While the state facilitates capital, it does not intervene at the level of exchange (access, opportunity), distribution (income inequality) or collateral damages (ecological, social, political). This aspect of neoliberalism is significant for understanding why the growing imbrication of the state with capital today does not generate the kind of legitimacy crisis predicted by 1970s Marxist state theorists — Jürgen Habermas, Claus Offe, Nicos Poulantzas, Ralph Miliband, among others. The state is not neutral with regard to capital, nor, however, does it compensate for the infelicities or damages of capital. The neoliberal state may act openly as a capitalist state and on behalf of capital because economic growth is its raison d’état, and capital appreciation is the presumed engine of growth.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 125