What are the state’s limits in light of looming environmental and economic disasters? To address this question, this book rethinks the relationship between liberalism, capitalism and the state to develop a critical theory of capitalist governance that sheds light on its growing fragility. By critically reconstructing key liberal traditions – including French liberalism, social liberalism and neoliberalism – it reveals a recurrent theme within liberal thought: the anxious endeavour to maintain a boundary between the state and civil society. This liberal anxiety mirrors in theoretical form the capitalist state’s daily, practical struggle to uphold a separation between politics and economics. The book marshals liberalism’s insights and oversights to offer a new account of the nature and limits of capitalist governance, an exercise that brings to light the growing inadequacy of state power in the face of capitalism's impersonal mode of domination.
