Since the onset of the Arab uprisings in 2011, scholars have begun to focus greater attention on the growing political and military role of the GCC in the region, as well as the specificities of the Gulf’s own political economy. This paper engages with this emerging literature – as well as older writing on the Gulf – to offer a critical account of the GCC’s political economy in both its historical evolution and contemporary forms. The paper begins by locating the GCC within the wider international sphere, focusing in particular on the period following the Second World War, in which oil (and its associated financial surpluses) emerged as central to the balance of global power and the functioning of modern capitalism. It traces how these features have shaped the development of the state in the Gulf, to which is linked a powerful class of Gulf business conglomerates that have come to dominate all moments of accumulation. Viewed from this perspective, the paper argues that the Gulf is not an anomaly among states internationally, in which a ‘weak’ capitalist class is arrayed against a ‘strong, independent state’ (as much of the literature on the region contends). Rather, the nature of state power in the Gulf is reflective and supportive of a dominant business class – consisting of both ruling families and a larger network of corporate power. Having explored this relationship between state and capital in the Gulf, the paper then turns to examining three further significant features of the Gulf’s political economy: (1) the structural role played by the presence of a large migrant labor-force, lacking access to citizenship or basic political rights; (2) the significant internationalisation of Gulf capital that has occurred over the last two decades, concomitant with the rolling-out of neoliberalism (in both the Middle East and globally); and (3) the changing relationships and tensions between different GCC states. The paper will ask what these three features mean for the political dynamics of Gulf societies, as well as their impact on the GCC’s place in the wider Middle East. This discussion is situated in the context of the 2011 Arab uprisings and their aftermath; encompassing both the downturn in low oil prices that began mid-2014, as well as the on-going crises affecting numerous Arab countries.