Beyond the Mutual Constitution of States and Markets: On the Governance of Alienation

ABSTRACT

International Political Economy (IPE) textbooks tend to present the concept of a clear state-market dichotomy as the disciplinary mainstream. Yet we argue that a critical consensus has emerged around the mutual constitution of states and markets. Underpinning this is the Polanyian thesis that economic activities are always politically embedded. However, we claim that this notion of state-market mutual constitution is inadequate to grasp the peculiarities of the capitalist political economy. While capitalist market relations are underpinned by states, they take on an autonomous, dominating logic that limits states’ agency. Concretely, by reproducing international monetary relations, states accidentally contribute to the establishment of world labour productivity averages that force them to boost national competitiveness in order to keep pace with world market standards. In place of the notion of mutual constitution, then, we offer Marx’s concept of alienation as a theory of a form of social relations that have escaped the control of the institutions that produce them. The challenge of state governance – reflected in the canon of liberal thought – is to reconcile the impersonal imperatives of world market relations with the creation of a legitimate national political project, which we term the politics of governing alienation.

KEYWORDS:

• States and markets
• neoliberalism
• Keynesianism
• Polanyi
• Marx

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Werner Bonefeld, Maria Eugenia Giraudo, and Te-Anne Robles for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. We would also like to express our gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their rigorous and insightful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jack Copley

Jack Copley is Lecturer in Political Economy at the Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies, University of Bath. His research has been published in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, and Capital and Class.

Alexis Moraitis

Alexis Moraitis is an Associate Lecturer at the University of York. His research focuses on Critical Political Economy, the political economy of deindustrialisation, and French politics. In September 2020, he will be joining the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University.