Managerialism is a mode of production

In this interview devoted to their book Managerial Capitalism: Ownership, management and the coming new mode of production (Pluto Press, 2018), G. Dumenil and D. Levy address the implications of their analysis of managerial capitalism for the study of historical capitalism, its fundamental class structures and variable power alliances. The thesis of traditional Marxism, identifying managers with a fraction of the capitalist class, is criticized, along with the presuppositions conveyed by the concept of “State capitalism”. Invited to rehearse, in greater detail, their distinction between modes of production and “social orders”, as representing variable configurations of power hierarchies and class alliances, the authors clarify the reasons for their introduction of a new category, that of the managerial mode of production, which imposes a rethinking of the capitalist mode of production itself in terms of a logic of “hybridity”. This makes it possible to offer a more complex reading of the long term tendencies of historical capitalism, adding greater precision to the class analysis of managerial capitalism, and thus enabling the authors to specify, in somewhat different terms, relative to the post-war “compromise” (characterized by an alliance between managers and popular classes, under the leadership of the former), what is involved in the latest social order to date, characterized by an alliance “at the top” between managers and capitalists (to the detriment of the popular classes): neoliberalism.