Introduction
The dominance liberal political and economic thought since the beginning of the 19th century was contributed to largely by the industrial revolution. The rise of Britain also exerted a lot of influence on the emergence of liberal political-economic thought. However, two frontiers of opposition to this thought emerged. One frontier comprised of neo-mercantilist economic nationalism. The other frontier comprised of Marxis class analysis. These two frontiers soon gained dominance as reactions to capitalist organization of the global economy as well as the British-led liberal international economic and political order. The aim of this essay is to examine the rationale for the neo-mercantilist thought and to outline the neo-mercantilist policies that continue to exist today. The paper also reviews the ways in which Marxist class analysis and neo-Marxist/structuralist ideas have been used to critique industrial capitalism and globalization respectively.
Neo-Mercantilist Arguments
Neo-mercantilists agree that liberal capitalism is productive and efficient. However, they are concerned that the most powerful states always stand to benefit disproportionately from the functioning of the free market. To deal with this problem, neo-mercantilists are willing to alter the tenets of liberal capitalism in order to ensure that the state retains as much power as possible from…