Neoliberalism (also spelled neo-liberalism) defies simple definition. In the Marxian literature, it has been understood in four closely related ways: as a set of ideas inspired by the Austrian and Chicago schools of economics and German Ordoliberalism and elaborated under the umbrella of the Mont Pelerin Society; as a set of policies, institutions and practices inspired and/or validated by those ideas; as a class offensive against the workers and the poor, led by the state on behalf of the bourgeoisie in general or finance in particular; and as a material structure of social, economic and political reproduction, in which case neoliberalism is the mode of existence of contemporary capitalism or a system of accumulation.
The differences between these understandings of neoliberalism are symptomatic of the distinct methodologies and viewpoints within contemporary Marxism, their relationship with influential non-Marxist approaches in the social sciences, and the complexity of neoliberalism itself. From a Marxian perspective, these analytical tensions can be felt at three interlocking levels.
First, all neoliberal experiences share significant commonalities; some are relatively abstract and universal, for example the growing power of finance and the curtailment of political democracy, while others are relatively concrete and (country-)specific, such as privatization and the spread of non-governmental organizations into areas that, previously, were the domain of state institutions. While these commonalities imply that neoliberalism cannot be adequately described in purely contextual terms, they are also insufficiently general or historically distinctive to define a new mode of production. Inevitably, then, analyses of neoliberalism straddle across levels of abstraction within capitalism, including (some understanding of) such basic concepts in Marxist theory as the commodity, value and labor power all the way to conjunctural description, by way of specific understandings of exploitation, class, competition, price formation, finance, the state and international trade.
Second, Marxist analyses are by definition systemic, and seek to encompass the economic, sociological, institutional, political, legal, cultural, ideological and other aspects of neoliberalism. This necessarily includes how, why and to what extent the neoliberal “reforms” have transformed economic and social reproduction after the disarticulation of the Keynesian-social democratic compact in the leading capitalist economies, the paralysis of developmentalism, the implosion of the Soviet bloc, the dramatic transformations in China and the crises in the European periphery. This historically grounded and interdisciplinary approach is both superior to and incompatible with the narrow focus provided by most traditional disciplines in the social sciences. Among its many advantages, it allows Marxist explanations to offer more comprehensive and logically coherent explanations of the origins of neoliberalism and its recurrent crises than rival interpretations can provide. Nevertheless, the contributions of those social science disciplines inevitably remain influential in the background. This helps to explain the distinct conceptualizations of the key features of neoliberalism observed in the Marxist literature and the diverse understandings of their articulation and relations of determination. It follows that Marxist analyses can more or less legitimately reach very different conclusions about the vitality of contemporary capitalism, its vulnerability to crisis, the scope for electoral politics, the feasibility of radical alternatives, and so on.
Third, while the schematic depiction of the key ideas underpinning neoliberalism can plausibly eschew the domain of the “international” by focusing, instead, on the realm of ideas or the description of stylized institutions, actually existing neoliberal experiences are completely inseparable from highly complex global processes, especially imperialism and globalization. From this angle, too, neoliberalism cannot be encapsulated into a soundbite: it can neither be defined purely conceptually, nor captured inductively through the description of historical experiences.
Identification of these analytical difficulties can help to contextualize the four Marxist understandings of neoliberalism identified above; it can also support claims for the potential superiority of Marxist views over rival explanations of neoliberalism. For example, while Marxist analyses are necessarily systemic, class-based and nested on a grand theory (in the sense of Mills 1959), competing interpretations tend to be either middle-range or descriptive, unsystematic and (sometimes despite appearances to the contrary, as in many varieties of Keynesianism) methodologically individualist.
As a system of ideas, neoliberalism draws upon the contributions of a wide spectrum of variously talented, frequently inconsistent and sometimes spectacularly cantankerous writers, including Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Wilhelm Röpke, Ludwig Erhard, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, Gary Becker and Ayn Rand (Burgin 2012; Cahill 2014; Dardot and Laval 2013; Mirowski and Plehwe 2009; Stedman Jones 2012).
They argue, in profoundly dissimilar ways, that differently endowed property-owning individuals exchanging goods, services and (in certain cases) information in minimally regulated markets can allocate resources more efficiently than either democratic processes or state guidance. Their arguments seek to legitimize extreme versions of free-market capitalism, and they have frequently promoted US geopolitical interests either directly or indirectly. Unsurprisingly, they were welcomed by powerful interests. Many contributors to the neoliberal literature benefitted from substantial economic, political and institutional support received from private as well as public sources, which unquestionably enhanced the public visibility and political impact of their interventions (Birch and Mykhnenko 2010).
This propitious milieu nurtured several lines of criticism of Soviet-style socialism, Keynesianism, developmentalism and “excessive” democracy since the mid-twentieth century. They were loosely co-ordinated through the Mont Pelerin Society and the extensive networks of academic institutions, think tanks and faux “grassroots” associations established by the neoliberal lobby (Mirowski 2009). Some of those views were precariously articulated with a rapidly expanding body of neoclassical economic theory in the 1950s–60s through monetarism. After the disintegration of monetarism in the 1980s, in the wake of the failure of Friedmanite ideas to inspire effective policy-making in several advanced economies and the inability of monetarist writers to address the criticisms addressed to them, neoliberal ideas were strapped more or less awkwardly to different versions of “supply-side” and new classical economics, new Keynesianism and new institutionalism (Fine, Lapavitsas and Pincus 2001; Fine and Milonakis 2009; Milonakis and Fine 2009). In the late 1990s similar ideas were recycled in social democratic garb through the so-called Third Way, which was described in the Marxist literature as a position akin to “neoliberalism with a human face.”
Closer examination reveals considerable tensions between the theories underpinning neoliberalism. For example, while the Austrian school emphasizes the inventive and transformative subjectivity of the individual and the spontaneous emergence of an increasingly efficient order beyond individual reason through market processes, neoclassical economics focuses on the efficiency properties of a static equilibrium achieved entirely in the logical domain on the basis of unchanging individuals, resources and technologies. Neither captures the political economy and moral philosophy associated with Adam Smith, despite an obsessive recourse to (different interpretations of) the “invisible hand” (Fine and Saad-Filho 2014). In turn, the inconsistencies of monetarism had been exposed in merciless detail by Marxist and other heterodox economists even before “early” neoliberal policymakers admitted their inability to identify or control the money supply and deliver macroeconomic stability and growth in the 1980s. Finally, the Third Way was analytically vacuous, and its fleeting renown was predicated on political opportunism and the willful abandonment of intellectual integrity. It dissolved into irrelevance faster than one could spell “triangulation” (a badge of political expediency rendered temporarily famous by US President Bill Clinton and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair) (Callinicos 2001).
The inconsistencies and policy failures associated with neoliberalism would swiftly have condemned rival heterodoxies to oblivion. In sharp contrast, the institutional sources of support available to the neoliberal literature ensured that it would expand relentlessly from its strongest base in economics to claim hegemony across a whole spectrum of neighboring social sciences. This literature has also promoted a populist understanding of “competitiveness” and “democracy” that has been deployed repeatedly, if incoherently, in order to validate selected policy reforms and repression against the opposition. In this discourse, competition is presented in the short-termist (Chicagoan) sense associated with the operation of financial markets (the closest real-world equivalent to “perfect competition”), while democracy is circumscribed to the (Hayekian) view of competition between shades of neoliberalism in the political markets. The significance of these ideas in the legitimation of the status quo and the neoliberal policy reforms has reinforced an idealist conception of neoliberalism both within and outside Marxism, in which social organization essentially derives from pre-existing ideologies. It incorrectly follows (see below) that social and economic transformation must be driven by ideational change (Cahill 2013).
Marxist studies have shown that the neoliberal policies implemented through Reaganism, Thatcherism and the (post-)Washington Consensus are largely inspired by the Chicago School, and they are supported by five ontological planks (Saad-Filho and Johnston 2005). First, the dichotomy between markets and the state, implying that these are rival and mutually exclusive institutions (significantly, this dichotomy is rejected by the Ordoliberals). Second, the assumption that markets are efficient while state intervention is by definition wasteful because it distorts prices and misallocates resources (in comparison with what an ideal market would have done), induces rent-seeking behavior and fosters technological backwardness. Third, the belief that technological progress, the liberalization of finance and capital movements, the systematic pursuit of “shareholder value” and successive transitions to neoliberalism around the world have created a global economy characterized by rapid capital mobility within and between countries and (an ill-defined process of) “globalization.” Where they are embraced, rapid growth ensues through the prosperity of local enterprise and the attraction of foreign capital; in contrast, reluctance or “excessive” state intervention (however it may be determined) drives capital, employment and economic growth elsewhere (Kiely 2005). Fourth, the presumption that allocative efficiency, macroeconomic stability and output growth are conditional upon low inflation, which is best secured by monetary policy at the expense of fiscal, exchange rate and industrial policy tools. Fifth, the realization that the operation of key neoliberal macroeconomic policies, including “liberalized” trade, financial and labor markets, inflation targeting, central bank independence, floating exchange rates and tight fiscal rules is conditional upon the provision of potentially unlimited state guarantees to the financial system, since the latter remains structurally unable to support itself despite its escalating control of social resources under neoliberalism.
Marxist analyses have also shown that the neoliberal policy reforms are usually implemented through a two-stage process (Fine and Saad-Filho 2014). The first (transition or shock) phase of neoliberalism requires forceful state intervention to contain labor, disorganize the left, promote the transnational integration of domestic capital and put in place the new institutional framework. The second (mature) phase focuses on the stabilization of the social relations imposed in the earlier period, the consolidation of financial sector control of resource allocation, state management of the new modality of international integration of production, and the introduction of specifically neoliberal social policies both to manage the deprivation created by neoliberalism and to reconstitute society along neoliberal lines (see below). All of them require extensive regulation, despite the rhetorical insistence of all manner of neoliberals on the need to “roll back” the state.
Marxist critiques of these policies and their institutional framework have offered rich insights about the features and repercussions of the neoliberal transition in various countries. However, neoliberalism cannot be reduced to a collection of policies, which would suggest that a multiplicity of discrete policy initiatives may be sufficient to reverse or even transcend neoliberalism. Policy changes are certainly essential, but the scope for such changes can be questioned in the light of the political means available to the left, the strength of the coalitions potentially committed to them, and the scope to drive the required distributional, regulatory and policy reforms given the neoliberal transformation of the state in recent decades. None of these can be adequately assessed without a prior understanding of the systemic features of neoliberalism and the transformations that it has wrought on class relations and institutions and the processes of economic and social reproduction.
Marxism is intimately wedded to class analysis through its logical structure, historical development and unique commitment to the abolition of capitalism by means of communist revolutions led by the working class. Class analysis has informed Marxian interpretations of neoliberalism in two ways.
On the one hand, Marxian studies of neoliberalism are overtly informed by a class perspective. This explains their focus on the modalities of exploitation emerging through financialization, globalization and the neoliberal reforms, including the “flexibilization” and intensification of labor, the limitation of wage growth, the rollback of collective bargaining and the changes in the welfare regime and how they have affected the workers, women, minorities, immigrants, and so on. Marxian and closely related analyses have also examined the effects of privatization and the appropriation of the “commons” (i.e., areas where property rights were either absent or vested upon the state) (Harvey 2005), and the destructive consequences of the financialization of social reproduction for the working class (Krippner 2011; Montgomerie 2009). And Marxian analyses have illuminated the destabilizing implications of neoliberalism and its propensity to generate macroeconomic crises that penalize disproportionately the working class and the poor (Duménil and Lévy 2011; McNally 2014).
On the other hand, Marxist political economy directly informs political activism by shedding light on the limitations and contradictions of neoliberalism and suggesting how mass action can disrupt the reproduction of neoliberal societies. In doing this, Marxism supports the search for an alternative future in which the vast majority can realize their potential beyond the systemic constraints imposed by the contemporary form of capitalism.
In both cases, Marxian approaches rightly show that analyses of neoliberalism and the conditions for transcendence must take into account the power relations embodied in the structure of society, the state, production, technology, trade and finance. However, taken to the extreme this approach might suggest that neoliberalism is a “capitalist conspiracy” against the workers, in which case there would be nothing systemic or historically specific about it (since capitalists and the state have always conspired against the workers). Alternatively, they could also be read as implying that “things were much better” under previous systems of accumulation (Keynesian, developmentalist, and so on), in which case they should, in principle, be restored.
These conclusions would be illegitimate. First, the Marxist literature demonstrates that the key features of neoliberalism are articulated systemically; they were not designed arbitrarily by right-wing political parties, libertarian think tanks or more or less secretive debating societies (Mont Pelerin, Bilderberg and Davos, among others) and they cannot be unpicked or reversed at will. Second, even if the superiority of previous systems of accumulation in terms of growth, employment or distribution could be demonstrated, this does not imply that they could be revived. After all, there were material reasons behind their decline; moreover, if they were so obviously superior from the point of view of capital the capitalists themselves—currently enjoying much greater power than before—would already have prompted the reversal of history. This implies that neoliberalism offers distinctive advantages to capital beyond reformist demands for growth, full employment or distributional improvements. Finally, and more interesting from a Marxist perspective, there is no reason why the aspirations of the working class should be circumscribed by those earlier systems of accumulation, as if they represented the best of all possible worlds.
Most Marxist analyses insist that financialization is the defining feature of accumulation under neoliberalism and that it has driven the restructuring of the global economy since the 1970s. Financialization has been described in different ways, but in essence it expresses the control of interest-bearing capital (IBC) upon the allocation of social resources and social reproduction more generally, through distinct forms of fictitious capital (Fine 2013–14). These processes have been buttressed by extensive institutional transformations expanding and intensifying the influence of finance over the economy, ideology, politics and the state (Duménil and Lévy 2004; Panitch and Gindin 2012).
The prominence of finance under neoliberalism cannot be attributed to a “distortion” of pre-existing competitive or industrial capitalism or to a financial sector “coup” against productive capital, as if finance were an independent sector that, in the late 1970s, managed to wriggle itself into a lording position over capitals which it must, ultimately, also be parasitical upon. For finance is not merely the pool of liquid capital held by the financial institutions, standing in opposition to the “real” (productive) capital metaphorically stuck to the ground.
In neoliberal economies, transnationally integrated finance controls the allocation of resources, including the volume and composition of output and investment, the structure of demand, the level and structure of employment, the financing of the state, the exchange rate and the pattern of international specialization, and it restructures capital, labor, society and the state accordingly. As such, finance has become the mode of existence of capital in general, and its prominence expresses the subsumption of sectoral capitals by (the interests of) capital as a whole. These are both expressed and imposed through the regular operation of the financial markets, and through the institutions, rules and ideas attached to them. In policy terms, the prominence of finance implies that accumulation is not regulated by contingent sectoral coalitions but by the capitalist class. It also follows that there is no “antagonism” between production and finance under neoliberalism, and there should be no expectation that industrial capital might “rebel” against finance and push for the restoration of old systems of accumulation. Quite the opposite: industrial capital has become structurally embedded into IBC, and it reproduces itself according to the financial logic of the system of accumulation (Rude 2005; Panitch and Konings 2008; Saad-Filho 2008; 2011).
The structurally dominant position of finance under neoliberalism has supported the development of a whole array of instruments of fictitious capital, the expansion of purely speculative activities and the explosive growth of rewards to high-ranking capitalists and managers in every sector, especially finance itself, funded by a rising rate of exploitation. Financialization has also driven the restructuring of production through the transnationalization of circuits of accumulation, which is commonly described as “globalization.”
These developments have recomposed the previous “national” systems of provision at a higher level of productivity at firm level, created new global(ized) production chains connected through transnational patterns of ownership, finance and circulation of the output, reshaped the country-level integration of the world economy, and facilitated the introduction of new technologies and labor processes while compressing real wages. Finally, financialization has also supported the reconstitution of US imperialism in the wake of the collapse of the Bretton Woods System, US defeat in the Vietnam War and the Iranian revolution (Gowan 1999, Kotz 2015). As a result, corporate power has increased almost everywhere, a globalized and US-led financial system has acquired unmatched policy influence, the political spectrum has shifted to the right, social democracy has imploded, left parties and mass organizations have shriveled, and the trade unions have been largely muzzled or disabled by legal and behavioral changes and shifting patterns of employment. Neoliberalism has also created an income-concentrating dynamics of accumulation that can be limited, but not reversed, by marginal (Keynesian) interventions.
In summary, while financialization expresses IBC control of the main sources of capital and the levers of economic policy in most countries, globalization reflects the centralization of those levers in US-led financial institutions and their regulation by US-controlled international organizations. These relations of mutual determination have established the material basis of neoliberalism (Albo 2008; Saad-Filho and Johnston 2005).
The structures of accumulation outlined above imply that neoliberalism cannot be adequately described simply through libertarian ideas or fanciful notions concerning the “withdrawal” of the state or the “expansion” of markets in general or finance specifically. Neoliberalism draws upon the power of the state to impose, under the ideological veil of non-intervention, the hegemony of globalized finance in each area of social life, not least in production itself, and it requires the state to drive, underwrite and manage the internationalization of production and finance in each territory. The ensuing—typically neoliberal—modality of social reproduction is the historically specific mode of existence of contemporary capitalism, or the dominant system of accumulation. It encompasses the currently dominant forms of production and employment, international exchanges, the state, ideology and the mode of reproduction of the working class.
At a further remove, neoliberalism has redefined the relationship between the economy, the state, society and the individuals. It has constrained the latter to give their lives an entrepreneurial form, subordinating social intercourse to economic criteria, and has nullified the previous structures of political representation. The ideology of self-responsibility has been especially significant since it is antagonic with any form of working class agency or culture: it deprives the citizens of their collective capacities, values consumption above all else, places the merit of success and the burden of failure on isolated individuals, and suggests that the resolution of every social problem requires the further individualization and financialization of social intercourse.
Neoliberal ideology is too fragmented to provide a coherent representation of society. It offers, instead, a populist discourse drawing upon poorly defined notions of “individual freedom,” “competition” and “democracy” that justify a set of loosely articulated finance- (i.e., capital in general-)friendly state policies and practices giving neoliberalism a semblance of purpose in the realm of ideas and considerable resilience in practice. Those policies cannot be contested easily, since the neoliberal restructuring of the economy and society drastically narrows the scope for debates about economic policy.
Despite these strengths, neoliberalism remains limited by five contradictions identified in different strands of the Marxist literature.
First, the neoliberal restructuring of production introduces mutually reinforcing policies that dismantle the systems of provision established previously (which are defined, often ex post, as being “inefficient”), reduce the degree of coordination of economic activity, create socially undesirable employment patterns, feed the concentration of income and wealth, preclude the use of industrial policy instruments for the implementation of socially determined priorities, and make the balance of payments structurally dependent on international flows of capital. In doing this, neoliberalism fuels unsustainable patterns of production, employment, distribution, consumption, state finance and global integration, and it increases economic uncertainty, volatility and vulnerability to (financial) crisis.
Second, financial sector control of economic resources and the main sources of capital allows it to drain resources away from production; at the same time, neoliberalism systematically favors large capital at the expense of small capital and the workers, belying its claims to foster competition and “level the playing field.” As a result, accumulation in neoliberal economies tends to take the form of bubbles which eventually collapse with destructive implications and require extraordinarily expensive state-sponsored bailouts. These cycles include the international debt crisis of the early 1980s, the US savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, the stock market crashes of the 1980s and 1990s, the Japanese crisis dragging on since the late 1980s, the crises in several middle income countries at the end of the twentieth century, and the dotcom, financial and housing bubbles of the 2000s, culminating with the global meltdown that started in 2007.
Third, neoliberal policies are justified ideologically through the imperatives of “business confidence” and “competitivity.” This is misleading, because confidence is elusive, ungrounded in reality, self-referential and volatile, and it systematically leads to the over-estimation of the levels of investment that will ensue from the pursuit of finance-friendly policies. In turn, the pursuit of competitivity amounts to the self-infliction of capital’s imperatives (“flexibility,” conformity, low wages, and so on), usually for someone else’s profit.
Fourth, neoliberal policies are not self-correcting. Instead of leading to a change of course, failure to achieve their stated aims normally leads to the deepening and extension of the “reforms” with the excuse of ensuring implementation and the promise of imminent success this time around.
Fifth, neoliberalism is inimical to economic democracy and it hollows out political democracy. The neoliberal discourse and practice of TINA (There Is No Alternative) blocks the political expression of dissent and feeds apathy, populism and the far right. This is the outcome of a neoliberal political project including a modality of democracy that isolates the political from the socioeconomic sphere, restricts democracy to the former, and limits democracy to voting in elections while, simultaneously, imposing a strongly illiberal agenda towards civil liberties and collective action. The crisis of this modality of democracy has become evident through increasing global instability and the proliferation of “pseudo-” or “illiberal” democracies and “electoral authoritarian” regimes, “failed states,” civil wars and “terrorism,” especially in the postcolonial world. The limitations of conventional democracy have also raised concerns in the “advanced” West, where large numbers of people now reject ritualistic elections leading to power scarcely distinguishable political parties as a means of addressing their economic and political concerns. Despite their limitations, the “Arab Spring” and the emerging popular movements in crisis-hit Western economies have reiterated their aspiration for a substantive form of democracy, encompassing the “economic” domain that has been insulated by neoliberalism—that is, including substantive choices about the nature of social provision, the structure of employment, and the distribution of income (Ayers and Saad-Filho 2015).
The economic contradictions of neoliberalism, the incremental sclerosis of the political institutions regulating its metabolism and the inevitable corrosion of its ideological foundations make this system of accumulation vulnerable to political challenges. This does not imply that electoral strategies are sufficient (after all, the electoral system has been thoroughly contaminated by neoliberal capitalism), or that changes in social, industrial, financial or monetary policies can fulfill radical expectations. Quite the contrary: neoliberalism has repeatedly demonstrated its resilience both in practice and in the realm of ideas. But the demand for the expansion and radicalization of political and economic democracy can integrate widely different struggles, delegitimize neoliberalism and support the emergence of alternatives.
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