As a woman whose herky-jerky journey towards becoming a socialist began in the anti-globalization movement of the late 1990s, it's been pretty surreal watching the dystopian future I was fighting against back then, become today's everyday reality. In those days, plenty of analysts on the left warned that more than a fight about jobs and wages, the battle over free trade policies was a contest about surrendering state power to corporate control. With each new trade agreement, came new international rules and bodies to enforce a capitalist framework on the participating countries; essentially forever, and certainly regardless of who they elected.
Although I didn't know anything about it at the time, this line of reasoning tracks closely with theories about neoliberalism published by David Harvey and Karl Polanyi. Harvey in particular argues that the foundational goal of neoliberalism is to restore and increase ruling class power, specifically at the expense of democracy and people power. As Yanis Varoufakis and the citizens of Greece discovered, even if you elect a nominally socialist government, these agreements can prevent you from enacting socialist reforms. Which begs the question, what happens when socialist reforms become literally the only way to save life on Earth?
Well, as it turns out the answer is nothing good. In this November 2nd, 2021 article by Manuel Pérez-Rocha at Truthout, we come face to face with the results when globalization's free trade regime comes into conflict with preventing climate crisis. The answer is, rich guys and corporations can sue your government in a corporate kangaroo court, to block action and/or collect millions, if not billions of dollars in damages. To the surprise of precisely no one, this system has primarily been used by resource extraction companies in the global north, against developing nations in the global south; because capitalism is nothing if not consistently racist.
All of which brings us to the same problem with the COP26 climate summit that we discussed yesterday; none of the promises world leaders make in Glasgow mean anything at all, as long as the policies and agreements they pursue at home continue to lock us into a dystopian climate apocalypse. Telling me you're serious about fighting climate crisis while simultaneously signing and enforcing trade agreements that allow corporations to sue for their right to destroy the world, is a little bit beyond just insulting my intelligence. Literally nobody at COP26 is going to talk about dismantling the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, which means most of their bold pledges are demonstrably nothing more than hot air.
Editor's note: you know what the academics say; all play and no work make Jill a very droll conversationalist - after a couple of shorter videos you could watch without a notepad, we're back to the grindstone with a serious political theory discussion to start the new year. Now that we're no longer posting these film sessions on Facebook, I took full advantage of the opportunity to properly source this post, so you might want to click on the links; although I have included some of the most important ones under "Additional Resources" at the bottom of the article.
Finally, I'd like to throw a shoutout to "Prof. Denim" on my Discord server who pointed today's video out to me a little while ago; it's always easier to get by in life with a little help from your friends.
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Alright then lads, welcome to 2021; where the world is still on fire, Captain Trips still stalks the land like a wheezy grim reaper, and due to logic based primarily around the lack of early American road maintenance and the declining horsemanship of aging squires - Donald Trump is still president for roughly another eighteen and a half days. Of course, baring an extremely unlikely (at this point) chud uprising, the winds of change are blowing us towards a neoliberal triumphalist Palooka Joe Biden presidency. Which leaves the question, is that an improvement for the American labor class? Well, it's complicated, but in as few words as possible, the answer to that query is almost certainly "no," and today we're going to start to unpack why.
For a more nuanced look at neoliberalism then, let's again turn to lefty Youtuber Tom Nicholas and his delightful cultural studies video series "What the Theory." I'm not going to lie, when I saw that Tom built this tight twenty-six minute video around the work of two of my favorite analysts (David Harvey, author of "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" and Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine") I couldn't resist writing up a film study about it eventually.
Kicking off the lesson by noting that neoliberalism is the "guiding economic, political, and social ideology in much of the world," Nicholas unpacks the (highly) theoretical underpinnings of the neoliberal ideology, touching briefly on concepts such as the primary importance of economic relations between humans, the idea that greed is good because self-interest drives progress and of course Smith's ridiculously overemphasized (and purely hypothetical) "invisible hand of the market." This then pairs with a brief discussion about the misleading use of the word "liberalism" in "neoliberalism" by noting that the term neoliberalism has its roots in the classical liberalism of the 18th and 19th centuries, and is thus primarily concerned with economic freedom for the rich (and capital itself.)
Of course, given what I'm coming to realize is Nicholas's "soft leftism," it's not all gum drops and lollipops. I think that while mentioning both Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, this video lets them off far too lightly for their pivotal role in cementing the neoliberal agenda in America and the UK; ditto for former U.S. President Barack Obama who inexplicably doesn't come up much. Similarly, key neoliberal leaders on the mainstream right (such as David Cameron, George H.W. Bush, and his even more repugnant son) are afforded seconds of screen-time at most.
More importantly however, and despite clearly having read both Harvey and Klein's seminal works on the violence of neoliberal rule, I was utterly baffled not to hear even a reference to Karl Polanyi's extremely accurate observation that the contradiction between economic freedom, and personal freedom under neoliberalism is inherently unstable and would logically seem to lead to a police state against the poor, if not outright fascism. Pursuant to this, as much as I like Nicholas's work here and I think it's a great introduction to Pig Empire neoliberalism in the imperial core, how anyone can read The Shock Doctrine and use it to make a video about neoliberalism that literally doesn't even mention Augusto Pinochet, is quite simply mystifying.
Despite these problems however, Neoliberalism: From Ronald Reagan to the Gig Economy is, on the whole, an excellent foundation on which we can build future discussions about neoliberalism; and as such I encourage readers to check it out today:
