The neoliberal market state may differ fundamentally from the earlier punitive conjuncture

Evidence

One question that this poses to contemporary readers is, what are the significant differences between the two conjunctures? Does the basic shape of social control identified in our analysis persist? Are we still in some kind of “exceptional state”? Or is the neoliberal/“market state” which followed fundamentally different in its modalities? And, if so, what are we to make of the continuing oscillation between free market and “authoritarian populist” impulses? The book, published in 1978, could not have addressed this question. But if its republication provokes the posing of new questions, not just the rehearsal of old ones, the decision to have a second edition will have been vindicated. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1069 (#responds-to, via linked claim)

The attention—of a more detailed and analytic kind—to the nature of modes of production helps to ground these other aspects of the social formation more adequately at the level of the economic structures (the materialist premise). However, we cannot thereby deduce a priori the relations and mechanisms of the political and ideological structures (where such features as racism make a decisive reappearance) exclusively from the level of the economic. The economic level is the necessary but not sufficient condition for explaining the operations at other levels of the society (the premise of non-reductionism). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 621 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The essay works by means of what Weber calls an “elective affinity” between the structure of Puritan ideas (above all, of the Calvinist variant) and the structure of the rationalization of capital accumulation necessary to the development of capitalism. That is, it opposes any notion that economic change directly provides the content of capitalist ideas. Instead, it suggests that what is important is the “homology” between what capitalism needed in order to become a sanctioned system of regulated economic activity, and the impulse to planned and routinized “activity” in Puritanism. It adds to this a middle, mediating term: the Puritan/capitalist “character structure.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 338 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Inspiration and Speculation

Related

• Whether today’s market state persists the exceptional-state modality remains unresolved (similarity 0.85)
• Economic change does not directly supply the content of capitalist ideas (similarity 0.84)
• Neoliberalism alters what culture gets made and how it is distributed (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Whether today’s market state persists the exceptional-state modality remains unresolved #responds-to (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 1069
• Economic change does not directly supply the content of capitalist ideas #corroborates (0.50) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 338
• Economic structures are necessary but not sufficient to explain political and ideological features #corroborates (0.50) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 621