I am fascinated by what seems like an ambient consensus that neoliberalism is “over”.
The first time I remember encountering this claim was in 2020, when governments were suddenly spending massively on relief benefits and eschewing the kind of fiscal conservatism that’s been the norm since the 1990s. The problem with it then was that neoliberalism has never solely been about fiscal austerity (and certainly not “small government”). Neoliberalism is fundamentally about the privatization of public goods, the marketization of life, and the disciplining of labour power vis a vis capital. It seemed highly unlikely, to say the least, that temporary pandemic benefits were going to dramatically transform those dynamics.
And now?
I’m equally sceptical — perhaps even more skeptical — of the claim that neoliberalism is over and that we’re consequently living through something else. In fact I’m quite puzzled this claim has become so fashionable to make to begin with. Because American power is declining? Because a multipolar world is gradually emerging? Because it’s become trendy on parts of the New Right to make philosophical critiques of liberal individualism that are never meaningfully taken up by actual right wing governments when they’re in power? Because international trade is being reconfigured? Because American administrations have begun to flirt with vaguely protectionist industrial policy? Because the old consensus is broadly disliked and now facing a series of insurgent challenges from populist forces left and right?
All of these are real developments and many of them are potentially profound. But the extent they’re going to fundamentally transform the underlying dynamics of global political economy remain pretty unclear. An old order losing legitimacy does not in itself suggest it has disappeared (powerful institutions, after all, can remain entrenched even when they’re no longer supported). If anything, it seems to me that the core dynamics of neoliberalism have only intensified over the past half decade.
Having inherited pandemic era budget deficits, governments everywhere promptly moved to suppress wages in a doomed bid to bring down inflation while mostly doing nothing to cap prices on essential goods. Tech oligarchs have successfully captured key levers of the global economy and are wielding them to commodify daily life like never before. For all we’ve heard about populism, mass politics — of the kind that predominated throughout much of the 20th century — have not yet reemerged. Union density, at least when compared to the 1960s or 70s, remains cavernously low. As distinct from the 1990s or early 2000s, genuine alternatives are beginning to find their feet. But these remain, at best, on the periphery of real political power.
Far from being over, I think neoliberalism has simply entered a new and more heightened stage. Once again, I’m puzzled anyone think it’s otherwise.
Neoliberalism is far from over . It is in its multi-vector predacious zombie stage where it does great damage in so many fundamental ways. People are socially and intellectually blind to its impacts.
It is one on the great issues destroying Western civilization and nobody wants to address it, just like war, militarism , empire and few others on my shopping list.
Hard agree. I'm old enough to remember the 1980s (I was a teenager, but still) when the project of neoliberalism was far more contested, fragile and contingent. The problem now is that the whole mindset has been internalised even by those who claim to oppose it. It will take an enormous effort to dislodge it.