Production, Class, and Power in the Neoliberal Transition

Abstract

The transition from Keynesianism to neoliberalism1 is a significant concern in neo-Gramscian scholarship at two closely related levels. First, this historical process is associated with the profound transformation of key features of the contemporary political economy. For example, the transition is associated with the transnationalization of production, the rise of finance, the end of the cold war, the renewal of U.S. imperialism, and other political economy shifts that must be accounted for by any aspiring school of thought in the field of international relations. The importance and intellectual complexity of these historical processes help to explain why the transition to neoliberalism is central to neo-Gramscian literature.2 Relatedly, analyses of this transition offer important ground for examining the explanatory adequacy of much neo-Gramscian literature through the methodology and key assumptions within such accounts, for example, concerning the internal relationship and relative importance of classes, states, and nations in social theory; the nature and role of empire and imperialism in contemporary political economy; the relationship between changes in the labor process and broader sociohistorical transformations, and so on.