ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to de-reify the notion of a transnational capitalist class (TCC). The concept of variegated neoliberalism, whilst enabling the conceptualization of convergence and divergence as dialectically interwoven moments in capitalist development, also allows for an understanding of the differential ‘projects’ of transnationally oriented fractions within a contingent neoliberal consensus (Chapter 5). This chapter returns to this argument in an attempt to highlight the fragility of this consensus; by implication it also aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of opportunities for resisting neoliberalization. In effect, by emphasizing the explanatory power of the impulsions-agency-common sense nexus and then moving to highlight contingent elements therein we aim to circumvent two criticisms: one concerns the overestimation of the coherence of neoliberalism (Drainville 1994); a second critiques neo-Gramscian analysis for their agent-centrism (Bonefeld 2006). Yet prospects for counter-hegemony still derive from this more nuanced account.
