A Brief History of Neoliberalism

This history of neoliberalization and class formation, and the proliferating acceptance of the ideas of the Mont Pelerin Society as the ruling ideas of the time, makes for interesting reading when placed against the background of counter-arguments laid out by Karl Polanyi in 1944 (shortly before the Mont Pelerin Society was established). In a compl

In the post-war period, much of the non-communist world was opened up to US domination by tactics of this sort. This became the method of choice to fight off the threat of communist insurgencies and revolution, entailing an anti-democratic (and even more emphatically anti-populist and anti-socialist/communist) strategy on the part of the US that pu

Redistributive effects and increasing social inequality have in fact been such a persistent feature of neoliberalization as to be regarded as structural to the whole project. Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy, after careful reconstruction of the data, have concluded that neoliberalization was from the very beginning a project to achieve the restora

The assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market and of trade is a cardinal feature of neoliberal thinking, and it has long dominated the US stance towards the rest of the world.7 What the US evidently sought to impose by main force on Iraq was a state apparatus whose fundamental mission was to facilitate conditions f

For any way of thought to become dominant, a conceptual apparatus has to be advanced that appeals to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as to the possibilities inherent in the social world we inhabit. If successful, this conceptual apparatus becomes so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not ope

All forms of social solidarity were to be dissolved in favour of individualism, private property, personal responsibility, and family values. The ideological assault along these lines that flowed from Thatcher’s rhetoric was relentless.17 ‘Economics are the method’, she said, ‘but the object is to change the soul.’ And change it she did, though in

Common sense can, therefore, be profoundly misleading, obfuscating or disguising real problems under cultural prejudices.1 Cultural and traditional values (such as belief in God and country or views on the position of women in society) and fears (of communists, immigrants, strangers, or ‘others’) can be mobilized to mask other realities. Political

What the Mexico case demonstrated, however, was a key difference between liberal and neoliberal practice: under the former, lenders take the losses that arise from bad investment decisions, while under the latter the borrowers are forced by state and international powers to take on board the cost of debt repayment no matter what the consequences fo

In the US, the Walton family has become immensely rich as Wal-Mart has surged into a dominant position in US retailing but with integration into Chinese production lines as well as retail stores worldwide. While there are obvious links between these sorts of activities and the world of finance, the incredible ability not only to amass large persona