Capital, conflict and convergence: a political understanding of neoliberalism and its relationship to capitalist transformation

ABSTRACT

In this article we argue against influential analyses of neoliberalism that prioritize variegation and the role of ideas as key theoretical foci relevant to understanding neoliberalism’s diffusion into myriad national and political settings. Rather, we contend that crucial to understanding neoliberalism is the role of politically-produced convergence around market rationality that reflects two core processes: the reorganization of production and the ascendency of financialization. We present a theorization and analysis of neoliberalism’s political production and diffusion over time, explaining its contested evolution and impact across diverse settings (both ‘North’ and ‘South’) and emphasizing its ever-intensifying symbiotic relationship with the consolidating world market in which the former has increasingly come to serve as the latter’s operating system (OS). Further, we posit that neoliberalism’s form, function and impact demand analytically prioritizing the leverage of constellations of ideological and material interests within the contradictory context of consolidating relations of production and financialization. Our analysis thus challenges many previous expositions of neoliberalism for their failure to locate neoliberalism’s manifestation as arising out of social conflict within particular junctures that privilege certain social forces and ideas over others. We also distinguish our position by highlighting how manifestations of neoliberalism in various settings have combined to yield a greater world market in which variegation has gradually given way to ever-intensifying disciplinary pressures towards market-policy conformity (mono-policy). While current populist movements may well turn out to be important counter movements to neoliberal hegemony, especially if they can internationalize, the disciplining effect of the world market renders many nationally-oriented policy alternatives costly and politically fraught.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• development
• capitalism
• social conflict
• marketization
• financialization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The engagement of this school with historical materialist positions echoes other narrow and earlier critiques of dependency theory and misses considerable theoretical and empirical contributions, especially those relating to neoliberalism’s impact on the global South.

2 In this manner it echoes earlier approaches within institutional theory such as those associated with demarcating and explaining ‘varieties of capitalism’ and certain ‘statist’ approaches, such as those associated with analyzing East Asia’s ‘developmental states’ (see, for example, Hall & Soskice, 2001; Weiss, 2012).

3 In this sense, our position here is complementary to important, though oft-neglected, positions from within critical political economy and development studies, although we still see it as somewhat unique to this work, having developed our perspective through a predominant focus upon developmental transformation in both developing and developed Asia. While there are many worthy references, we declare sympathy for Bruff’s (cf 2011, 2014) excellent critical work on authoritarian neoliberalism and his critique of the varieties of capitalism position, Cammack’s ongoing efforts to map out the global extension of neoliberalism over time via multilateral efforts (cf Cammack, 2004, 2011, 2017, this special issue), Connell and Dados’ (cf 2014) important correctives regarding the global nature of neoliberal diffusion and Green and Lavery’s excellent engagement with Peck and ‘his collaborators’ (Green & Lavery, 2018, p. 79).

4 Mark Blyth and Matthias Matthijs (Blyth & Matthijs, 2017, p. 210) and Peck and Tickell (2002, p. 33) have also used the metaphor of software in relation to ‘macroeconomic regimes’ (MRs), albeit in a different, though not entirely incompatible, manner to that deployed here.

5 For example, the US government was able to inject cash in to relatively healthy banks such as JP Morgan and Wells Fargo and recover it with a premium. European governments, in contrast, invested in weak banks, with Spain’s Audit Court recognizing that more than 80% of funds used for the bailouts would be unrecoverable (The Washington Post, 201 4; Publico, 201 7). To make matters worse, in Spain the inability to pay a mortgage and the subsequent foreclosure and repossession of a home does not settle the former owner’s debt, who still has to pay off the mortgage after being evicted.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Toby Carroll

Toby Carroll is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies at City University of Hong Kong. He works on the political economy of development in Asia and the global diffusion of neoliberalism and market social relations. He has published in journals such as Journal of Contemporary Asia, Globalizations, Development and Change, and Antipode, and is author or editor of numerous books, including Delusions of Development, The Politics of Marketising Asia (with Darryl Jarvis) and Asia after the Developmental State (with Darryl Jarvis). He co-edits the Palgrave book series, Studies in the Political Economy of Public Policy and is a co-editor of Journal of Contemporary Asia.

Darryl S.L. Jarvis is Professor and Head, Department of Asian and Policy Studies, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the Education University of Hong Kong. His recent publications include Institutional Entrepreneurship and Policy Change: Theoretical and Empirical Explorations (Palgrave Macmillan, with Caner Bakir); Asia After the Developmental State: Disembedding Autonomy (Cambridge University Press, with Toby Carroll); Markets and Development: Civil Society, Citizens and the Politics of Neoliberalism (Routledge, with Toby Carroll); Financialisation and Development in Asia (Routledge, with Toby Carroll); and The Politics of Marketizing Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, with Toby Carroll).

Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente

Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente is a lecturer at Leiden University. His research interests include ‘South-South’ development cooperation, China’s international relations (with a specific interest on China’s engagement in Latin America and the Caribbean), the role of natural resources in processes of development, and the transformation of politics and international relations under late capitalism. His work has been published in journals such as Review of International Political Economy, Political Geography, Globalizations, The China Quarterly and Latin American Politics and Society.