Alex Christoforou- Biden inflation victory lap. SCO Dedollarisation. Krivoy Rog dam. Lukashenko, EU wood chop. Update 1

The neoliberal offensive

As alluded to in earlier chapters, one of the most prominent misrepresentations of liberalism has been the introduction of the term ‘neoliberalism’. In this case an ideological variant dons the mantle of a rival in order to clothe itself in rhetorical respectability and even to wrest ground, deliberately or unwittingly, away from established liberal versions. Neoliberals tend to see the world as an immense and potentially unencumbered global market, in which the exchange of goods for profit overrides other aspects of cross-national relations. Individual understandings of neoliberalism will of course differ. But in general terms, being a liberal is understood by neoliberals to characterize the free individual agent, alone or in conjunction with others, as being above all economically assertive. The defining features of that assertiveness are to maintain and develop the economic power inherent in capitalist production and transactions, to open up new areas for investment, and to benefit from the plethora of goods available for consumption. Neoliberals subordinate social, political, and cultural spheres to a professed self-regulating economic market and their principles are supposed to inspire the ways all social activities are run.

In terms of liberal morphology, neoliberals confine the core liberal concept of rationality to maximizing economic advantage. They do away with any idea of natural sociability and minimize mention of human individuality as the end of social progress. State power is mainly marshalled to guaranteeing trade and commerce, not to creating the conditions for human flourishing and well-being. Instead the unfettered power of the market is unleashed, so that the liberal concept of constrained and accountable power is circumvented. It is retained mainly to protect entrepreneurs in going about their business, while sidestepping the aim of a genuinely free market that could unlock the economic energy and inventiveness held to be intrinsic to all individuals. In its most recent forms, neoliberalism champions a world in which huge multinational corporations and mega-banks increasingly control and dictate the way we live, fostering an imposed and conformist managerialism. Instead of regarding economic intercourse as a means to the furthering of political ends such as peace and international solidarity, it sees political institutions as a framework arrangement for securing the efficiency and financial prosperity of the private sector. Liberal universalism has been replaced with neoliberal globalism; the ethical permeation of individuals has been supplanted by the economic ingestion of territory. Even governments themselves are predominantly recast as investors and facilitators of trade, rather than deliverers of welfare or social justice. Only when financial crises erupt do governments make efforts to regulate the world of banking, but that is done with a relatively light touch.

In promoting the notion of a self-regulating market, neoliberals approach conservative terrain. One of conservatism’s key features is a belief in the extra-human origins of the social order, reflecting sets of rules that derive from the divine, the historical, the economic, or the ‘natural’. Neoliberals provide a self-assured economic version of the naturally balanced system. In that version, attempts to direct and coordinate human effort can trigger catastrophic intervention when ‘natural’ economic rules are flouted. Hayek’s inspiration is evident on this point. In terms of liberalism’s layers, neoliberalism has been decoupled from its closest antecedent, layer two market liberalism, which nourished a moral vision of markets as a part of a civilizing endeavour, emphasizing individual talent not corporate power. There are few vestiges of an ethical mission towards a fair society among neoliberals—instead, levels of social inequality have been rising under neoliberal policies. And there is little commitment to engaging the engines of progress in the quest for human self-improvement. The welfare-state role of layer four is whittled away or handed over to private organizations. The constitutional arrangements of layer one, with their safeguarding of individual space and liberation from tyranny, are retained but effectively redirected towards free competition among powerful and vastly unequal economic players. In sum, neoliberals do not possess the minimum kit to be located squarely at the heart of 21st century liberalism. Put more forcefully, the complex morphology of liberalism is shattered and becomes barely recognizable.

Liberalism A Very Short Introduction by Michael Freeden, 2015

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Neoliberalism— A Critical Reader by Alfredo Saad-Filho, Deborah Johnston, 2005

Introduction to Neoliberalism by Alfredo Saad-Filho and Deborah Johnston

We live in the age of neoliberalism. It strongly influences the lives of billions of people in every continent in such diverse areas as economics, politics, international relations, ideology, culture and so on. In less than one generation, neoliberalism has become so widespread and influential, and so deeply intermingled with critically important aspects of life, that it can be difficult to assess its nature and historical importance. Yet such an assessment is essential for both intellectual and political reasons.

Neoliberal globalism is not at all a model of “economic deregulation,” and it does not promote “private initiative” in general. Under the ideological veil of nonintervention, neoliberalism involves extensive and invasive interventions in every area of social life. It imposes a specific form of social and economic regulation based on the prominence of finance, international elite integration, subordination of the poor in every country and universal compliance with US interests. Finally, neoliberalism does not foster rapid accumulation. Although it enhances the power and the living standards of the global elite and its appendages, it is destructive for the vast majority. Domestically, the expansion of “market relations” tramples upon rights of access to food, water, education, work, land, housing, medical care, transportation and public amenities as well as on gender relations, as is shown by Chapters 16 to 18. Laws are changed to discipline the majority, restrict their rights of association and make it difficult to protest against the consequences of neoliberalism and to develop alternatives. The police, the courts and the armed forces are available to quash protests in the “new democracies” such as Bolivia, Ecuador, Nigeria, South Africa, South Korea and Zambia, as well as in “old democracies” such as France, India, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Chapter 20 shows that democracy is everywhere limited by the rights of global capital to seize the land and exploit its people, while Chapter 8 reviews the systematic seizure of assets which has gone hand in hand with neoliberalism in many countries. Finally, an increasing share of global profits is being pumped into the rich countries, especially the United States. These transfers increase the pressure on the periphery, where rates of exploitation must increase sharply in order to support extraordinary levels of elite consumption domestically as well as in the United States. In other words, neoliberalism is a hegemonic system of enhanced exploitation of the majority. Chapter 12 shows that the neoliberal promise of rising living standards for poor countries has not been fulfilled, and Chapter 13 discusses the manner in which foreign aid has served this process of exploitation. These and other chapters in this volume argue that neoliberalism prevents the implementation of those very policies that would most likely contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction: as Chapter 28 argues for South Asia, neoliberalism has fatally narrowed the policy discourse.

This exploitative agenda is primarily but not exclusively the outcome of a shift in the power relations within (and between) countries. It is also the outcome of technological changes, especially cheaper international transportation, communications and computing power, the internet, the emergence of “flexible” production, greater international integration between production chains and in the financial markets, and so on. These material changes responded to existing social changes at least as much as they induced them.

TRANSCENDING NEOLIBERALISM

In spite of its power, the transformations that it has wrought on the world economy, and the achievement of ever-rising living standards for the minority, neoliberalism does not offer an efficient platform for capital accumulation. Under neoliberalism, economic growth rates have declined, unemployment and underemployment have become widespread, inequalities within and between countries have become sharper, the living and working conditions of the majority have deteriorated almost everywhere, and the periphery has suffered greatly from economic instability. In other words, neoliberalism is a global system of minority power, plunder of nations and despoilment of the environment. This system breeds economic, political and social changes, creating the material basis for its own perpetuation and crushing the resistances against its reproduction. Chapters 26 to 30 discuss the continuing crisis in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Japan and East and South-East Asia. They argue that neoliberal policies have enhanced instability everywhere, while Chapter 10 shows that the theoretical and empirical evidence cannot support neoliberalism’s central hypothesis that trade openness is good for growth.

However, neoliberalism also destroys its own conditions of existence. Its persistent failure to deliver sustained economic growth and rising living standards exhausts the tolerance of the majority and lays bare the web of spin in which neoliberalism clouds the debate and legitimates its destructive outcomes. The endless mantra of “reforms” which systematically fail to deliver their promised “efficiency gains” delegitimizes the neoliberal states, their discourse and their mouthpieces. The explosion of consumer credit that has supported the improvement of living standards in the center, given the growing fiscal constrains upon the state, limits the scope for interest-rate manipulation—the most important neoliberal economic policy tool. Most importantly, popular movements have emerged and successfully challenged the neoliberal hegemony. Whatever their limitations, as Chapter 19 argues, the recent social explosions in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, as well as more limited social movements elsewhere, show that neoliberalism is not invulnerable. This book details and substantiates these claims, and points toward an agenda of reflection, critique and struggle.

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