Vingtième Siècle 35 (1992-3)

The New Political Economy has slowly discovered that politics are alive in the economy, or in fact, above it. But the "political" is nothing here but a supplementary coating over the structure of the markets, themselves reputed as perfectly self-regulating—and inconveniently perturbed by the parasite that is political life.

This book, by contrast, affirms that politics are imminent to the social relations of capitalism. They act well on a comprehensive political concept, comprised here as an omnipresence of conflict and power relations, having for an election center the framework of capitalism that forms their institutional composition.

It's a journey of triple diversity that these authors propose. Institutional diversity, as conflict and power are just as well observed in relation to salary, money, business, as they are in the political economy. Geographic diversity across American, Iranian, Argentine and Russian cases. Disciplinary diversity, calling together beyond the economy, sociology, law, political science and history.

Fréderic Lordon is Director of research at the CNRS and Researcher at the Office of Economic Theory and Application (Strasbourg).

Contributors to this work: Neil Fligstein, Sabine Montagne, Ramine Motamed-Nejad, André Orléan, Pepita Ould-Ahmed, Alexandre Roig, Taek-Jin Shin.