The Legal-Economic Nexus

Abstract

[I]t is, however, decisive for a realistic understanding of the phenomen [ sic ] of the state to recognize the importance of that group of persons in whom it assumes social form, and of those factors which gain domination over it. This explains the state’s real power and the way in which it is used and developed. 1 One of the deepest conceptual structures of the modern mind and discourse, in the sense of Michel Foucault, is the distinction between the ‘economy’ and the ‘polity’. It is a distinction that roughly parallels that between ‘private’ and ‘public’. These distinctions have increasingly predominated thought and discourse since the Enlightenment, since the political theories of Hobbes, Locke, Pufendorf and Montesquieu, and since the economic theories of Smith and, yes, Marx. Political economic thought of Western civilisation is imbued with the concepts, ‘economy’ and ‘polity’, ‘private’ and ‘public’. Except for ‘religion’ and the ‘nuclear family’, it is difficult if not impossible to identify other such fundamental conceptions that underlie vast reaches of thought. The predominant perception is that the concepts constituting each pair are fundamentally separate and distinct, self-subsistent vis-à-vis each other and in conflict. In ordinary life, we share the fundamental belief that government and the economy are separate and mutually exclusive, a belief reinforced by language and ideology. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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