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Is Capitalism “a Thing”?

According to Sam Moyn, capitalism and the ills it is said to generate are nothing more than a contingent jumble of various legal rules and regulations. Indeed, “capitalism” is merely a term of abuse, to which nineteenth-century thinkers made a misguided attempt to attribute “general laws.” This critique, however, overlooks the extent to which Marx’s conception of capitalism is itself historically specific, even contingent. Capitalism is not a consequence of ineluctable laws of nature, human or otherwise, but a fortuitous convergence of a peculiar constellation of social relations and institutions.

On Courts, Exchanges, and Rights

If CLS was right to point out that law is a form of politics, why does the separation between law and politics exist and persist in our contemporary capitalist society, practically and institutionally if not conceptually?