ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the interpretations of state, economy and society developed by neoliberalism actually obscure more than they reveal. It addresses not simply in terms of their empirical and theoretical adequacy, but also in the context of a more general, and partially successful, attempt to construct a new capitalist hegemony, a hegemony in which the structural power of capital. There are good reasons for thinking, then, that the claims of neoliberalism relate more to a desired than to an actually existing national or global capitalist order, and that they obscure as much as they reveal in their arguments regarding state, economy and society. The evidence from the United States, one of the most successful capitalist economies throughout the twentieth century, indicates the utility of the regulationist model. Swedish social democrats believed that capitalism was inherently irrational and that the state and an institutionalised union countervailing power were needed to make it operate efficiently and humanely.
