Browning and Kilmister review the nature and possibility of critical political economy in the light of recent post-modern and cultural theory. They provide an historical understanding of critical political economy, focusing on the development of the critical perspectives on capitalism of Hegel and Marx. They then review post-Marxist, post-structuralist, ecological and feminist standpoints that challenge notions of critical political economy sustained in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition. This study of critical and post-critical political economy concludes by arguing for the integration or these (...) standpoints within a revitalized critical perspective. (shrink)

Hegel develops a critical political economy, which is critical because he takes no aspect of the world to be discrete or impervious to revisionary re-reading in the light of its relationship with other spheres. Hence, for Hegel, the modern political economy is not accepted at face value; it is to be criticised in the light of a deeper philosophical reading of social and political developments. Hegel’s philosophy is critical and holistic. Within its perspective, the economy is not detachable from a (...) wider set of social relationships. Hegel accepts that a modern political economy operates for the most part via self-interested utility-maximising behaviour, but he qualifies this acceptance by emphasising the need for wider social and political values and commitments to limit the autonomy of the market and the impact of economic individualism. Hegel highlights the wider web of social relationships within which the economic is situated. In achieving the prime objective of an overall rational organisation of the social world, the economic goals of producing and distributing goods and services are subordinated to the goals of securing an overall harmony between social practices and of establishing ethical relationships between members of a community. Again, for Hegel, political economy does not transcend time, for the modern market economy is part and parcel of the distinctively modern world. (shrink)

Radical analyses of money have been greatly stimulated in recent years by two interrelated developments. First, there have been a number of innovative theoretical analyses, backed up by historical detail, that have challenged the conventional view of money embedded in orthodox economics. Prominent here have been the work of sociologist Geoffrey Ingham and anthropologist David Graeber, along with a number of contributions that come under the broad heading of Post-Keynesian monetary theory. This strand of thought emphasizes the role of money (...) as a unit of account, rather than as a medium of exchange, and stresses its origin in relationships of credit and debt, its connection to social power, and its validation by the... (shrink)