Ten theses on the new state capitalism and its futures

Abstract

Global capitalism is currently experiencing a turbulent and polymorphous (geo)political reordering, encompassing multiple transformations in the landscapes of state intervention, and a drastic reconfiguration of the state's role as promoter, supervisor and owner of capital across the world economy. Can the concept of state capitalism aid us in grasping these transformations conceptually? My answer is yes, with the proviso that state capitalism is neither conceptualised as a national (or regional) variety of capitalism, nor as a new regime of accumulation, but as a flexible means of problematising this historic arc in the trajectories of state intervention. Based on this approach, I offer in this essay ten theses on the new state capitalism, its roots in the dynamics of capital accumulation, its relations to broader material conflicts and its potential futures.