Municipal corporations, economic calculation, and political pricing: exploring a theoretical antinomy

Most thinking about political economy treats states as unitary actors. In contrast, this paper treats states as ecologies of politically-based enterprises. Where a market is a congeries of business enterprises, a state is a congeries of political enterprises. Both sets of enterprises compete with one another in a setting where those who manage corporate capital are largely separate from those who supply it. Competition among political enterprises, however, cannot generate market prices because of the inalienability of property rights. In consequence, what arises is a system of pricing and calculation that exists parasitically upon the system of market prices.