. Prospective results of the proposed special activities with prisoners of war and their possible consequences after return from custody (exchange) are considered., Проаналізовано умови тримання військовополонених, які є громадянами Російської Федерації та перебувають в установах виконання покарань Державної кримінально-виконавчої служби України. Визначено типовий характер поведінки військовослужбовців збройних сил Російської Федерації змоменту потрапляння у полон і вказано випадки використання їх після повернення з полону (обміну) в інтересах ворожої пропаганди та повторного залучення до ведення бойових дій на території України. Розглянуто перспективи виникнення протестних рухів усередині Російської Федерації з огляду на приклади минулого та реалії сучасності. Подано до розгляду низку спеціальних заходів різного спрямування, які доцільно проводити звійськовополоненими Російської Федерації у період їхнього перебування у таборах для тримання на території України. Спрогнозовано перспективні результати проведення запропонованих спеціальних заходів з військовополоненими та їх можливі наслідки після повернення з полону (обміну).

הקפיטליזם שולט בעולם. דיונים סוערים מתנהלים בין המלומדים הממסדיים לבין "הביקורתיים" על טיבו של הקפיטליזם הגלובלי. הבעיה היא שטיבו של המוסד המרכזי בקפיטליזם -- ההון -- אינו ידוע. לאחר יותר ממאתיים שנה של התפתחות קפיטליסטית נמרצת לא קיימת תיאוריית הון הגיונית אמפירית -- לא במדע הכלכלה, לא בכלכלה הפוליטית המרקסיסטית ולא במדעי החברה בכלל, בין אם הם פוזיטיביסטיים או ביקורתיים, בין אם הם מודרניים או פוסטיסטיים. הדבר בולט בעת משברי הון. אז נחשפת אוזלת ידם של המומחים והמנהלים האמונים על רזי ההון, ולעתים, ברגעי חרדה, הם אף מתוודים כי אין הם מבינים לא את טיבו של ההון ולא את משבריו. וכאשר מונפים דגלי המחאה והמפגינים יוצאים בזעם אל הרחובות, מתברר שאין להם תוכנית אלטרנטיבית. אין הם מבינים את מהותו של ההון ואת תוצאותיו. הספר מציג דרך חדשה להבנת ההון ומשבריו המחזוריים. ההון אינו עצם מטריאלי ואף לא תהליך ייצור כלכלי. הוא אינו הצבר של אמצעי ייצור או מלאי של ציוד וטכנולוגיה, אלא מוסד מרכזי של יחסי שליטה, המאפשר בין השאר לשלוט בקווי הייצור, במלאי הסחורות ובעבודה השכירה. ההון הוא סימבול פיננסי של יחסי כוח מאורגנים הפרושים ברשת היררכית, ובמרכזם ניצבות קבוצות ההון הדומיננטי ,אותן תשלובות תאגידיות-מדיניות. אלה כפויות לחלק-מחדש את יחסי הכוח לטובתן מול ההתנגדות ההולכת וגוברת, ובצירוף היחסים נוצר משבר ההון. משטר ההון (הקפיטליזם) הוא אופי-כוח מסוג חדש יחסית בהיסטוריה של המין האנושי -- משטר שהתמסד במאות האחרונות והלך והתגבש מחדש לאורך שבעת משברי ההון שהתחוללו מאז תחילת המאה התשע–עשרה. הספר כתוב בשפה תמציתית פשוטה, ללא ערפל אקדמי, ואינו דורש מן הקוראים ידע מוקדם, "כלכלי", מתמטי, או אקדמי. הוא אינו מסתפק בסיסמאות ובהכרזות. הוא מציג לא רק היסטוריה ביקורתית, אם לא קטלנית, של תיאוריות ההון המרכזיות המקובלות, האקדמיות והרדיקליות, אלא גם תיאוריות ומודלים כמותיים אלטרנטיביים של ההון ומשברי ההון אשר יוכלו לשמש את הרוצים בדרך רדיקלית חדשה להריסת משטר ההון ולהחלפתו במשטר אנושי. כותבי הספר, יהונתן ניצן ושמשון ביכלר, הם מרצים בכלכלה פוליטית באוניברסיטאות ובמכללות בקנדה ובישראל

Cet article revient sur les « écrits polémologiques » de Veblen et leur place dans l’ensemble de son œuvre. Éditée en février 1917, c’est‑à‑dire deux mois avant l’entrée en guerre des États‑Unis aux côtés de l’Alliance, son Enquête sur la nature de la paix et les termes de sa perpétuation occupe à cet égard une place importante. Dans une réflexion originale et intéressante, Veblen y développe ses vues sur les conditions d’une paix durable qui doit être maintenue par une « Ligue » d’États républicains, ainsi que sur la situation du monde des Nations dans l’après‑Ligue. Partant des pré‑requis de l’institutionnalisme de Veblen, cet article offre une perspective de renouvellement d’une interrogation critique sur notre actualité. This article discusses Veblen’s War Essays and their place in the entirety of his work. Published in February 1917, i.e. two months before the US war alongside the Alliance, his “Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of its perpetuation”, occupies in this regard an important place. Veblen develops his views on the conditions for a lasting peace to be maintained by a "League" of Republicans States and on the state of the community of Nations in a post-League era. Based on the prerequisites of Veblen’s institutionalism, this original article offers the prospects for a renewed critical questioning on our time/epoch.

The April 21, 2005 issue of the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS carried a lead article titled ‘Blood for Oil?’ The paper is attributed to a group of writers and activists – Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews and Michael Watts – who identify themselves by the collective name ‘Retort.’ In their article, the authors advance a supposedly new explanation for the wars in the Middle East. Much of their explanation – including both theory and fact – is plagiarized. It is cut and pasted, almost ‘as is,’ from our own work. The primary source is ‘The Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition,’ a 71 page chapter in our book THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ISRAEL (Pluto 2002). The authors also seem inspired, incognito, by our more recent papers, including ‘It’s All About Oil’ (2003), ‘Clash of Civilization or Capital Accumulation?’ (2004), ‘Beyond Neoliberalism’ (2004) and ‘Dominant Capital and the New Wars’ (2004). In their paper, the Retort group credits us for having coined the term ‘Weapondollar-Petrodollar Coalition’ – but dismiss our ‘precise calibration of the oil/war nexus’ as ‘perfunctory.’ This dismissal does not prevent them from freely appropriating, wholesale fashion, our concepts, ideas and theories – including, among others, the ‘era of free flow,’ the ‘era of limited flow,’ ‘energy conflicts,’ the ‘commercialization of arms exports,’ the ‘politicization of oil’ and the critique of the ‘scarcity thesis.’ Nowhere in their article do the authors mention the source of these concepts, ideas and theories; occasionally, they even introduce them with the prefix ‘Our view is. . . .’ Their treatment of facts is not very different. They freely use (sometimes without understanding) research methods, statistics and data that took us years to conceive, estimate and measure – again, never mentioning the source. These concepts, theories and facts are far from trivial. Until recently, they were greeted with strategic silence, from both right and left. Their publication has been repeatedly denied and censored by mainstream as well as progressive journals (including, it must be said, by the LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS, that turned down our paper on the subject). They cannot be found anywhere else in the literature, conservative or radical. To treat them as ‘common knowledge’ is deceitful. To cut and paste them without due attribution is blatant plagiarism. The first part of our paper illustrates this process of ‘intellectual accumulation-by-dispossession’ with selected examples. The issue, though, goes well beyond personal vanity and self-aggrandizement. At the core, we are dealing here with the clash of science and church, with the constant attempt of organized faith – whether religious or academic – to disable, block and, if necessary, appropriate creativity and novelty. Creativity and novelty are dangerous. They defy dogma and undermine the conventional creed; they challenge the dominant ideology and threaten those in power; occasionally, they cause the entire edifice of power to crumble. For these reasons, the latent purpose of intellectual accumulation-by-dispossession – like the accumulation of private property – is primarily negative. The word ‘private’ comes from the Latin ‘privatus,’ meaning ‘restricted,’ and from ‘privare,’ which means ‘to deprive.’ And, indeed, the most important feature of private ownership is not to enable those who own, but to disable those who do not. It is only through the threat of prevention – or ‘strategic sabotage’ as Thorsein Veblen called it – that accumulation can take place. It is only by restricting the free creativity of society that society itself can be controlled. The second section of the paper explains how the appropriators of ‘Blood for Oil?’ fit this pattern. The final section of the paper is an epilogue. It describes our failed attempts to get this paper published with The LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS; Retort’s efforts to mislead us; and some additional insight from their AFFLICTED POWERS, a 2005 Verso book that contains the same plagiarism and more. The epilogue concludes with a few observations on the nature of academic dialectics.

The chapter offers a new approach for analysing capitalist development and crisis, tying together mergers and acquisitions, stagflation and globalization as integral facets of accumulation. The framework builds on the concept of differential accumulation, emphasizing the power drive by dominant capital groups to beat the average and exceed the normal rate of return. Four regimes of differential accumulation are articulated: internal breadth by amalgamation, external breadth through green-field investment, internal depth via cost-cutting, and external depth through stagflation. The complex relationships between these different regimes, as well as their broader societal implications, are analysed in light of the US experience over the past century. Several broad conclusions emerge. (1) Of the four regimes, the most important are amalgamation and stagflation, which tend to oscillate inversely to each other. (2) Over the longer haul, amalgamation grows exponentially relative to green-field investment, contributing to the stagnation tendency of modern capitalism. (3) The wave-like pattern of mergers and acquisitions reflects the progressive break-up of socioeconomic ‘envelopes’, as dominant capital moves through successive amalgamation at the industry, sectoral, national, and, finally, global level. In this sense, the current global merger wave is an integral facet of differential accumulation. (4) Periodic lulls in amalgamation tend to be compensated for by stagflation, which appears as a crisis at the societal level, but which contributes significantly to differential accumulation at the disaggregate level. An end to the present worldwide merger boom could therefore trigger global stagflation. (5) Stagflation crises have been previously 'resolved' when dominant capital broke its existing envelope, pushing to amalgamate within a broader universe of takeover targets. Given that there is nothing more to conquer beyond the global envelope, future stagflation crises may prove much more difficult to tame.

A theoretical and historical account of the global political economy of oil, armament and capital accumulation in the Middel East.

Over the past century, Israel has been transformed from an agricultural colony, to a welfare-warfare state, to a globally integrated “market economy” characterised by great income disparities. What lies behind this transformation? Why the shift in emphasis from “war profits” to “peace dividends” – and back to conflict? How did egalitarianism give rise to inequality? Who are the big winners here, and how have they shaped their world? Never before have these questions been answered as they are in this highly original book. In order to understand capitalist development, argue Bichler and Nitzan, we need to break the artificial separation between “economics” and “politics”, and think of accumulation itself as “capitalisation of power”. Applying this concept to Israel, and drawing on seemingly unrelated phenomena, the authors reveal the big picture that never makes it to the news. Diverse processes – such as global accumulation cycles, regional conflicts and energy crises, ruling class formation and dominant ideology, militarism and dependency, inflation and recession, the politics of high-technology and the transnationalisation of ownership – are all woven into a single story. The result is a fascinating account of one of the world”s most volatile regions, and a new way of understanding the global political economy.

The purpose of this article is to offer an alternative analytical framework for understanding the long term transformation in Israel. First, we argue against the conventional separation between the “political system” and the “economic system.” This separationist approach has been popular among Israeli scholars but its analytical value is open to doubt. Second, instead of the comment aggregate/statist approach, we take the disaggregate route of political economy, accentuating the historical role played by key power groups. And, finally, rather than focus merely on domestic considerations, we claim that both the earlier military economy and the current trajectory into “peace markets” are part of a broader global developments, particularly the internationalization of business institutions and the changing nature of the capitalist nation-state. In our opinion, the sharp “U-turn” in Israeli history is intimately linked to the changing nature of capital accumulation and corporate concentration, both in Israel and in the United States. For the large core firms at the centre of the economy, which we view as principal actors in this process, accumulation and concentration are two sides of the same process. With the evolution of modern capitalism, the leading firms are increasingly driven not to maximize their profits but rather to “beat the average.” Specifically, they seek to achieve a “differential rate of accumulation” – that is, to exceed the average rate of return in the economy. However, since a differential growth in profits implies control over a growing share of the aggregate capitalized assets, for these firms the goal of accumulation means a quest for rising corporate concentration.