Total Capitalism Market Politics, Market State

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Total Capitalism is about the way capitalism has been transformed from an economic system controlled - in some countries, and always with difficulty - by democracy, into a largely uncontrolled system that increasingly invades the whole of life. Just as total war is war fought without limitations, by whole societies, total capitalism invades and dominates every sphere of life, public and private. It takes over what used to be the ‘public sector’ - including health, social services, education and research - and increasingly controls and saturates intellectual and artistic life, and turns politics into a business. Instead of being an agent of the electorate, the state increasingly becomes a servant of capital. This theme is pursued first in relation to the countries of the South, in an essay on development theory, and then in two essays which use Britain as a case study in order to describe a process that has now become literally worldwide. An introduction brings out the links between the three essays, arguing for the need for a new kind of democratic politics capable of defeating and replacing capitalism before it devours the biosphere and plunges the world into irreversible violence.

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Colin Leys lives in London. He has taught politics at the universities of Oxford, Makerere (Uganda), Sussex, Nairobi (Kenya), Sheffield, and Queen’s University, Canada, where he is now an emeritus professor of political studies. He is also an honorary professor at the University of Edinburgh. He is co-editor, with Leo Panitch, of the well-known annual publication, the Socialist Register, and is currently active in the fight against the privatisation of Britain’s National Health Service. His research has been mainly on the political economy of development in Africa and Britain. His most recent books include The Rise and Fall of Development Theory (James Currey, 1996); The End of Parliamentary Socialism (with Leo Panitch, 1997, second edition 2001); Market-Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest (2001); and Histories of Namibia: Living Through the Liberation Struggle (edited with Susan Brown, 2005).