polecon 101 ids

"Accumulation by Dispossession" — David Harvey

Harvey argues that neoliberalism is a political project designed to restore class power to elites. To do this, elites steal or privatize public wealth and resources (like public infrastructure or land) to concentrate wealth into their own hands, rather than generating new wealth through actual economic growth

“Dirigiste Dogma" — Deepak Lal

This is Lal's attack on traditional Development Economics. He defines it as the mistaken belief that the government (the state) must heavily intervene in the economy and manage price mechanisms to spur development in the Third World. Lal argues this government intervention is actually the cause of most serious economic problems and champions free markets instead

"Logic of Elimination" — Saree Makdisi

Makdisi uses this to describe the inherent violence of Israel's settler-colonial project. He argues that because Israel wants Palestinian land without the Palestinian people, the system operates on a logic of entirely eliminating and replacing the native population through forced or "voluntary" transfer

"Self-as-Capital" — Wendy Brown

Brown warns that under neoliberal rationality, human beings are no longer treated as democratic citizens (homo politicus). Instead, every dimension of human life is economized, and the individual is reduced to "Self-as-Capital"—an asset or investment portfolio that must constantly be enhanced to increase its market value

"r > g" — Thomas Piketty

This is Piketty's central formula for explaining extreme wealth inequality. It means the rate of return on capital/investments (r) is historically greater than the rate of overall economic growth/wages (g). Because of this, inherited wealth grows much faster than actual earned income, leading to "patrimonial capitalism" where the rich automatically get richer

"Depeasantization" — Walden Bello

Bello uses this term to describe a destructive trend driven by the Neoliberal Food Regime. It is the process by which the capitalist mode of agricultural production becomes completely dominant, actively displacing and destroying the livelihoods of small-scale peasant farmers in favor of massive corporate agribusinesses

"Biocapitalism" — Christian Marazzi

Marazzi defines Biocapitalism as a new mode of production under modern financial capitalism that extracts value from a person's entire existence, not just their formal working hours. This system relies heavily on "co-production," meaning everyday consumers perform free, unpaid labor just by participating in society, which the financial system then captures for profit

"The Great Mistake" — Christopher Newfield

Newfield uses this term to describe the withdrawal of public funds and the widespread privatization of the American public university. He argues this began with the "Culture Wars," which were actually economic wars waged by elites who intentionally attacked the university to destroy its democratizing, egalitarian influence on the middle class

"Development as a Discourse" — Arturo Escobar

Escobar argues that "development" is not a natural or objective process, but a socially constructed narrative created by Western powers after WWII. As a discourse, it creates systems of knowledge and power that deliberately frame the Third World as "backward," allowing the West to maintain control over how progress is defined and who possesses it

"Discursive Disability" — Tony Judt

Judt warns that modern society suffers from a "discursive disability" because we rely almost entirely on an "economic calculus" to make decisions, abandoning our social and moral vocabularies. By reducing human beings to purely self-interested actors ("Economic Men"), society literally loses the ability to talk openly about political concepts like injustice, unfairness, and immorality.

"Linkages" — Albert Hirschman

Hirschman argued that economic development is a dynamic, uneven process. Rather than needing a massive, simultaneous push, development relies on strategic investments that maximize forward and backward "linkages" (such as a shoe factory creating demand for a rubber factory), which ultimately pull the rest of the economy up.

"Kicking Away the Ladder" — Ha-Joon Chang

Chang uses this term to expose the hypocrisy of modern free trade. He argues that wealthy, developed nations built their own economies using heavy state intervention and protectionism (infant industry protection), but now use global institutions to force poorer countries into free trade, effectively "kicking away the ladder" they used to climb to the top

"Spatio-Temporal Fix" — David Harvey

Harvey uses this concept to explain how capitalism temporarily survives its own internal crises. When capitalists suffer from over-accumulated capital, they use a "spatial fix" by moving their capital geographically to find new profitable markets, or a "temporal fix" by investing in long-term infrastructure (fixed capital embedded in land) to defer the crisis into the future.

"Universal Owners" — Stephen Maher & Scott Aquanno

This refers to massive asset management firms that have ushered in a new phase of American capitalism. Because they manage the vast majority of US capital, they act as "Universal Owners" who, despite claiming to be passive investors, directly control firms to brutally maximize profits, increase competitiveness, and increase the exploitation of labor

"The Economy" (as a discursive object) — Timothy Mitchell

Mitchell argues that before the mid-20th century, the economy was viewed as a process. However, fueled by the illusion of limitless cheap oil, Keynesian economics invented "The Economy" as a brand new discursive object (a "thing" measured by total transactions/GDP). Mitchell warns that this allowed elites to hide political power by turning democratic debates into pure economic calculations managed by "experts".