ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Roberto Mangabeira Unger’s social theory, political economy, and espousal of flexible specialisation or, as he terms it more recently, the ‘knowledge economy’; the chapter looks at Unger’s social thought in the broadest sense as it has developed since the 1980s and, moreover, how it critiques orthodox forms of Marxism and sociological modernisation theory as being, in his own jargon, an example of ‘false necessity’, which because it espouses a form of integrated totality social and economic theory is, as he argues, unable to account for contingency and ‘plasticity’ in social becoming and political and economic possibilities. The chapter shows how Unger drew upon, and developed in his own manner, the ideas and research programme around flexible specialisation, albeit in his own specifically original and gargantuan manner. In turn, it needs to be acknowledged that it is Unger who has developed and applied the ideas behind the FSRP up until the present with his continued insistence on the importance of developing and diffusing FS production systems in the ‘knowledge economy’ or ‘experimental economy’. His emphasis on going beyond social democratic redistribution policies (exemplified by Brazil’s Workers’ Party experience under the leadership of Luiz Inácio Lula before Jair Messias Bolsanaro’s victory and later defeat in 2022 with Lula coming back to power with the victory of the Workers’ Party in the 2022 election) and foregrounding the importance of a knowledge-based vanguard production as a pre-distribution strategy by changing the productive focus of the economy is emphasised.
