Neoliberalism - Old Foe, New Fights

I stopped reading works about neoliberalism itself some years ago due to weariness. This tired - or 'invisible', in George Monbiot's terms - doctrine ploughs on as if 2008 had never happened. In the words of John Maynard Keynes, 'practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist...madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back'.

In the case of neoliberalism, these crazed academic scribblers are Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich Hayek, among others. What Monbiot's The Invisible Doctrine: A Secret History of Neoliberalism adds to the by now hackneyed histories of this ideology is a reckoning with the extent to which vested interests promoted it. It is precious little understood how far ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations bankrolled this economic theory into existence using an array of think tanks which continue to act as trusted lieutenants to the political class into the present day.

Take the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). This was created in 1955 by credulous supporters of Hayek and quickly grew into one of hundreds of neoliberal think tanks across over 90 countries channelling funds from as many prominent transnational companies as presidents could get in contact with. Neoliberalism did not breed monopolistic transnational corporations; monopolistic transnational corporations bred neoliberalism. Far from being some sort of random or fortuitous renaissance of classical liberal ideas, neoliberalism comprised a doctrine of capitalist control from the start to bankroll contending economic theories out of existence.

Monbiot's juxtaposition of 'disaster capitalists' against 'housebroken capitalists' later in the book to designate phenomena neoliberalism has unleashed in the last 10 years is highly convincing. What we now face is an oligarchic class gaining ascendancy within the most powerful governments in the world rather than simply conditioning their politics from outside. Disaster capitalists prey on economic crises where 'housebroken' capitalists such as small business people despise these. Big capitalists take these opportunities to row back remaining government regulations and further promote unfettered domination by the ultra-rich; any pretence of principle or intellectualism is gone. Hayek's admonition to the IEA in 1955 to become a 'second-hand dealer in ideas' (p70) rather than a fount of original thought has rung true.

Threaded through the book is a deeper account of capitalism as a system constantly sucking new ecological and labouring frontiers dry in order to drive profit and proficiency. In fact, Monbiot's conception of 'disaster capitalists' reminded me of the historian Sven Beckert's conception of the 'war capitalists' of centuries gone by who literally seized huge frontiers from indigenous peoples elsewhere and used economies of scale to introduce the resources and (slave) labour into these regions they needed to reap a sordid financial reward. As the excellent work which Monbiot leans on for his own analysis - Jason Moore's Capitalism in the Web of Life - theorises, these sordid ultra-rich men are now pressing up against the limits of the cheap land, labour, food, and other factors that both enable and are enabled by these frontiers, generating the absurd spectacle of a Silicon Valley class looking to colonise Mars.

Hope is crucial to any socialist worldview which seeks to avoid replicating the very same misanthropy that the system which it critiques - capitalism - drives. I agree with Monbiot that that hope is rooted in nurturing a democratic narrative that demands the restoration of the commons, alongside the taxing of the very rich who are responsible for the plunder and environmental degradation of the last forty years. Green parties including Zack Polanski's formation in Britain are pushing in this direction, arguing for localism and communal ownership over centralisation, and wealth taxes over ever-more brazen assaults on miserable refugees by supposedly progressive politicians. Centrists simply get blown around in the political wind and the political wind is not, as Monbiot shows, a value-free entity subject to unknown turbulence, but rather, putty in the hands of those with by far the most resources. It is high time anybody calling themselves progressive started unequivocally pushing back against this tide.