Neoliberalism and the American State

Abstract

This essay argues that neoliberalism was a return to classical, laissez-faire liberalism only on an ideological level, and that neoliberal practices were never so much about subordinating public and private actors to disembedded markets as about enhancing the American state’s infrastructural control over financial life and advancing the capacities of those actors who enjoy privileged access to its organizational mechanisms. The neoliberal era is analysed as a process of institutionalization whereby financial forms penetrated more deeply into everyday life, innovation assumed a certain systemic coherence, and authorities created more effective policy instruments. The essay concludes that the American state’s intervention in the current conjuncture (i.e. in the aftermath of the subprime crisis) should not primarily be seen as a breakdown of neoliberalism but rather as the state wielding political capacities constructed over the course of the neoliberal era.