Why Political Economy?

Abstract

1. WHAT IS POLITICAL ECONOMY? This paper addresses two questions: (i) what is political economy (PE for short), and (ii) why political economy? An answer to the first question is necessary for a satisfactory answer to the second. Literally speaking, political economy is the social science that studies the interrelationships between the political and the economic. The relation between the two is not unidirectional, running only from the political to the economic. The reverse linkage is equally important, though decidedly much more complex. To understand this (reverse) linkage, we must understand at least the fundamentals of the relation between the society (class and non-class social formations) and the state, that is, delve into the domain of political sociology, especially the Marxist political sociology. Most of the time, the theory of this reverse linkage running from the economic (and other social forces) to the political via social classes (and other groupings and elites) is called the theory of political economy; at other times, only the role of the political in the economic is emphasised as the true kernel of the theory of political economy. But either of the two linkages, by itself, is one-sided. It is both together that constitute the theory of political economy. More generally, the relative emphasis as between the political and the economic can vary with the needs of the context of explanation. Thus, following the dominant interpretation and to highlight the role of the political visa -vis the economic, political economy (PE) may as well be defined as the study of the political factor in its interaction with the economic. By itself, it is an overly simple statement if we take the political factor as given, for the true guts of the PE approach he in analyzing several factors that lie behind the political factor and their complex interaction in its constitution, i.e. the constitution of the state (the centre of the political factor) and the political practices that go with it. Thus conceived, the state becomes only the mediating factor through which its ultimate determinants interact with the economic. This consideration shows the keen insight of Marx's statement that 'the state is the official resume of a society' (Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 156). Poulantzas (1973) has stated the same thing thus: 'the state is the material condensation of all the class contradictions of a bourgeois society'. The above is explained very briefly below. To begin with, we note that the whole society serves as the basis of the state. As the society, so the state (largely). So, the structure of society becomes very important for understanding the true nature of the state. Also, this structure has differential impact on the constitution of the state. This structure, in turn, is founded upon several factors such This content downloaded from 202.