This looks as if it will be an interesting conference:

Rethinking Marxism Conference
To be held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on November 5-8, 2009. (Other; English).

The sponsors are calling for papers on the subject of “Capital as Power”
Nitzan, Jonathan and Bichler, Shimshon. (2009).

Nitzan and Bichler’s (whose work I’ve posted on here before) look beyond a labor (Marxist) or utility (Neo-liberal/neo-classical) theory of value. Instead, they see prices reflecting power relations.

On that topic, here’s an interesting piece by Immanuel Wallerstein , the developer of ‘world systems theory.”
In it Wallerstein describes what he calls “hegemonic cycles.” Hegemonic cycles are cycles of power relations, as compared to economic cycles.

Hegemonic cycles are much longer than so-called Kondratieff cycles (50-60 years).

In terms of hegemonic cycles, the US reached a peak at 1945 and started to decline sharply from the 1970s onward. That decline matches the shorter Kondratieff cycle B-phase (the A-phase was the upswing from 1945 to 1967-73). This B-phase lasted a lot longer than any other only because of the intervention of the US Treasury, Federal Reserve and its supporters in Europe and Japan – which means prices and valuations during this period reflected nothing more than power relations.

The rest of the world, in other words, was subsidizing the valuation here….

Structural accounts of this kind sweep a lot under the carpet, but they can clarify what’s going on politically at the ground level. If the analysis is right, then greater and greater force will be needed to keep the lid on the pot here at home and elsewhere too. That explains the new efforts against “home -grown terrorists” (domestic dissidents) and against recalcitrant states abroad (Iraq, Afghanistan etc.)