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The contribution examines the market liberal veracity of Hayek’s view that a dictatorship may be more liberal in its policies than an unlimited democratic assembly. Hayek’s warning about the potentially illiberal character of democratic government is key to the German ordoliberal thinking that emerged in the context of the crisis of the Weimar Republic. The ordoliberal thinkers were keenly aware of Schmitt’s political theology and argued with him that the state is the predominant power in the relationship between market and state, conceiving of this relationship as free economy and strong state. They maintained that the establishment of social order is the precondition of free economy; law does not apply to disorder and does not create order. The liberal state is the ‘concentrated force’ of that order. The contribution argues that ordoliberalism is best characterized as an authoritarian liberalism and assesses its contemporary veracity in relation to the European Union.

The ordoliberal conception that the strong but limited state is the fundamental precondition of a free society entails a negative judgement about the character of market competition. In opposition to the laissez-faire idea of market self-regulation, it rejects as dangerous to the constitution of liberty the idea that markets always know best. Competition does not unite society. Instead, it manifests freedom in the form of unsocial relationships between economic agents and social classes. Ordoliberalism posits the state as planner for competition and guardian of enterprise. In this context, the article explores the ordoliberal meaning of democracy and liberal interventionism. It concludes by arguing that in the ordoliberal view, economic crises manifest a failure of political interventionism. Keywords: Ordoliberalism, free economy, strong state, economic crisis, democracy, political authority ----- Bibliography: Bonefeld, Werner: Crisis, Free Economy and Strong State: On Ordoliberalism, ERIS, 3-2015, pp. 15-26. https://doi.org/10.3224/eris.v2i3.23445

In the context of the contemporary crisis of neoliberal political economy, the politics of austerity has reasserted the liberal utility of the state as the political authority of market freedom. This article argues that economy has no independent existence, and that instead, economy is a political practice. It examines the political economy of Adam Smith and the German ordoliberal tradition to decipher the character of the political in political economy and its transformation from Smith's liberal theory into neoliberal theology. Ordoliberalism emerged in the late 1920s at a time of a manifest crisis of political economy, and its argument was fundamental for the development of the neoliberal conception that free economy is matter of strong state authority. The conclusion argues with Marx that the state is the concentrated force of free economy.

We are in the middle of huge wave of uprisings, of massive, multitudinous refusals to accept the contemporary conditions. The article asks what it means to say NO in a society in which the poor and miserable are required to subsidise the financial system for the sake of sustaining the illusion of abstract wealth. This subsidy is necessary in existing society, to secure its wealth and prevent its implosion. Capitalist society cannot be fought in a direct and immediate manner - what really does it mean to struggle against money, resist the movement of coins, combat the movement of interest rates, fight price movements, and resist poverty in a mode of social reproduction that entails the pauper in its concept of wealth? The refusal to sanction things as they are is entirely negative of the existing conditions of social reproduction. It demands that their further progress comes to a standstill. Estamos en medio de una onda enorme de protestas, rechazos masivos y multitudinarios de las condiciones contemporáneas. El trabajo se pregunta qué significa decir NO en una sociedad que requiere de los pobres y miserables que subsidien el sistema financiero para mantener la ilusión de una riqueza abstracta. Este subsidio es necesario en la sociedad existente, para asegurar su riqueza y prevenir su implosión. La sociedad capitalista no puede combatirse de una formadirecta e inmediata - ¿qué significa realmente luchar contra el dinero, resistir el movimiento de monedas, combatir el movimiento de tipos de interés, luchar contra los movimientos de precios, y resistir a la pobreza en un modo de reproducción social que conlleva la pobreza en su concepto de riqueza? El rechazo a aceptar las cosas tal y como son es enteramente negativo con respecto a las condiciones existentes de reproducción social. Demanda que su progreso continuo se ponga en suspenso.

1, 8, วารสารสังคมศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยนเรศวร

In this chapter, I discuss Holloway’s theory of interstitial revolution. I start with an account of John Holloway’s life and intellectual trajectory over a forty-year period. Then, I present and examine several components of his theory of interstitial revolution, presented in his two books Change the World Without Taking Power. The meaning of revolution today (2002) and Crack Capitalism (2010). These are: Marxism as a theory of struggle; fetishization, form and totality; classification, class struggle and the revolutionary subject; doing, practical negativity and anti-power. I conclude that Holloway has turned the page to both a new Marxism and a new thinking about revolution. Both have their roots in a long-term process of theoretical development where Holloway found his own voice by collaborating with fellow critical theorists within the Conference of the Socialists Economists (UK), Open Marxism and the University of Puebla, Mexico. For critical theory as a critique of capital, Holloway’s work is ground breaking.