Selective Hegemony and Beyond-Populations with “No Productive Function”: A Framework for Enquiry

A significant shift in the form of the political economy since the 1980s is frequently described as a shift from the welfare state to neoliberalism, the latter either referring to new principles of rule or more broadly to include the nature of the economy. The paper argues that it is more fruitful to explore how these changes reflected a shift in the dominance of forms of capital–principally from production to finance. The dominant class blocs in the former period pursued hegemonic projects described here as expansive; in the latter period such projects became selective. Insofar as finance capital seeks security through diversification (benefitting from difference) and is not itself productive of value, so it relies on and re-producesrespectively, a) selected populations invested in distinctions, and b) an absolute residual population. The politics of the former is one of negotiation, of the latter counter-politics beyond negotiation. Exploration of this difference becomes a crucial task for social analysis.