Bifurcating politics and economics undermines left critique of neoliberalism

Evidence

Kotsko (2018) shows powerfully how the aim of “saving the political,” and keeping it open against the closing ranks of neoliberal rationality, has been undermined by the very deployment of this binary. His analysis leads us to question the practice of bifurcating the political and the economic (understood as “anti-political”), which constitutes the kernel of Polanyian critiques of neoliberalism. I examine this issue closely in chapter 5, but for now, I want to insist on the importance of reinstating the concept of imagination (as opposed to rationality) within political economy itself. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 431

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s assessment of the counter-speculations chapter—whether reinstating imagination in political economy is viable or concedes territory. — connects to: Left parties struggled to comprehend the swift neoliberal resurgence after 2008 — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 9; Left economists’ voluntary adherence to orthodoxy explains the left’s failure post-2008. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 58; Treating culture and economics as separate spheres misreads how neoliberalism operates — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 298 (+5 more)
• QUESTION: The reader may want to track how this line develops in chapter 5 when evaluating whether the left-reclaim of speculation works.