neoliberalism
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Radhika Desai: Neoliberalism, Economic War, BRICS & a New Russia
Radhika Desai discusses how neoliberalism has financialised and de-industrialised Western economies. The economic war to reverse the decline of the West has instead intensified the decline, and BRICS has become an important institution to construct an alternative post-neoliberal economic system. Russia’s shift from Europe to Eurasia is at the centre of the new international economic… Continue reading
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UK: still winter, no sign of spring
The UK government’s Spring statement on spending was as expected – really awful. First, Chancellor Rachel Reeves had to accept that the 2025 real GDP growth estimate will be half the rate previously forecast, halved to 1% from 2% by the government’s official forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). In addition, Reeves had to… Continue reading
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The Plot Against America
8 February 2025 — Notes form the Circus [Creepy stuff and if true, frightening! WB] How a Dangerous Ideology Born From the Libertarian Movement Stands Ready to Seize America Mike Brock As I write this in early 2025, a quiet revolution is unfolding within the U.S. government. Inside the newly created Department of Government Efficiency Continue reading
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Alice Weidel: Oligarch Tool
From the very start Hitler was financially supported and groomed by elements of the German establishment. As that establishment’s hold on the German people was challenged by the Great Depression they decided to move from liberalism (control the population through a hegemonic culture and false consciousness) to fascism. Hitler’s Nazi Party was very fully funded… Continue reading
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Yellow Vest Win: Proving that Western Liberal Democracy is the same old autocracy
If we say that the Yellow Vests are not socialist revolutionaries even latently, then what are they protesting about? To put it the most simply: they are protesting the end of European Social Democracy, with the limited protections it provided. Continue reading
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2005-22′: The crisis of western capitalism behind the left and far right radicalism
In a previous article we have tried to explain the rise of the extreme right in Europe, in its various forms, as a result of the deep crisis of world (western) Capitalism. The same is true of the rise of the radical left, where and when we witness it. It is simply impossible to understand what is… Continue reading
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The State Strikes Back
10 April 2021 — theplanningmotivedotcom the-state-strikes-back.pdf Just a few years ago, at the height of globalisation, International Trade Treaties that were being negotiated included laws binding on participating countries with enforcement devolved to offshore havens. Failure to comply would entail facing unavoidable financial penalties set offshore. This was the ultimate goal of neo-liberalism, to strip Continue reading
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Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism
In a short video on the empirediaries.com YouTube channel, a protesting farmer camped near Delhi says that during lockdown and times of crisis farmers are treated like “gods”, but when they ask for their rights, they are smeared and labelled as “terrorists”. Continue reading
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Three tragedies born in the womb of neo-liberalism
At first sight, the Pandemic, Grenfell and Brexit, don’t seem to be connected, but they are. They represent the uncivilised outcomes of an unrestrained capitalism obsessed by cutting costs, the state and regulations. The result is that the short-term enrichment of the tiny minority are now being swamped by the longer-term losses that the rest… Continue reading
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End of Neoliberalism? The Capitalist Reset and the Possibilities of a New Stage of Social Revolt
An important part of the international left has announced the end of neoliberalism and the return to the central role of the state. This would seem to indicate the possibility of a return to the tutelage of the State over the public, given the disastrous panorama that was shown with the COVID-19, as a result… Continue reading
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Against “Capitalist Realism” and the “Neoliberal State”
Capitalist realism is the official ideology of the neoliberal state, and is an insidious form of propaganda that seeks to eliminate resistance to regressive corporate tyranny. “Capitalist Realism,” the seminal text by Mark Fisher, forensically dissects the dynamics by which late capitalism ensures world domination, enforcing its mantra of “there is no alternative,” which discourages… Continue reading
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Lockdowns, Coronavirus, and Banks: Following the Money
It usually makes sense to follow the money when seeking understanding of almost any major change. The strategy of following the money in our current convergence of crises in late summer of 2020 leads us directly to the lockdowns. The lockdowns were first imposed on people in the Wuhan area of China. Then other populations… Continue reading
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Crisis and Virus: COVID-19 in Context
It has been over forty years since Thatcher and monetarism, thirty years since the Canada-US Free trade agreement came into effect, and twenty years since the launch of the Euro. More recently, 2020 marks twelve years since the Great Recession and bank bailouts began, ten years since the turn to stimulus and sharp return to… Continue reading
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Post-Pandemic Economic Scenarios-Interview #3
Following is the 3rd excerpt from my late April interview with Konrad Stachnio of Poland for his forthcoming volume on the current pandemic crisis from a European perspective. In this concluding segment, Konrad asks my views on subjects like the next global depression, the future of digital money, financialization, my response to corporate ideologists’ interpretations… Continue reading
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Britain’s government – entangled in its own corruption
TruePublica: Thatcherism, as it is known, was made of up of principles comprising economic, social and political ideals that described the Conservative Party that undoubtedly shaped Britain for nearly fifty years. The economic policies that came with Thatcherism really amounted to little more than deregulation. It was and still is a total rejection of the… Continue reading
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USA: Returning to normal?
The recent release of the US jobs data for May, which apparently showed a reduction in the unemployment rate from April, sparked a sharp rally in the US stock market. And if you were to follow the stock markets of the major economies, you would think that the world economy was racing back to normal… Continue reading
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Neo-liberalism and how it has disrupted the bourgeois state
The incompetent and disorganised response by the US and UK government to the pandemic poses a deeper question than simply the personnel involved. Is this response accidental or predictable in so far as it has occurred in the two countries where neo-liberalism is most advanced, financialization most extreme and the state most disrupted. This article… Continue reading
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Mike Davis on pandemics, super-capitalism and the struggles of tomorrow
What are the underlying political, economic and environmental structures that paved the way for this global outbreak? Where do pandemics emerge from? Is our capitalist way of life biologically sustainable? Continue reading
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Amid coronavirus crisis, China demonstrates that an alternative to the US-led, neoliberal order is possible
For nearly four decades the United States and its Western allies have proclaimed to the world that “there is no alternative” to neoliberalism, maligning the state and public sector as inefficient and unproductive. If the 2008 financial crisis loosened this myth’s stranglehold on notions of what is possible, the current coronavirus pandemic has shattered it. Continue reading
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Italy Calls General Strike: “Our Lives Are Worth More Than Your Profits”
Italy is the global epicenter of the pandemic, with more than 64,000 cases of infection and almost 7,000 deaths, half of which occurred in the last week. This is the result of both neoliberal austerity measures that defunded healthcare in Italy and the criminal negligence of the EU. Continue reading