Neoliberalism and Counter-Hegemony in the Global South: Reimagining the State

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between processes of primitive accumulation in this present era of neo-liberal globalisation and the role of the state in relation to counter-hegemonic movements in the global South. I will argue that current trends within the left that neglect the role of the state in promoting more socially just development or acting as a site for the contestation of neo-liberal hegemony fail to provide a realistic or viable emancipatory project for the South. The paper will argue that forms of contemporary dispossession can only be resisted and reversed in favour of a socially just and democratic form of development if the state is brought back into the centre of theoretical and political debate. If the state is to become a vehicle for radical change, the state must be re-imagined as a means through which subaltern classes and peripheral economies can challenge neo-liberalism. This paper argues that the theoretical resources for such a re-imagination are to be found within Marxist state theory.