Peter Burnham

New Labour and the Politics of Depoliticisation

A number of commentators in the 1980s sought to explain the character of the Thatcher administration. By contrast, relatively little work has been produced that seeks to analyse the principles and governing strategies of the Blair government. Focusing primarily on economic management, this article offers a characterisation of statecraft under Blair in terms of the politics of depoliticisation. In summary, it argues that the Blair government has fused aspects of traditional economic management with new initiatives to create a powerful tool of governing organised on the basis of the principle of depoliticisation. Depoliticisation as a governing strategy is the process of placing at one remove the political character of decision-making. State managers retain arms-length control over crucial economic and social processes whilst simultaneously benefiting from the distancing effects of depoliticisation. As a form of politics it seeks to change market expectations regarding the effectiveness and credibility of policy-making in addition to shielding the government from the consequences of unpopular policies.

Neo-Gramscian Hegemony and the International Order

This paper assesses the neo-Gramscian analysis of the relation between states, arguing that it replicates the errors of Weberian pluralism. A capital relation approach is called for if we are to avoid over emphasising ideology in debates about capitalist restructuring.

The political economy of postwar reconstruction

The international state system and theories of postwar reconstruction towards the Washington negotiations the Washington loan agreement the Marshall offensive the revision in state strategy the impact of rearmament

Capital, Crisis and the International State System

The closing months of 1993 saw the conclusion of two agreements heralded by liberals as setting the world economy on a new and sound footing. The United States’ ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in November was capped in December 1993 when the Director-General of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) brought down the gavel on the Uruguay Round, which had been formally launched in September 1986. Amid the popping of champagne corks the Financial Timesdeclared that the agreements would provide, ‘powerful underpinning for the world economy, fresh impetus to competition, and fresh hope for those developing and former communist countries that have been opening up to international commerce’.1 By the opening months of 1994 this liberal triumphalism looked somewhat premature in the face of the Zapatista revolt in Chiapas (see Chapter 7; and Cleaver, 1994) and tension in Europe occasioned by persistent economic stagnation and disputes over the enlargement of the European Union.

Marx, international political economy and globalisation

It is perhaps understandable that until the fall of the Soviet Union, the study of Marxism within the discipline of international relations was restricted largely to discussion of the state ideology Marxism-Leninism. The events of 1989, and the spectacular rise of the sub-discipline of international political economy in the context of globalisation, have, somewhat paradoxically, led to a resurgence of interest in critical, open forms of Marxism. Attempts to break away from the dogmatism of Marxism-Leninism whilst avoiding the complementary error of humanistic subjectivism have, of course, a long tradition in marxist thought. Consistent with the ‘open’, critical tradition is the work produced by, amongst others, Luxemburg, Korsch, Bloch, Rubin, Pashukanis, Rosdolsky, the Italian tradition of ‘autonomist’ Marxism and the work of contributors to debates on value and the state held in the early years of the Conference of Socialist Economists. This paper briefly outlines the contribution the ‘CSE tradition’ offers to the study of international relations and the fashionable analysis of globalisation.

Britain and the Politics of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism 1990-1992

This article focuses on Britains membership of the ERM 1990–1992. The authors argue that membership was pursued by the British government as a means of insulating the administration from the consequences of recession. They show that membership was motivated by class politics and thus argue against economistic perspectives on European integration.

Depoliticising Monetary Policy: The Minimum Lending Rate Experiment in Britain in the 1970s

This article assesses the thinking behind what is perhaps the single most important attempt to depoliticise monetary policy making in postwar Britain prior to the Bank of England Act 1998 – the introduction of the minimum lending rate (MLR) in October 1972. Drawing on recently released primary sources it argues that the MLR was devised to ‘defuse’ the political implications of Bank Rate policy and thereby shield the government from the consequences of frequent upward shifts in interest rates. MLR is considered as an experiment in ‘governing through the market’ and it is argued this has implications for how postwar monetary policy is viewed and how state/market relations are analysed, empirically and theoretically, within IPE.

Class, Capital and Crisis: A Return to Fundamentals

The financial crisis that currently threatens the stability of global capitalism is the latest in a long line of similar episodes stretching back some 200 years. While many orthodox economists explain the crisis in terms of the failure of the proper operation of the market mechanism, radical accounts see crisis as an aspect of the constitution of capital and of the process of the accumulation of capital itself. This article explores the extent to which Marxs understanding of accumulation and crisis can provide the basis for a general theory of capitalist crisis. It concludes that the growing and chronic separation between financial (fictitious) accumulation and productive accumulation is the key to understanding the latest crisis of capital expressed as a global credit crunch. Furthermore, Marx opens the door to the development of an overtly ‘political’ theory of crisis stressing the ‘capitalist use of crisis’ as a means for the violent reassertion of the fundamental class relation.

Towards a Political Theory of Crisis: Policy and Resistance across Europe

This article analyses the Great Recession in terms of a movement from a discourse of financial crisis to a crisis of sovereign debt to the current phase of the politics of austerity and cuts. It suggests that the unifying factor in the response of policy-makers to the crisis is the attempt to recompose class relations and tighten market-based constraints over labour power and money. The strategy represents a clear illustration of the “political use of crisis” to reaffirm the stark reality of the “cash nexus.” Selective state intervention to contain and prevent the “contagion” of the crisis has increasingly politicized the management of the economy and fueled debate about the nature of money, the character of the state, and the morality of capitalist social relations. This debate is being conducted by a growing number of resistance movements in Europe and threatens to turn an economic crisis into a political crisis of the state.

The Organisational View of the State

The state is arguably the most fundamental concept in politics and international relations. However, much confusion surrounds the employment of the term. This article emphasizes the importance of adopting an organisational definition of the state. The strength of this approach is that it draws attention to the changing nature of state forms, thereby enabling distinctions to be made between national form of the state and the nation-state, and between the state itself and government. The organisational approach opens up a rich field for the comparative study of institutional forms which politically-organised subjection has taken throughout history.