ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the debtfarist feature of neoliberal states that provides vital institutional and ideological support to the growth of the poverty industry, not least by normalising and disciplining the dependency of the surplus population on credit. Marxist or materialist, state theories represent a diverse and contested terrain. The chapter explores the rhetorical and regulative manifestations of neoliberal state forms of intervention and some of their basic assumptions. It discusses three core components of neoliberal states that undergird the poverty industry: monetarism, corporate welfarism and workfarism. The chapter explains the roles played by debtfare states in the expansion and social reproduction of the poverty industry. It examines a materialist understanding of capitalist states that allows people to grasp how neoliberal forms of domination have sought to mediate the poverty industry by invoking the social power of money to discipline and normalise the continual exploitation and marginalisation of the surplus population.
