Can Capitalists Afford Economic Growth?

An Animation

Elvire Thouvenot

September 14, 2019

Despite the global dominance of capitalism, economic growth continues to weaken. Mainstream economists blame the slowdown on various ‘distortions’, but as this animation shows, the reality is quite different. Capitalists seek not more income per se, but greater power-through-redistribution, which they achieve by stymying growth.

Watch on YouTube (10:26 minutes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTpanudMToA

---

This animation is based on Nitzan and Bichler’s 2014 paper, ‘Can Capitalists Afford Recovery? Three Views on Economic Policy in Times of Crisis’, Review of Capital as Power, 1 (1, October): 110-155 (http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/414/). The Bichler & Nitzan Archives can be accessed here: http://bnarchives.net.

This resource was created by Elvire Thouvenot (http://www.elvirethouvenot.com) and is shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0). You are free to copy and reuse this for non-commercial purposes but we ask that you acknowledge “Elvire Thouvenot” when doing so. If you remix or modify this material, you may not distribute the modified material.