Political Capitalism or pathways out of Neoliberal Systemic Chaos

• In Event: US Militarism and Militarization in World Historical Perspective

Abstract

The current world-hegemonic crisis of the US led Brenner and Riley (2025)to argue that we are witnessing the emergence of a new US regime of accumulation associated with outright plunder by a predatory State using “raw political power, rather than productive investment” as its vehicle. They call this new regime of accumulation “political capitalism". I will argue that the description of 'political capitalism' offered by the authors has far more in common with the effects of historical financial expansions (Braudel), effects which resemble what Harvey (2003), following Arrighi (1994), calls ‘accumulation by dispossession'. All historical financial expansions are closely associated with forms of plunder, financial frauds and scams. Brenner and Riley appear to think these effects are unique to the US.

Brenner and Riley's characterization of political capitalism also differs from the original characterization of political capitalism by Max Weber. Weber contrasts the capitalism of the late Middle Ages directed towards market opportunities, with the capitalism of Antiquity when the freedom of the cities was ‘swept away by a bureaucratically organized world empire within which there was no longer a place for political capitalism’. The capitalist city-states of the 16th century and beyond, in contrast with the cities of Antiquity, “came under the power of competing national states in a condition of perpetual struggle for power in peace or war. This competitive struggle created the largest opportunities for modern western capitalism” (Weber 1927).

If we were to re-deploy Weber's understanding of political capitalism, then we see interstate competition for mobile capital is a critical component of every phase of financial expansion during which blocs of governmental and business organizations form to lead the world system out of systemic chaos. My paper uses this understanding of political capitalism to reexamine some post-US hegemony scenarios. Can and will Western Europe and the US recombine to reconstitute a Western alliance directed towards a new imperialism despite the contemporary tensions and fractures in the 'West'? Are there stronger possibilities for an East Asia-led developmental path as an exit from the worst effects of the deepening systemic chaos?

Author

• Ganesh Trichur, CUNY-Staten Island