The American System and the Critique of Political Economy

• In Event: Justice, Democracy, and Policy

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss the reuptake of nineteenth-century American protectionist ideology by policy thinkers attempting to navigate American hegemonic decline. I focus on invocations of “the American System” as inspiration for a post-neoliberal political framework. My intention is to read Henry Carey, once a highly influential protectionist thinker with a worldwide reception who is today mostly forgotten, as a developmentalist thinker who placed the state at the center of his social theory. Carey turned to the state to preserve the “natural” harmony of the developing capitalist social relations of North America in light of the disruptive influence of British market competition. I consider Carey’s defensive, anti-imperialist protectionism in light of recent scholarship that seeks to counter a common historical and political schema that aligns protectionism with sovereignty and anti-imperialism, and free-trade with imperialism. I provide an interpretation of Marx’s contemporaneous critique of Carey’s political economy to illuminate (1) the significance of Carey’s social theory as an expression of North American social relations, and (2) Marx’s critique of state interventionism, and protectionism in particular.

Author

• Tyler Crown, CUNY Graduate Center; Queens College; Baruch College