Neoliberalism has been allegedly challenged in East Central Europe. The neoliberal rollback by both nationalist forces and their economic nationalism in Hungary and Poland is commonly used to confirm this regional generalisation. In this generalisation, economic nationalism promotes anti-neoliberal state strategies because it challenges the economic globalism which was formerly privileged by the neoliberal globalist forces in these strategies. This paper challenges such a generalisation. Focusing on Czechia, it counterargues against this rollback thesis by stating that neoliberalism has overcome the global economic crisis and the political crisis of its austerity management. The transnational class approach is then offered as an alternative to the rollback scholarship: contrary to the rollback thesis, Czechia illustrates how economic nationalism can also promote neoliberalism. Moreover, Czech neoliberalism remains resilient because a pragmatic coalition of two neoliberal—nationalist and globalist—forces retains an enduring influence on the country’s economic strategies. These findings cultivate the regional generalisation but contribute subsequently to the broader debate on the worldwide rollback of neoliberal globalisation due to the political rise of economic nationalism.
This review essay on the books New Directions in Comparative Capitalisms Research and The Future of Capitalism After the Financial Crisis uses the prism of ‘travelling theory’ to appraise whether both edited volumes meet their proclaimed aim to challenge the alleged reductionisms inherent in the Comparative Capitalisms (CC) research and reinvigorate the CC agenda's radical potential to analyse contemporary capitalism in critical and global perspectives. The verdict is affirmative as both volumes (i) introduce new as well as forgotten approaches to combined inter-spatial and inter-temporal comparisons into the CC literature, which then (ii) allows for the rediscovery of a multitude of roads to (knowledge about) really existing capitalisms. However, the essay urges some of the authors to avoid tracing capitalism only at its worst, which leads to an exaggerated intellectual pessimism and fatalism. Finally, putting both volumes into the context of post-socialist Central and Eastern European (CEE) capitalism, the review documents the continuing relevance of empirical discoveries in CEE for developing an expanded critical-global CC scholarship.
This article addresses Richard Westra, Ian Bruff and Matthias Ebenau's responses to my prior review essay on their edited volumes. In my initial survey, I concluded that both volumes reinvigorate the radical potential of contemporary Comparative Capitalisms (CC) literatures, but warned against the tendency in critical research to trace capitalism solely at its worst. I posited that this pessimism undermines the volumes’ pedagogical potential and threatens to bring us to intellectual cul-de-sacs. The authors respond in different ways to this critical engagement: Westra provides a guideline to trace such an intellectual pessimism in the (neo-)Marxist political economy and points to the so-called ‘Uno approach’ as an alternative direction that opens our intellectual horizons to social change in (post-)capitalism. In contrast, Bruff and Ebenau regard my review as less monochromatic than other discussions of their research project but nevertheless assertively retort to my critique. This reply seeks to engage the aforementioned scholars in a discussion, while reconsidering the alleged pessimism of critical CC research as informed optimism. Such informed optimism must be found in a critical research that (i) is based on a deeper reflexive theoretical discussion rather than a one-sided deconstruction of mainstream scholarship; and (ii) derives from a holistic approach broadened by a human-centred perspective, which also exposes us to actually existing alternatives within as well as to (post-)capitalism. Given that such approaches are currently only implicit, the many ongoing crises of contemporary capitalism represent a critical juncture not only for mainstream, but also for critical CC research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.