V for Vendetta as Vernacular Critique: The Exceptional State of Liberal Political Economy

This paper suggests that the liberal state in market society presents an inherent tension between liberalism and democracy. It shows how the tradition of liberal political economy provides for a constitutional form that supports specific and contestable values, relies on depoliticising the foundation of those values (especially in relation to private property and the bases of commercial society), and the exercise of authority – enshrined in the Rule of Law and backed by the force of law. The paper suggests that this has been poorly mediated in mainstream discourse, but that Moore and Lloyd's V for Vendetta provides an astute vernacular critique of the liberal state by developing clearly recognisable allegories of Thatcherite political economy that illustrate the formal nature of justice and democracy under the liberal state form. The paper makes the specific claim that V for Vendetta can be read as a significant critique of the political economy of the liberal state, and the more general claim that cultural artefacts have the potential to develop important insights into the relationship between state, economy, and society in keeping with the traditions of the ‘new political economy’.