ABSTRACT
The Varieties of Capitalism approach belongs to the institutionalist school of political economy. This approach can be traced to the German Historical School that influenced the establishment of institutionalist economics in the United States, associated with Thorstein Veblen. Its theoretical language was influenced by Pragmatism, which as a quasi-philosophy of trial-and-error built on the anti-metaphysical attitudes of a pioneer society, blended with the evolutionism of Social Darwinism that wafted from Britain. The prevalence of finance, risk, individuality in neo-American capitalism dates from the 1980s, and before with its long prehistory of Lockean liberalism. From the 'initial' balance of class force, mutations are passed on through the network of interconnections. This will become clear once we turn to the advent of neoliberalism and the role of the two forms of money capital in it. Releasing money capital from the Keynesian constraints also entailed the emancipation of money-dealing capital, which does not add value but obtains its profit share from price movements.
