Financial
meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump –
neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left
failed to come up with an alternative?
by George
Monbiot
PART 1
Imagine if
the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The
ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name.
Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug.
Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle
to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?
Its
anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a
major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown
of 2007-8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama
Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health
and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness,
the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond
to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware
that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same
coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name.
What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?
So pervasive
has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an
ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian,
millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological
law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as
a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of
power.
Neoliberalism
sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations.
It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best
exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and
punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers
benefits that could never be achieved by planning.
Attempts to
limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and
regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised.
The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions
are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a
natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as
virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which
trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal
society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market
ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
We
internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves
that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the
advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may
have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for
their failures, even when they can do little to change their
circumstances.
Never mind
structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you
are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if
your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident.
Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field:
if they get fat, it’s your fault. In a world governed by
competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as
losers.
Among the
results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are
epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness,
performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it’s unsurprising
that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously
applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals
now.
Source:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
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