Critical Theory, Ordoliberalism and the Capitalist State

Resum

In this contribution, the author uses the concept of the state as the political form of capitalist reproduction to shed light on the post-liberal state theories of two intellectual currents that were heavily marked by the experience of Weimar, namely the Freiburg school of ordoliberals and the Institute for Social Research or Institut fur Sozialforschung (IfS). The two intellectual currents, though politically opposed, both argued that the emergence of authoritarian states in the twentieth century reflected a historical transition to a post-liberal economy that favoured state planning to the spontaneity of the free economy. In contrast, the present article argues that the true function of the authoritarian measures of the capitalist state today is not to threaten the logic of the free economy but to facilitate and ensure its continued reproduction. The crises of 2008 and the Covid-19 pandemic have resulted in an increase of state intervention and favoured the rise of authoritarian and demagogic forces in politics. However, rather than heralding a historical crisis of neoliberalism, it is argued that such phenomena ought to be understood as an alternative political means of ensuring the survival, extension, and strengthening of ‘liberal’ capitalist relations during unstable times.