Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism  (ideology)
Interest of	• Mont Pelerin Society • Pacific Research Institute • Softpanorama
An economic doctrine of "ensur[ing] that the fruits of growth [go] to the few not to the many."

Neoliberalism is associated with policies of economic liberalization including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity, and generally reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.

Official narrative

The state isn't really able to manage the economy, so all enterprises should be private. The state only needs to manage some core tasks, this will make the operation of the state cheaper, so taxes can come down, so more money is in the system, so people have more in their pocket. The system will function with taxes that are paid by private businesses.

Origins

Extract from Double Down News video "Liz Truss: The Oligarch's Prime Minister" by George Monbiot:

"When the [neoliberalism] cult first started to be developed in the late 1930s, it was regarded as just crazy, completely fringe, marginal, no-one paid it much attention but then it started receiving serious money.

"Money from some of the richest people on Earth and it started being championed by those rich people's media.

"They began to push it, and push it, and push it until eventually it became the water in which we swim, or to be more accurate the sewage in which we drown."

Problems

It is a political ideology which Larry Elliot of The Guardian suggested might be better termed "unpopulism... i.e. tilting the balance of power in the workplace in favour of management and treating people like wage slaves. Unpopulism was rigged to ensure that the fruits of growth went to the few not to the many."

The ideology is not as far removed from neoconservative ideology as the names might suggest, although neoliberalism tends to focus less on the MICC.

Deregulation

Deregulation has generally the effect that companies reorganise for the maximisation of profit with little, or without consideration for the public good.

2008

The 2008 Financial Crisis was caused in part by a deregulation of the so-called "derivative market".

2018

The Boeing 737 MAX crashes of 2018/19 were caused by deregulation since the FAA had handed too much authority over to Boeing to certify the safety of their own planes. In 2020 the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure with the Subcommittee on Aviation found that Boeing put it's profits over peoples safety and confirmed what has been already publicly discussed.

 

Examples

Page name	Description
"Free market"	The neocon economic system.
Austerity	A meme with tenuous connection to the real world which is typically used by rich politicians in an effort to encourage the majority, poor, populations of their country to accept hardship and deprivation.
Globalisation	A modern coinage to refer to the process of the intermixing of previously different and more distinct societies. The phrase is used as something of a front under which to push a corporate friendly neo-liberal agenda.
Private finance initiative
Privatisation

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
9-11/Official narrative	“It turns out, 45 years later, that those who truly hate us for our freedoms are not the array of dehumanised enemies cooked up by the war machine — the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, even the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or ISIS. They are the financiers, bankers, politicians, public intellectuals and pundits, lawyers, journalists and business people, cultivated in the elite universities and business schools who sold us the Utopian dream of neoliberalism. We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism. Capitalists unable to generate profits by expanding markets have, as Karl Marx predicted, begun to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites.”	Chris Hedges	2017
NGO	“It’s almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the US preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation.”	Arundhati Roy	16 August 2004

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Antidote to Privatisation is Public Ownership	Report	19 September 2022	Prem Sikka	"The report recommends progressive taxation and democratisation of corporations, so that they serve the interests of communities and people rather than just shareholders and executives. It recommends that essential industries, such as energy, be brought into public ownership. It shows that there is very little cost associated with bringing energy, and other essential industries, into public ownership."
Document:Brexit reveals Corbyn to be the true moderate	blog post	12 September 2019	Jonathan Cook	It is time to stop acting like zealots for neoliberalism, squabbling over which brand of turbo-charged capitalism we prefer, and face up to our collective responsibility to change our and our children’s future.
Document:George Monbiot’s excuses for not speaking out loudly in defence of Assange simply won’t wash	blog post	6 October 2020	Jonathan Cook	Faced with a barrage of criticism from some of his followers, George Monbiot, The Guardian’s supposedly fearless, leftwing columnist, offered up two extraordinarily feeble excuses this week for failing to provide more than cursory support for Julian Assange over the past month, as the Wikileaks founder has endured extradition hearings in a London courtroom.
Document:Modern Monetary Theory: an explanation	blog post	18 April 2023	Richard Murphy	The MMT approach to the command of resources is the polar opposite of that in neoliberalism. MMT seeks to do what is possible. Neoliberalism seeks to constrain what is possible.
Document:Privatization for Dummies – The Nuts & Bolts of The World's Biggest Scam	article	21 March 2019	Ronald Thomas West

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References

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