State Capitalism(s) Redux?

Abstract

Abstract The current proliferation of social scientific signifiers old and new, such as ‘geoeconomic world order’, ‘political capitalism’, ‘post-neoliberal statism’, to name but a few, both testify to turbulent material transformations in the modalities of state intervention, and to the vitality of scholarly attempts at theorizing them. Arguably, none of these terms embodies this intellectual effervescence more than the ‘new state capitalism’, a rubric which has gained increasing traction across the social sciences as well as in business and political commentary to register the enhanced role of the state in capitalist economy and society. In setting up the scene for the remainder of the book, this introductory chapter presents a wealth of data points to illustrate the magnitude of this expansion. It then briefly reviews how the term state capitalism has recently been used in both academic and policymaking circles and notes some important conceptual and definitional problems. Despite the latter, which are explored at length in the book, an extremely lively and promising pluri-disciplinary research agenda has coalesced around the rubric state capitalism, demonstrating its potential for focusing scholarly efforts on the changing role of the state in present-day capitalism, and the drastic reconfiguration of its role as promoter, supervisor, and owner of capital. As such, the chapter contends that state capitalism deserves the attention of political economists, economic geographers, political scientists, international business and strategic management analysts, development studies scholars, and other social scientists. The chapter then offers an overview of the argument and chapter outline of the book.