APRIL 8 — Political economy is not just an old-fashioned term from the time of Adam Smith and Karl Marx. It is the essential, often hidden, reality of how any society functions. It is the simple, powerful recognition that the economy is not a natural system like the weather. It is a human-made system of rules, and those rules are written by politics—by ideologies, by power, by who gets a seat at the table. In other words, it’s the study of the marriage between power and production. Every economic arrangement—who owns what, who profits, who struggles—is the result of political choices: laws on taxation, regulations on corporations, trade deals, labour rights, and the definition of property itself. The question is: Who benefits from the current rules, and who pays the price?
The “fuss” exists because for decades, a dominant ideology tried to pretend political economy didn’t matter. This was the neoliberal claim that the “free market” was an autonomous, self-correcting force, separate from and superior to the messy realm of politics. Economics departments became temples of complex mathematical models that ignored power, history, and social conflict. The great upheavals of the 21st century have violently re-politicized the economy. The 2008 financial crisis wasn’t a natural disaster; it was the direct result of political decisions to deregulate Wall Street. Stagnant wages aren’t an inevitable law of physics; they are the outcome of political choices that weakened unions and prioritized shareholder returns. The climate crisis isn’t just a market failure; it’s the logical endpoint of a political economy that prizes endless extraction and treats the atmosphere as a free dump.
People are no longer asking merely, “Is the GDP growing?” They are asking, “Growing for whom? At what social and ecological cost? And who decided this was the only way?” This is political economy roaring back to life. It’s the debate behind every major fight today: Green New Deal or drill baby drill? Unionize Amazon or accept corporate dominance? Tax billionaires or cut school funding? The alternative to the stale, failed monoculture of neoliberal political economy is not a single, rival dogma. It is a vibrant pluralism of frameworks that put human well-being and planetary survival ahead of blind capital accumulation. This isn’t about finding the one “right” answer; it’s about asking better, more fundamental questions.
The alternative insists that the market must be embedded within democratic society, not the other way around. This means using political tools—regulation, public investment, antitrust action—to steer the economy toward publicly-defined goals: full employment, climate stability, reduced inequality. The economy becomes a tool for the common good, not its master. We abandon GDP as our north star. Instead, we measure success with metrics of genuine well-being: health outcomes, educational attainment, mental wellness, community resilience, environmental quality, and work-life balance. Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness is less a quirky idea and more a necessary paradigm shift.
We move beyond the simplistic binary of “state vs. private” ownership. The alternative economy is a diverse ecosystem featuring: Robust, innovative public options in key sectors (energy, broadband, healthcare). Worker-owned cooperatives where employees share profits and governance. Community land trusts that decommodify housing. Purpose-driven B-Corps legally bound to social and environmental goals. Economist Kate Raworth provides a powerful visual alternative. Imagine an economy designed to operate in the safe and just space between a social foundation (meeting everyone’s basic needs) and an ecological ceiling (not overshooting planetary boundaries). Our current system violates both. The alternative is an economy that thrives in that regenerative and distributive “doughnut.” For the ecological vanguard, the alternative is a conscious, planned, and equitable downscaling of material and energy use in wealthy nations. It’s not about poverty, but about abundant well-being with less stuff—shifting from ownership to access, from extraction to regeneration, from frantic consumption to leisure, care, and community.
The revival of political economy forces a fundamental choice upon us: Will we continue to see ourselves as mere consumers in a market, whose highest civic duty is to shop? Or will we reclaim our identity as citizens in a democracy, with the power to collectively rewrite the rules of our common life? The alternative is not a detailed blueprint. It is a change in posture—from passive acceptance to active design. It is the understanding that the economy is ours to make, not a force we must meekly obey. The “fuss” is the sound of that daunting, essential responsibility being seized once more. The project of the 21st century is not to tweak a broken system, but to build a new political economy worthy of our humanity and our fragile planet. There is much at stake.
* Professor Datuk Dr Ahmad Ibrahim is affiliated with the Tan Sri Omar Centre for STI Policy Studies at UCSI University and is an Adjunct Professor at the Ungku Aziz Centre for Development Studies, Universiti Malaya. He can be reached at [email protected].
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
