The progressive-neoliberal bloc combined an expropriative, plutocratic economic program with a liberal-meritocratic politics of recognition.

we must break definitively both with neoliberal economics and with the various politics of recognition that have lately supported it—casting off not just exclusionary ethnonationalism but also liberal-meritocratic individualism.

The latest mutation of social Darwinism goes by the name of neo-liberalism, and interprets nature to mean market forces. The underlying reasoning remains the same, being demonstrated, where possible, with ever more figures and tables.

So you have several different kinds of changes— you’ve got intellectual changes and changes in the capitalist economy’s rules of the road. And all of them threatened the living standards of the vast majority. That’s why the neoliberal project couldn’t be sold politically at face value. It required some window-dressing.