ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Marxist political economy aside from a few comparative references to neoclassical economics. It analyses the problem of the economics–politics separation within the writings of Neumann, Pollock and Marcuse. Most theorists tend to explain capitalism with dualist methodologies that have two sets of categories: one set for capital (economics) and another for ideology, power and authority based on the assumption that politics and economics are separate. For instance, the economics–politics relationship is key to understanding how the historical development of the capitalist mode of production has been contemporaneous with liberalism, fascism, imperialism, colonialism, post-colonialism and neo-liberalism. Furthermore, Marx had great insight on social power because he understood that political force balanced the otherwise unstable contradictions of production and accumulation. Marcuse re-conceptualizes the implicit separation between economics and politics in Weber’s distinction between the formal and substantive rationality.
