ABSTRACT
This chapter approaches the merits and some shortcomings of the Amsterdam School through the lens of Eastern Europe's neoliberal capitalist restructuring. Arguably, there is no other region in the world where the School's central concerns – transnational class formation, transnationalization of the state and the neoliberal concept of control – are as formative for its capitalism as in Eastern Europe. The chapter argues that the Amsterdam School's toolkit is an enormous asset when analysing the emergence of capitalism in the region. Neo-Gramscian scholarship has taken great pain to show how transnational capital has exerted structural and behavioural power in their host countries, influencing state strategies and social compromises. The Amsterdam School has often been criticized for being too focused on elite-driven hegemonic projects and practices, for conflating the structural and behavioural power of capital and for paying insufficient attention to divisions within the capitalist class, as well as to the social bases of resistance to neoliberal restructuring.
