Infinite Capital Accumulation Through the Endless Harvesting of Limitless Dead Souls. Criminogenic Asymmetries, Structural Inequalities, Mimesis, and Parallel Oligarchies

This article is neither an empirical nor an analytical study; rather, it is a concise statement of a research paradigm that reflects the personal (and perhaps idiosyncratic) concerns of its author, which he wishes to continue and elaborate upon in much further detail at some point in the near future (if any). The general concern is with devising a functional criminological taxonomy of the multitudinous mutabilities migrating between neo-liberal political economy and organised and semi-organised criminality, here defined as criminogenic asymmetries. My central premise is this: although frequently associated in the scholarly literature with corruption, underdevelopment, anomie, and the breakdown of the brokerage of trust, neo-liberalism itself is the sufficient explanation for criminogenic asymmetries. As should be expected, the “moral panic” over the “death of democracy”, already part of our post-1989 history but currently symbolised by the “power crime” presidency of Donald J. Trump, w ill be utilised as the primary empirical example of these trends, both concurrent and convergent.

The Political Economy of Circular Economies: Lessons from Future Repair Scenario Deliberations in Sweden

The dominant technocratic and neoliberal imaginary of a circular economy dependent on corporate leadership, market mechanisms, and changed consumer behaviour is here explored using the findings of deliberative stakeholder workshops examining diverse scenarios for the promotion of repair as part of a circular economy. Stakeholder responses to four scenarios—digital circularity, planned circularity, circular modernism, and bottom-up sufficiency—are described with reference to the ideologies, interests, and institutions involved. We distinguish two levels of discourse in the stakeholder discussions. The main narrative in which individualist and consumerist ideologies dominate, even within ideals of sustainability, reflects a conjunction of corporate, labour, and public interests in the market liberal social democratic state, with proposed interventions focused on the institutions of markets and education. A subaltern narrative present in the margins of the discussions challenges the consumerist and productivist presumptions of the market liberal political economy and hints at more transformative change. These conflicting responses not only cast light on the ways in which the political economy of contemporary Sweden (within the European Union) constrains and conditions current expectations and imaginaries of circularity, but also suggest ways in which the future political economy of circular economies might be contested and evolve.

Conceptualizing contemporary markets: Introduction to the special issue

Contemporary markets are evolving in numerous ways that affect their structure, dynamics and consequences. Yet while the concept of the market is central to comparative, international and global political economy, there exists no concerted body of literature dedicated to debating and articulating different conceptions of the market and that critically self-reflects on how these empirical transformations are intersecting with the central theoretical concerns of political economy: power, contestation and change. This special issue enriches the debate by looking to decentre the concept of the market from its traditional home in mainstream neoclassical/liberal political economy. Western-centric conceptualizations of the market based on a minimal atomistic classical definition have dominated international economic discourses but it is becoming increasingly clear that different understandings of markets and the functions they serve are crystalizing between market stakeholders at the global level. This special issue addresses these concerns via the historicization of the concept of the market, the development and refinement of the concept of the market, as well as the decentring of the concept of the market via empirical studies of global market change informed by an awareness of the political, economic, social and cultural embeddedness of markets. In so doing, the special issue leverages the insights of global political economy and cognate disciplines to achieve richer insights into the analytical potential of the concept of the market.

22. Global Political Economy

This chapter provides an overview of the field of Global Political Economy (GPE), also known as International Political Economy (IPE). It begins with a discussion of how GPE/IPE has developed as a major focus of study within the broader field of global politics over the last four decades. It then considers the rise of mercantilism as a theory of GPE, along with its relationship to nationalism and colonialism. It also examines the emergence of liberal political economy, Marxism and critical IPE, and the international economic order after World War II. In particular, it looks at the Bretton Woods system, which emerged after the war as a compromise between liberalism and nationalism. The chapter concludes with an analysis of international political, economic, and social problems associated with the North–South gap, globalization and regionalization in the post-Cold War period, and financial crises that rocked the global economic system.

Progress and Poverty

This chapter further illustrates the split between American and British liberal political economy by analyzing the antebellum treatment of Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo. Important distinctions are shown between American liberals on population, and theories of rent and wages. American exceptionalism was the primary intellectual impetus behind liberal America’s apostasy from British classicism. This chapter showcases the various forms of laissez-faire ideology that circulated in the domestic discourse, with special attention paid to, among others, J. D. B. De Bow, George Tucker, Henry Vethake, Jacob Cardozo, and Thomas Dew. American exceptionalism, combined with the influence of regional social, political, economic and cultural attitudes, shaped Americans’ understanding of British liberalism.

Laissez-Faire in the American Tradition

This chapter discusses liberal economic thought in the Southern and Northeastern discourses. Regional historical contexts account for the internal and trans-Atlantic divisions within antebellum liberal political economy. Southern free traders like John Calhoun and Thomas Cooper tied their brand of laissez-faire to a politically and economically inspired states’ rights and agrarian defense of slavery. In theoretically significant ways, Southerners divorced their version of free trade from Northeastern and British liberalism. Divisions widened as slavery was raised to the fore of domestic politics, and made permanent when British laissez-faire grew attached to industrialization. Northeastern free traders like Francis Wayland and John McVickar pursued a style of laissez-faire that comported with the Smithian tradition by focusing on the moral and theological benefits of free trade universalism. Northeastern liberals largely ignored the economic benefits of free markets. And the mid-century secular turn in economics, especially in British thought, completed the breach between American and European expressions of intellectual capitalism.

POLITY AND ECONOMY IN PLATO’S REPUBLIC

Although the architectonic of Plato’s best city is dazzling, some critics find its detailed prescriptions inimical to human freedom and well-being. Most notably, Karl Popper in The Open Society and its Enemies sees it as a proto-totalitarian recipe, choking all initiative and variety out of the citizenry. This essay does not directly respond to Popper’s critique but instead spotlights a strand in the dialogue that positions Plato as an advocate of regulatory relaxation and economic liberty to an extent otherwise unknown in the ancient world and by no means unopposed in ours. His contribution to liberal political economy thereby merits greater attention and respect.