Neoliberalism represents a paradox for capitalism. Its relative success as a ruling-class strategy, particularly in weakening the trade union movement and reducing the share of profits going to labour, has helped to disguise that some aspects of this mode of regulation are proving unintentionally detrimental to the system. Serving the interests of the rich is not the same – or at least, not always the same – as serving the interests of capital and may in certain circumstances be in contradiction to it. Simply doing what the rich want is unlikely to produce beneficial results for the system as a whole, although it may help increase the wealth of individual capitalists. For not only are capitalists generally uninterested in the broader social interest, which we might expect, but they are also generally incapable of correctly assessing their own overall collective class interests, which might seem more surprising – although it is a long-standing phenomenon, observed by many of the great social theorists from late eighteenth century onwards.
Capitalist states – or more precisely, their managers – have traditionally acted to make such an assessment; but in the developed West at least, neoliberal regimes are increasingly displaying an uncritical adherence to the short-term wishes of particular business interests. The self-destructive nature of neoliberal capitalism has nothing necessarily to do with the removal of restrictions on markets. Leaving aside the fact that capitalism was always capable of producing social atomisation, collective violence and environmental destruction, even in periods when the state was far more directly involved in the mechanisms of production and exchange than it is now, there are two problems with this position. First, rhetoric apart, capitalists no more favour untrammelled competition today than they did when monopolies and cartels first appeared as aspects of the emerging system in the sixteenth century. Second, one would have to be extraordinarily naïve to believe that the neoliberal project has been about establishing ‘free’ markets in the first place.
Regardless of their class origins, state managers and capitalists are drawn together into a series of mutually supportive relationships. The former need the resources provided by individual national capitals, principally through taxation and loans, in order to attend to the needs of the national capital as a whole; the latter need specific policy initiatives to strengthen the competitive position of their sector of the national capital within the global economy. There have nevertheless always been tensions, above the fear on the part of capitalists that states – which they regard as Weberian autonomous entities with their own interests – will either restrict or abolish their right to private property. What gives these fears plausibility is precisely the fact that state managers have both to facilitate the process of capital accumulation and ameliorate its effects on the population and environment – an early example of this can be found in the Factory Acts and capitalist responses to them described by Marx in Capital I.
