Created Wednesday 28 May 2025
The End of Neoliberalism (NL)
Is it over yet? It would certainly appear so. According to my research, I world date it to the global financial crash of 2008 (GFC). Since then three trends have emerged that call into question the hegemonic power of the NL age.
First, we have seen a remarkable resurgence of private capital. The latter replacing the public capital that states used to invest in infrastructure and labour. Larry Fink has named it Neoliberalism 2.0.
Second, Politics and economic management are now openly mixing. This is most evident with the style of Trumps second term in office, but Biden before him also had begun the process with his green agenda polices. Further, it is a trend that the IMF has noted globally. In response to the failure of western financial tools to help in the aftermath of the GFC, many nations began to take a more direct role in economic policy again.
In effect, neoliberal's predilection to "independent" central bankers gone. Of course, independent is always a sham when all the layers of power conform to the same ideological precepts.
Neoliberal's power was that so many nations' politicians conformed to the philosophy of the open market, shielded from democratic accountability. A situation resulting from the massive endebting of post-colonial states since the Volker Shock of the early 1980s.
This damaged Global South economies sufficient enough that US friendly local elites were able to justify wholesale economic change. Obeying IMF diktats, spineless politicians around the globe impoverished their working classes by abandoning internal industrialisation to focus on exports. Mostly driven by the now structural need to repay the IMF in dollars. In return, the people got democracy. Though one where economic policy was not under discussion.
The job, made easier by the numerous US backed dictators and militaries that spent the 1960s and 1970s murdering leftists, nationalists and other anti-capitalists.
And this is the critical point, the left has been systematically weakened in the GS & N. After the activists in the GS where put down, the main source of worker power in the GN, the unions, have also been systematically dissolved. Nominally by exporting their jobs overseas and the NL re-regulation of labour relations.
With the collapse of organised worker power, the NL takeover of the political centre-left inequality came next. Whereas in the GS the oppression of the left combined with the Volker Shock facilitated the elite abandonment of the workers, in the GN a different strategy was needed.
Finacialisation in the GN, using GS resources, shrank the WC so much that the centre-left political parties abandoned them. Triangulation was in. The ideas of the left mediated through Identity politics. A process overlooked by the Professional Managerial Class. Unfortunately, sheen of a class analysis they could never tackle the structural issues that informed oppression and the growing inequality.
With no opposition, NL pushed on with its program of de-industrialisation and finacialisation. After their jobs were exported, workers had their and welfare rights slashed. Leaving behinds a cheap pool of reserve labour sustained by cheap prices at Walmart and even cheaper drugs. The insidious financialisation of the economy.
Finally, in response, right-wing reactionary forces in the West channelled post-GFC discontent into ballot box victory. Discontent that in general came from an alliance of two camps. The working Class and the petty bourgeoisies. Lenin, Trotsky and Gramcsi all recognised the importance of this coalition to a successful revolution.
The PMC, meanwhile, continued the charade, pining to sustain the social mobility promised by NL in its early days, even if they were not enjoying it.
It NL itself that has made this moment possible. It disabled the left, and alienated fractions of capital not in on the financial game underpinning globalisation.