then, it is not so much a case of examining the whether but rather the how of state intervention. For this I can draw from Polanyi, who, analogously to his concept of the three “fictitious commodities”—labor power, land, and money (Polanyi 2001), identified three problems of coordination that could not be solved by markets alone, but first required the assistance of state structures. First, in the course of creating a system of industrial relations, social security, educational institutions, and migration control policies, the supply of and demand for labor as well as the conflict between capital and labor are regulated. Second, private control of capital and land remains subject to the state guaranteed freedom of contract, property laws, rights of use, and other regulations. Third, even money, or at least the quantity of money, is regulated to a certain degree by central banks and other regulatory authorities. Polanyi’s approach can be embellished with further coordination problems: for example, knowledge, a further fictitious commodity is coordinated to a large extent by nonmarket institutions such as universities or research institutes. Finally, to ensure continued market competition, coordination efforts such as antitrust and cartel laws are implemented (Block 2005).
(2) To be able to determine the importance of distinct political systems for the formation of different types of capitalism, different mechanisms and strategies of state intervention and coordination must be taken into account. These have increased since the late nineteenth century and include, for instance, market-creating, market-regulating, and market-restricting measures. More recent studies distinguish between market-mediated ex post coordination, hierarchically prescribed ex ante coordination, heterarchic coordination regulated by processes of self-organization mediated by networks, negotiation, and deliberation, as well as cooperation built on solidarity. State rulers do not usually limit themselves to the command hierarchy but, rather, combine forms of governance in a specific way (see Jessop 2007, 207–24, Brand 2006; V. Schmidt 2009). At the same time, we must take different territorial and administrative levels into account. To examine the local state and territorial levels below the central government, I draw on relevant literature from social-science-based geography (see N. Brenner 2004; N. Brenner and Heeg 1999; Harvey 1989).
For their economic policies, modern states have recourse to direct and indirect methods of influencing the national economy. Thus, in line with Keynesian demand policy, the state can take action to achieve economic effects by implementing (anticyclical) fiscal and monetary policy measures (Aoki, Murdock, and Okuno-Fujiwara 2005). Here, the state does not intervene in companies’ investment decisions and does not plan in the strict sense, but, rather, plays a regulatory role. Indicative planning, on the other hand, goes further. The state negotiates with investors over basic principles of growth and recommends desirable behavior for the private enterprises, without, however, significantly interfering in ownership structures. By contrast, imperative planning is legally binding; the state prescribes certain modes of mandatory behavior and, when necessary, intervenes in investment decisions.
Historically, the structural interdependencies between economy and state emerge in different ways, thus constituting different forms of capitalism. From the 1930s, political authorities played a particularly important role in the various versions of state dirigism; the Keynesian intervention state in the West, the developmental state in the East and also the South. In this context, the concept of state-controlled capitalism or state capitalism was used (for early works, see Castoriadis 1988; Harris 1978; Pollock 1975; Szelényi 1982). In the more recent comparative capitalism research, Vivien Schmidt attempts to use the concept of state capitalism to distinguish countries such as France from coordinated market economies such as Germany (V. Schmidt 2000). For the analysis of East European and Central Asian transition economies, among others, the category of “political capitalism” in Weber’s sense (Eyal, Szelényi, and Townsley 2000) or state capitalism as one of its variants is used (see also Schneider 2008; D. Lane and Myant 2007). Large emerging economies are, as already mentioned, also described as state-controlled or state-permeated forms of capitalism (Nölke et al. 2015).
Because, in terms of economic policy measures, a comparison of China with other East Asian countries suggests itself, I will critically draw on concepts of the developmental state. For the success of a developmental state, a particularly important question is whether the nation-state produces sufficient social coherence to create a close partnership between the local political and the corporate elites (see Gerschenkron 1966). For this it needs first to be equipped with an effective bureaucracy that obeys the rules, and within the state apparatus there must be evidence of bureaucratic rationality, that is, an appropriate distribution of power between ministries and/or between ministerial planning staffs (Evans 1995). Second, sufficient capacity to discipline the private corporate sectors is necessary. As Chibber explains, using India as an example, these corporate sectors do not automatically assume the role of a “national” bourgeoisie prioritizing the development of the nation over commercial considerations (Chibber 2003).
(3) Further, the state itself can act as an entrepreneur. With respect to the economic policies of modern states, state intervention along with state property need not represent a negation of capitalist mechanisms but can, in fact, function as one of many forms of particularistic control over economic and political power—in the form of state capital, for instance. In this way state entities can be subject to the accumulation and competition imperative (N. Lin 2011, 70).
In China, local state actors and local public-private alliances almost act as breeding grounds for the development of productive forces. Thus the “private” owner should not be identified as the only capitalist actor. It is not only individuals or a joint-stock company comprising one or more persons, but rather also state functionaries or authorities, particularly at the local level, who can operate as exclusive controlling owners. Alongside the classic private property, there are other forms of exclusive ownership, including state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The main characteristic of property in capitalism is the separation of those who operate the means of production in exchange for a wage from the control of this means of production. Referring exclusively to the (politically defined) legal position of ownership can distract from this fact (Tamás 2007). Some authors link capitalism and private property too closely, resulting in them positioning state sectors in modern national economies outside the capitalist system (Y. Huang 2008). In the case of China, an analysis that examines state property and state action more generally against the backdrop of the power of the drivers of capitalism would seem more fitting. Thus, in the context of China, McNally speaks of “state capitalism” (McNally 2011), Nan Lin describes China as “centrally managed capitalism” (N. Lin 2011), Jessop uses the term “coordinated market state capitalism” (Jessop 2009, 18), Fligstein and Zhang see similarities with the French “dirigism” model (Fligstein and Zhang 2011, 51–52; see also Pearson 2011, who also includes a comparison with Brazil), and a short time ago, I myself referred to a “liberal market state capitalism” (ten Brink 2010; see also Nee 2005; Nee and Opper 2007; Redding and Witt 2007; Kennedy 2011a).
THE INTER- AND TRANSNATIONAL INTEGRATION OF CAPITALIST SYSTEMS
The fifth dimension of capitalism in time and space is the integration of individual capitalist orders into global economic, international political, and other intersocietal relationships. In order to take this dimension into account, an analysis is required that explores the interaction of national, international, and transnational processes. This particularly applies to the analysis of economic instabilities and crises, the trajectories of which must ultimately also be examined in the context of the development of capitalism worldwide. Analyzing the changes in China in terms of their connection with transnational capitalist dynamics thus prevents a Sinocentric bias (Hart-Landsberg and Burkett 2006; Hamilton 2006a).
Here, as mentioned above, I follow newer concepts that refer to a variegated global capitalism. Varieties of capitalism cannot be effectively analyzed solely on the basis of methodological nationalism and using comparative statistics but rather should be seen as facets of a global capitalist socialization. This allows us to consider varying trajectories of capitalist development in an international, and by extension, intersocietal context (Rosenberg 2006; ten Brink 2012b). Unlike the global economic development phase following the major crisis in the 1930s—in which
