Andy Cragg’s Blog

This article is in a similar vein with Brenner & Theodore’s, emphasizing the mutability of neoliberalism, and its ‘creative destruction’. The unique aspects of the article that stand out to me are: the question of neoliberalism as a regulatory regime; and the focus on extra- and inter-local rule systems.

So, the first question, is neoliberalism a system of social and economic regulation in the way that Keynesian-Fordist policies were, mediating and structuring relations between different classes and interests? Taking a historical perspective, the neoliberalism of Thatcher and Reagan was destructive and based on a ‘roll-back’ of prevailing policies, rather than being an alternative per se. Into the 90s, economic crises forced neoliberal policy makers to become more creative and to ‘roll-out’ policies designed to moderate and/or discipline social resistances to the system [e.g. Mike Harris' policies like workfare: an alternative to, not just a destruction of, previous welfare policies].

But describing the characteristics of the institutions of neoliberalism is difficult. In the Keynesian era there were various institutions like, for example, labour relations boards, policing services, hospitals, etc. Peck and Tickell propose that these sorts of institutions could be seen as ‘hardware’ and that, at least initially, neoliberalization changed the ’software’, the rules that determine the functioning of these institutions. ”Neoliberalism was playing a decisive role in constructing the “rules” of interlocal competition by shaping the very metrics by which regional competitiveness, public policy, corporate performance, or social productivity are measured—value for money, the bottom line, flexibility, shareholder value, performance rating, social capital, and so on. Neoliberalism therefore represented a form of regulation of sorts, but not a form commensurate with, say, the Keynesian-welfarism that preceded it in many (though not all) cases.” (387)  But eventually, more recently, the hardware is changing too, as neoliberalism becomes entrenched and the ’software’ becomes normalized. Ideas like, for example, ‘fiscal responsibility’are no longer debated, they are just assumed, and so whole new institutions can be created [e.g. department of homeland security, the G8 (vs. UN), others?] and destroyed or attacked [e.g. Canadian Wheat Board, others?].

The ultimate thrust of Peck and Tickell’s argument, and, I think, their answer to the question of whether or how neoliberalism regulates is that it regulates the spaces between. One thing about neoliberalism is that, like Brenner and Theodore’s ‘path-dependency’, neoliberalization manifests itself in different ways in every different location. Peck and Tickell call this ‘local neoliberalisms’. Neoliberalism gains its strength, its robustness, in controlling and ordering the rules that govern and create competition between these local neoliberalisms. Here’s an example that I think relates; the current obsession with insurance. Small-scale organizations, from community centres to public elementary schools, are worried sick about not being liable in the case that someone gets seriously injured on their property, and so they go to serious and bizarre ends to counter this, demanding waiver forms, limiting access, destroying/replacing perfectly good playgrounds, etc. How did this culture of paranoia develop? Perhaps it comes out of neoliberalism regulating not directly regulating these local organizations, but by existing in the space between these organizations in the creation of a the culture of fear and competition or at least isolation between these organizations as individual units, rather than part of a collective that gains strength from being mutually supportive–a community centre would not be so concerned about liability if all community groups were strong as a collective, besides which, more importantly, the risk of someone cracking their head open and also suing are very low but neoliberalism exaggerates this fear by valorizing financial liquidity and individual responsibility while at the same time removing support systems that would dissuade fears. I’m not sure that that ended up being a very coherent example. Here is what Peck and Tickell say about neoliberalism shaping contexts:

Contemporary politics revolve around axes the very essences of which have been neoliberalized. As such, neoliberalism is qualitatively different from “competing” regulatory projects and experiments: it shapes the environments, contexts, and frameworks within which political-economic and socio- institutional restructuring takes place. Thus, neoliberal rule systems are perplexingly elusive; they operate between as well as within specific sites of incorporation and reproduction, such as national and local states. (400)

If this is true about neoliberalism, that its rule systems are elusive because they shape environments, contexts, and frameworks, then resistance to neoliberalization must be properly focused not just on creating alternatives to manifestations of local neoliberalisms and their rule-structuring effects:

This is not to say that the hegemony of neoliberalism must necessarily remain completely impervious to targeted campaigns of disruption and “regime competition” from progressive alternatives, but rather to argue that the effectiveness of such counterstrategies will continue to be muted, absent a phase-shift in the constitution of extralocal relations. This means that the strategic objectives for opponents of neoliberalism must include the reform of macroinstitutional priorities and the remaking of extralocal rule systems in fields like trade, finance, environmental, antipoverty, education, and labor policy. These may lack the radical edge of more direct forms of resistance, but as intermediate and facilitative objectives they would certainly help to tip the macroenvironment in favor of progressive possibilities. In this context, the defeat (or failure) of local neoliberalisms—even strategically important ones—will not be enough to topple what we are still perhaps justified in calling “the system. (401)

This article (in Antipode 2002 34:3) is another one that theorizes about the development of neoliberalism in the last 3o years. The authors are both from geography backgrounds and so they inject a ’spatial’ focus into their analysis. The article, I think, presents at least three interesting concepts: the path-dependency of neoliberalism; the creative destruction of neoliberalism; and neoliberalism’s spatial focus on cities.

The first idea, of path-dependency, I think ties in with the the phrase “actually existing neoliberalism” that is in the title of the article. Descriptions of actually-existing neoliberalism are meant to contrast with the theoretical (or even utopian) descriptions of how neoliberalism is meant to work. The idea of actually-existing neoliberalism is also meant to counter two common pitfalls in thinking about neoliberalism:

First, neoliberal doctrine represents states and markets as if they were diametrically opposed principles of social organization, rather than recognizing the politically constructed character of all economic relations. Second, neoliberal doctrine is premised upon a “one size fits all” model of policy implementation that assumes that identical results will follow the imposition of market-oriented reforms, rather than recognizing the extraordinary variations that arise as neoliberal reform initiatives are imposed within contextually specific institutional landscapes and policy environments. (353)

Countering both of these pitfalls, the authors argue:

In contrast to neoliberal ideology, in which market forces are assumed to operate according to immutable laws no matter where they are “unleashed,” we emphasize the contextual embeddedness of neoliberal restructuring projects insofar as they have been produced within national, regional, and local contexts defined by the legacies of inherited institutional frame-works, policy regimes, regulatory practices, and political struggles. (349)

The ‘contextual embeddedness’ (i.e. the particular institutional context/history) of neoliberal projects inevitably influence the way that these projects are created, strategized, and implemented. And these contexts are always spatially-dependent, i.e. different places (usually states) have different “institutional frame-works, policy regimes,” etc. Thus, neoliberal projects are ‘path-dependent’:

As indicated, neoliberal programs of capitalist restructuring are rarely, if ever, imposed in a pure form, for they are always introduced within politico-institutional contexts that have been molded significantly by earlier regulatory arrangements, institutionalized practices, and political compromises. In this sense, the evolution of any politico-institutional configuration following the imposition of neoliberal policy reforms is likely to demonstrate strong properties of path-dependency, in which established institutional arrangements significantly constrain the scope and trajectory of reform. (361, italics mine)

This idea of path-dependency is one that is close to Harvey’s highlighting of the contradictions between neoliberalism in theory (a utopian project) and neoliberalism in theory, and I think also to Polanyi’s double movement because the neoliberal project wants to go in one direction but is constrained by the socio-political institutions of the particular spatial context it is working in. I don’t know if this really works though, because I see three movements or forces happening: the neoliberal move away from the Keynesian or Fordist values; the Keynesian resistance to it (a form of conservativism); and thirdly a resistance to neoliberalism’s social destructiveness that takes various forms ranging from anarchist to fascist backlashes. It is the first and third of these that would be a double movement, just like how in the 1930s it was the socialists and fascist surges reacting to increased capitalist power.  Anyhow, on to the next.

Brenner and Theodore’s second focus is the idea of neoliberalism as ‘creative destruction’. They acknowledge that their “emphasis on the tendentially creative capacities of neoliberalism is at odds with earlier studies that underscored its overridingly destructive character.” (362) But, they nonetheless present the idea that neoliberalism is creative in its destruction. My understanding of this, and it may be incorrect, is that in order to circumvent and elude path-dependencies, social resistance, and internal contradictions, neoliberal project are forced to be creative. Of course though, neoliberalism, like all theories of capitalist accumulation, are inherently destructive of all of the more meaningful aspects of human beings’ creations and potentials. Or as they say, “The point of this emphasis [on neoliberal creativity], however, is not to suggest that neoliberalism could somehow provide a basis for stabilized, reproducible capitalist growth, but rather to explore its wide-ranging, transformative impacts upon the inherited politico-institutional and geographical infrastructures of advanced capitalist states and economies.” (363) Indeed, neoliberal policies (like all capitalist strategies) generate their own crises, and thus must be constantly creative in order to continually generate capitalist accumulation while at the same time managing the backlash and crises that capitalist accumulation generates. And so, interestingly,

the neoliberal project of institutional creation is no longer oriented simply towards the promotion of market-driven capitalist growth; it is also oriented towards the establishment of new flanking mechanisms and modes of crisis displacement through which to insulate powerful economic actors from the manifold failures of the market, the state, and governance that are persistently generated within a neoliberal political framework. (374)

The third, and I think main, though for some reason less interesting to me, focus of the article is on cities as the location for neoliberal policies. Brenner and Theodor say that “cities have become strategically crucial arenas in which neoliberal forms of creative destruction have been unfolding during the last three decades,” (367) and that they have become

institutional laboratories for a variety of neoliberal policy experiments, from place-marketing, enterprise and empowerment zones, local tax abatements, urban development corporations, public–private partnerships, and new forms of local boosterism to workfare policies, property-redevelopment schemes, business-incubator projects, new strategies of social control, policing, and surveillance, and a host of other institutional modifications within the local and regional state apparatus. (368)

The authors provide two tables in the article that list examples of the ways in which neoliberalism has been destructive and creative. I think I’ll copy them here and that will be all.

Despite the annoying use of American spellings (the epic z vs s struggle), Stephen Gill’s article “Globalisation, Market Civilisation, and Disciplinary Neoliberalism” is a remarkable essay on neoliberalism, especially given that it was written in 1995, a time when, I believe, not very many people on the left had yet been able to grasp the context, magnitude, and implications of the neoliberal shift that was well underway. Gill combines a Marxist historical materialist approach with Foucault’s ideas of discipline and panopticism. The place that these two approaches intersect is in Gill’s argument that the neoliberal system is an example not of hegemony (or, ideally, justice) in a Gramscian sense, but rather of supremacy. A situation of hegemony would seek to absorb, undermine, and corrupt opposition movements, while supremacy just dominates and seeks no compromise, because there is not a cohesive opposition:

“When we introduce the issues of power and justice into our examination of neoliberal forms of globalization, what is emerging is a politics of supremacy, rather than a politics of justice or hegemony. For example, a situation of bourgeois hegemony implies the construction of a historical bloc that transcends social classes and channels their direction into an active and largely legitimate system of rule. This implies a fusion of economic, political, and cultural elements of society (the state and civil society) into a political alliance or coalition that combines coercion and consent. That is, the creation of such a bloc presupposes opposition and a means for incorporating or defeating it in a process of struggle. Whilst there is no compromise by the leading class fraction on the fundamentals of the mode of production [i.e. capitalism], there is nevertheless an inclusion, politically, of a significant range of interests. Subordinate classes thus carry weight within the formulation of state policy. By a situation of supremacy, I mean rule by a non-hegemonic bloc of forces that exercises dominance for a period over apparently fragmented populations, until a coherent form of opposition emerges.” (400)

Another main argument of his, I think, is that the neoliberal dominance is temporary because it of its relying upon a politics of supremacy rather than on a longer term hegemonic strategy. I think that it is in this context that Gill brings up Polanyi’s idea of the ‘double movement’, which involves seeing capitalism as a ’stark utopia’: “as Polanyi pointed out, a pure market system is a utopian abstraction and any attempt to construct it fully would require an immensely authoritarian of political power through the state.”(420) Polanyi’s theory of the double movement is about, I think,  the idea that when social structures are threatened, (for example as they are by the imposition of market values upon things and concepts that they don’t fit (e.g. water), or in Polanyi’s terms when the market becomes disembedded in society and society becomes embedded in the market), there will be a backlash by social force against these dehumanizing changes. This backlash takes different forms, from the recent rise in the political success of fascist and authoritarian governments to the election of populist socialist governments across Latin America.

On the ‘market civilization’:

I just finished David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Penguin, 2007). I highlighted a lot of passages (incidentally, it was the first whole ebook I’ve read–which was fine except for the need for an internet connection), which I want to go back over and write about here, but the main argument that he makes, much like the Canadian authors I’ve been reading (see category->neoliberalism in Canada), is that neoliberalism is not fundamentally about monetarist economic policies: it is really about the restoration of elite class power. In Harvey’s words, neoliberalism can be interpreted “either as a utopian project to realize a theoretical design for the reorganization of international capitalism or as a political project to re-establish the conditions for capital accumulation and to restore the power of economic elites” (19). So, on the one hand neoliberalism could be about rejuvenating (international) capitalism in response to the crises that occurred in the 1970s, (which is how it is described in the mainstream, and sold to the masses), or on the other hand it could be seen as opportunism designed to counter the general progress that had been made between the end of the Second World War and the 1970s towards a more equitable distribution of wealth and power within a capitalist system (i.e. Keynesianism, or what Harvey calls ‘embedded liberalism’).

Harvey backs up his belief in neoliberalism as a project to restore class power mostly by analyzing the track record of neoliberalism during the last 30 years: has human well-being increased in general? has society become more equitable? has the distribution of wealth become more even? has the world become more democratic? A number of indicators show that by these standards the record of neoliberalism is abysmal, which does not necessarily mean that neoliberalism is an elite class project–it could just mean that neoliberals have failed in their utopian project (the goal of which is to bring freedom and prosperity to all via the free-market and extreme individualism). However, given the rapid transfer of wealth from the poor to the wealthy, and given the large gap between neoliberalism in theory and neoliberalism in practice, it seems that freedom and prosperity for all may not be the true goal of those who influence policy. This is, I think, where Harvey’s theory of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ comes in. Here is a long passage about it:

“The main substantive achievement of neoliberalization, however, has been to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income. I have elsewhere provided an account of the main mechanisms whereby this was achieved under the rubric of ‘accumulation by dispossession’. By this I mean the continuation and proliferation of accumulation practices which Marx had treated of as ‘primitive’ or ‘original’ during the rise of capitalism. These include the commodification and privatization of land and the forceful expulsion of peasant populations (compare the cases, described above, of Mexico and of China, where 70 million peasants are thought to have been displaced in recent times); conversion of various forms of property rights (common, collective, state, etc.) into exclusive private property rights (most spectacularly represented by China); suppression of rights to the commons; commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative (indigenous) forms of production and consumption; colonial, neocolonial, and imperial processes of appropriation of assets (including natural resources); monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land; the slave trade (which continues particularly in the sex industry); and usury, the national debt and, most devastating of all, the use of the credit system as a radical means of accumulation by dispossession. The state, with its monopoly of violence and definitions of legality, plays a crucial role in both backing and promoting these processes” (159)

One of the earlier examples of accumulation by dispossession is the Mexican debt crisis in the early 1980s when Mexico declared that it could no longer pay off the massive debt that it had acquired to foreign banks:

“What the Mexico case demonstrated, however, was a key difference between liberal and neoliberal practice: under the former, lenders take the losses that arise from bad investment decisions, while under the latter the borrowers are forced by state and international powers to take on board the cost of debt repayment no matter what the consequences for the livelihood and well-being of the local population. If this required the surrender of assets to foreign companies at fire-sale prices, then so be it. This, it turns out, is not consistent with neoliberal theory.” (29)

Just who are the elite who are actively securing their own class power? Taking ‘accumulation by dispossession’ as a premise, the economic recovery during the neoliberal era is not based on the generation of (much) new wealth through the expansion of industry. Rather, new ‘wealth’ and accumulation are the result of finanzcialization (numbers games), enclosure of commons (e.g. the commodification and privatization of water), and the diminishment of the power of organized labour (e.g. the decline of wage rates in real terms). Thus, “one substantial core of rising class power under neoliberalism lies…with the CEOs, the key operators on corporate boards, and the leaders in the financial, legal, and technical apparatuses that surround this inner sanctum of capitalist activity” (33). Another group of highly influential elites are the owners of the massive corporations that have come to dominate the world economy, for example Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Carlos Slim in Mexico, perhaps Conrad Black in Canada, and the Walton family. “the incredible ability not only to amass large personal fortunes but to exercise a controlling power over large segments of the economy confers on these few individuals immense economic power to influence political processes. Small wonder that the net worth of the 358 richest people in 1996 was ‘equal to the combined income of the poorest 45 per cent of the world’s population––2.3 billion people’. Worse still, ‘the world’s 200 richest people more than doubled their net worth in the four years to 1998, to more than $1 trillion. The assets of the top three billionaires [were by then] more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people’”(43).

“While this disparate group of individuals embedded in the corporate, financial, trading, and developer worlds do not necessarily conspire as a class, and while there may be frequent tensions between them, they nevertheless possess a certain accordance of interests that generally recognizes the advantages (and now some of the dangers) to be derived from neoliberalization. They also possess, through organizations like the World Economic Forum at Davos, means of exchanging ideas and of consorting and consulting with political leaders. They exercise immense influence over global affairs and possess a freedom of action that no ordinary citizen possesses” (45).

There are a lot of other interesting parts in this book, including the influence of neoliberalism on ethics and rights (e.g. the connections between negative rights, privatization, and individualism); on postmodernism as a symptom of neoliberalism (the idea that “postmodern intellectual currents…accord, without knowing it, with the White House line that truth is both socially constructed and a mere effect of discourse,”(198) or in other words that there are no absolute moral truths so we can/should do whatever we want or whatever best suits our interests or acquisition of power); on democratic processes (e.g. the rise of NGOs, which are essentially private sector (i.e. not democratically accountable) groups); on the current tendency towards neoconservativism, which has less interest than neoliberalism in disguising its embrace of authoritarianism; the contradictions caused by neoliberal policy (e.g. the tendency toward large monopolistic companies like walmart and google, rather than increased innovation through competition); on Polanyi and the value of alternative, collective rights (e.g.”the the right to life chances, to political association and ‘good’ governance, for control over production by the direct producers, to the inviolability and integrity of the human body, to engage in critique without fear of retaliation, to a decent and healthy living environment, to collective control of common property resources”(213)); and more.

I haven’t offered any critical comments on Harvey’s book here, possibly because I think that it is pretty much right on. I thought that the chapter on China was very dry and economistic, and I tend to twinge whenever I read sweeping condemnations of China, entirely as a result of the influence of SLE. This is a very unpopular stance though these days. It is interesting though that Harvey’s criticism of China and its ‘human rights record’ is not coming from the usual place of (hypocritical) outrage about how draconian China is compared to the free and liberal west. Harvey is critical of Deng’s neoliberal turn, and the whole idea of ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics’ which has involved the destruction of the iron rice bowl, the creation of an elite class, increased privatization of services, implementation of user fees, the dislocation of millions of peasants, and the destruction of the power and influence of organized labourers. Hmmm, it seems that I ended up being uncritical of Harvey again…

In the entries in this series I am writing about my current readings on left writings relating to neoliberalism in Canada.

William Carroll and Murray Shaw’s essay “Consolidating Policy Neoliberal Bloc in Canada, 1976 to 1996”¹ interrogates the activism of five prominent organizations that led, and continue to lead, the “consolidation of neoliberal hegemony in Canadian public policy”(195). These five organizations are the Conference Board of Canada, the C.D. Howe Institute, the Business Coalition on National Issues, the Fraser Institute, and the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies. Carroll and Shaw outline political and policy backgrounds of these five organizations, with a focus on the contexts that gave rise to each organization, and on the particular niche role that each organization plays in advancing neoliberal policy. For example, the Fraser Institute functions to create more legitimacy for far-right views by publishing a lot of material and disseminating it widely; the C.D. Howe Institute, in contrast, has an image of more academic rigour and functions as a mainstream legitimator of the economic principles of neoliberalism (fiscal responsibility, international competitiveness, etc.). In the final section of the paper, Carroll and Shaw, both sociologists, undertake to map the connections in the “corporate policy network,” particularly the instances of interlocking directorships between the five main policy activist groups and leading corporations. This is reminiscent of Ryerson’s analysis in ___, but with a focus on connections to neoliberal policy leaders. The study is also situated within a Gramscian framework, which the authors describe on pp 196-197, specifically outlining “four concepts which converge on a view of neoliberalism as a political and cultural accomplishment: a hegemonic accomplishment” (196).

1. Carroll, William and Murray Shaw. “Consolidating a Neoliberal Policy Bloc in Canada, 1976 to 1996.” Canadian Public Policy 27, no. 2 (2001). [↩]

In the entries in this series I am writing about my current readings on left writings relating to neoliberalism in Canada.

In Alfredo Saad-Filho’s essay “Marxian and Keynesian Critiques of Neoliberalism,”¹ he outlines the main thrusts of these two political-economic systems and assesses their relative strengths, accuracy, and usefulness. His point of departure is the observation that despite its recent unpopularity and political defeat in some parts of the world, neoliberalism remains “the dominant modality of social and economic reproduction in most countries” (337). Saad-Filho argues that by delineating the analyses of Keynesians and Marxists it becomes clear that only Marxism can adequately understand the continued dominance of neoliberalism. Specifically, Keynesianism fails in its level of analysis, in its underestimation of the agency of neoliberals in support of their (class) interests, and in its prescription for overcoming neoliberalism. Keynesianism analysis does not go deep enough in understanding the influence of neoliberalism: “Keynesian analyses tend to describe conflicts around the process of accumulation, while obscuring or ignoring completely conflicts about the nature of capitalist accumulation” (341). As a result it does not criticize capitalism. Keynesianism fails to appreciate the extent of the agency of those promoting neoliberalism, who will act in their own interests to ensure their continued wealth. Neoliberalism is “not merely a set of economic and social policies,” it “combines an accumulation strategy, a mode of social and economic reproduction and a mode of exploitation and social domination based on the systematic use of state power to impose…a hegemonic project of recomposition of the rule of capital in all areas of social life” (342). Finally, Keynesianism predicts that a strong government with the correct policies could overcome the neoliberal agenda. This both ignores the embeddeness of the state in the social, political, and economic forces that have been taken over by neoliberalism. Recognition of this embededness means acknowledging that change must involve popular movements that challenge the state.

1. Saad-Filho, Alfredo. “Marxian and Keynesian Critiques of Neoliberalism.” Socialist Register, 2008: 337-345. [↩]

From A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey (2007).

“After the implementatino of neoliberal policities in the late 1970s, the share of national [USA] income of the top 1 percent of income earners in the US soared, to reach 15 per cent (very close to its pre-Second World War share) by the end of the century. THe top 0.1 per cent of income earners in the US increased their share of the national income from 2 per cent in 1978 to over 6 per cent by 1999, while the ratio of the median compensation of workers to the salaries of CEOS increased from jus over 30 to 1 in 1970 to nearly 500 to 1 by 2000. Almost certainly, with the Bush administration’s tax reforms now taking effect, the concentration of income and wealth in te upper echelons of society is continuing apace because the estate tax (a tax on wealth) is being phased out and taxation on income from investments and capital gains is being diminished, while taxation on wages and salaries is maintained.” (16-17)

A theme in the readings from the first week of the class called “Critical Perspectives on Citizenship” was the ideas of T.H. Marshall. Basically, Marshall describes the welfare state as having come out of a progression of rights, starting with civil rights (to own property, equal treatment under the law, etc.) in the 18th century, then political rights (to vote, run for office, etc.) in the 18th century, and finally social rights (the right to demand certain provisions from government, i.e. welfare) in the 20th century. The climax of this progression is what Marshall calls ’social citizenship,’

Marshall can be situated/explained in part by looking at the time at which he was writing, the post war era, when the UN, human rights, bigger social programs in Europe and other places, etc. were all at their apex. In the last 20 years neoliberal ideology has taken over, with a corresponding decline in the rights associated with social citizenship, namely the right to the collective provision of a certain level of basic needs. Janine Brodie in ‘The Social in Citizenship’ (ch. 2 of a book called __),  describes how Marshall’s description of ‘the social’ as only reaching existence /importance in the 20th century is false. Rather the social, or rather “social problems” really came into existence in the 19th century as fissures in society opened up due to the explosion of capitalism and the “industrial revolution,” creating a poor class (=lumpenproletariat?). This process is described most well/famously by two thinkers, one of whom I am already very fond of, and the other I am coming to appreciate immensely: Karl Polanyi and Michel Foucault.

So, the neoliberal destruction of ’social citizenship,’ through the so-called ‘hand up vs hand out’ approach (also called entrepreneurial citizenship) applies market values to all social institutions and actions, creating a situation where, “citizens are released from social entitlements and obligations as they maximize their choice and capacities for self-sufficiency.” (41) Neoliberals do this in a number of basically sneaky ways, culminating in the goal of “individualization.” Individualization, “places steeply rising demands on people to find personal causes and responses to what are, in effect, collective social problems.” Thereby, “responsibility for social crises that find their genesis in such macro processes as structural unemployment, racism, or unequal gender orders is put onto the shoulders of individuals.” (41)

So, and this is basically what Polanyi describes, the neo/liberals and neoconservatives are attempting to subordinate the social to the economic, a task that is, in my opinion and Polanyi’s (at least), doomed to eventual failure.

Thats it on this for now.