ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we set out the broad outlines of the position that we seek to develop and apply in this volume. Building on Polanyi’s arguments, we provide a political, rather than economic, account of neoliberalism and of what we shall call the ‘New Public Management template’. Thus our argument will not be grounded in political economy either in its liberal form, which emphasizes feasibility and the spontaneous order of the market, nor in what is normally taken to be its main rival: a political economy influenced by Marxist theory. Following Polanyi, we argued that the latter does not sufficiently break with liberalism’s ‘economic fallacy’, the ahistorical view that the economy is separate from and prior to the broader social relations in which it is embedded. We also noted that Polanyi is himself vulnerable to the criticisms he makes of Marxism. Contra Polanyi (1947), given the cyclical nature of capitalism the belief that crises offer a genuine opportunity for a reinvigoration of markets is no mere expression of economic liberalism’s ‘obsolete market mentality’. However, these teleological tendencies in Polanyi’s thought, rooted as they are in his ethical socialism, can be bracketed out without significantly affecting the analytical purchase that his arguments offer; indeed they run counter to the main thrust of that analytic framework.
