Tag: neoliberalism

2005-22′: The crisis of western capitalism behind the left and far right radicalism

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Saturday, 23 April 2022 — MROnline

Originally published: Defend Democracy Press on April 21, 2022 by Dimitris Konstantakopoulos

First of two articles

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 going on now in the world if we don’t take into consideration the crisis the globally dominant Western capitalism has been facing since 2008. The depth of this crisis is comparable to the depth of the two biggest crises in the history of capitalism, those of 1873 and 1929.

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The State Strikes Back

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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 national governments of their tax and legal powers rendering them supplicants to the multi-nationals and international finance.

Brian Green, 9  April 2021.

Indian Farmers on the Frontline Against Global Capitalism

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1 February 2021 — Global Research

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”.

He, along with thousands of other farmers, are mobilising against three important pieces of farm legislation that were recently forced through parliament. To all intents and purposes, these laws sound a neoliberal death knell for most of India’s cultivators and its small farms, the backbone of the nation’s food production.

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Three tragedies born in the womb of neo-liberalism

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25 January 2021 — theplanningmotivedotcom

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 of society will be forced to bear.

grenfell-pandemic-brexit.pdf

End of Neoliberalism? The Capitalist Reset and the Possibilities of a New Stage of Social Revolt

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29 November 2020 —  Internationalist 360°

Luis Bonilla-Molina

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Protests against police violence in Paris, November 28, 2020

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 of the liberalization that has occurred in the last decades with regard to health, social security, and education systems.

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Against “Capitalist Realism” and the “Neoliberal State”

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10 November, 2020 — Global Research

By Megan Sherman

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 and represses radical public critique of the late capitalist social system, making democracy only notional. Today, capitalist realism maintains a monopoly on interpretation of culture and politics, raising questions about the dictatorship of the market, which spreads its ideology like an aggressive virus in to all parts of society. Neoliberalism rejoices in the desecration of the public. This essay argues that the best defence against the seemingly total power of predatory capitalist realism is a strong public sphere, where healthy debate about alternatives to the prevailing social reality is permitted, allowing civic society the space to conceive and construct programmes for revolution conceived in the public good.

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Lockdowns, Coronavirus, and Banks: Following the Money

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15 August 2020 — American Herald Tribune

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By Prof. Anthony Hall

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 throughout the world were told to “shelter in place,” all in the name of combating the COVID-19 virus.

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Crisis and Virus: COVID-19 in Context

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30 July, 2020 — The Bullet

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“Toward the end of the twentieth century a sickness struck the world. Not everyone died, but all suffered from it” — Samir Amin (2003, 7).

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 austerity, and three years since the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. These historical milestones already offered an opportunity for a retrospective with future implications; however, 2020 will undoubtedly be remembered as the year of the virus with all the attendant hardship and hope that might bring.

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Post-Pandemic Economic Scenarios-Interview #3

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14 June 2020 — Jack Rasmus

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 of the crisis, and on left intellectuals’ views like Slavoj Zizek.

Britain’s government – entangled in its own corruption

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10 June 2020 — True Publica

By Rob Woodward – 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 ‘post-war consensus’ that drives privatisation, nationalisation and unleashes ‘corporatism’ – the so-called efficiency of the free-market and the fiction sold to everyone as a ‘trickle-down’ effect.

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USA: Returning to normal?

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6 June 2020 — Michael Roberts Blog

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 as the lockdowns imposed by most governments to combat the spread of COVID-19 pandemic are relaxed and even ended.

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Neo-liberalism and how it has disrupted the bourgeois state

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2 May 2020 — theplanningmotivedotcom

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 addresses this question.

the-neo-liberal-state.pdf

Mike Davis on pandemics, super-capitalism and the struggles of tomorrow

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30 March 2020 — Mada Masra

The coronavirus pandemic is overwhelming to comprehend. There are now hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases. Tens of thousands have died. Nations are on lockdown as the disease continues to spread. The planet is in crisis.

How did this happen?

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?

To shed light on some of these questions, we turned to American writer, historian and political activist Mike Davis, author of over 20 books, including City of Quartz, Planet of Slums, Ecology of Fear, and The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. Davis is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of California, Riverside and is a recipient of a McArthur Fellowship and the Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

He responded in writing to a series of questions from Mada Masr about the coronavirus pandemic.

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Amid coronavirus crisis, China demonstrates that an alternative to the US-led, neoliberal order is possible

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31 March 2020 — MROnline

From the series Paintings for Wuhan, China (2020) by Li Zhong

by

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.

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Brexit, Covid-19 and the Debt Deluge – The perfect storm about to engulf us all

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21 March 2020 — True Publica

By TruePublica Editor: Remembering this impending event and recalling it from memory to your friends is as easy as A, B, C, D. Broadly speaking it is about four interlinked events that have already happened but their combined effects will engulf the country within a year. Austerity, Brexit, CoVid and Debt will lead to a ruinous recession or a country and society so debt-laden it will be at the mercy of the ‘moneymen’ for decades to come.
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The Capitalist Pandemic, Coronavirus and the Economic Crisis

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19 March 2020 — CADTM

by Eric Toussaint

Sommaire

 A public health crisis

The coronavirus pandemic is a serious public health problem and the human suffering caused by the spread of this virus will be enormous. If it massively affects countries of the Global South with very fragile public health systems that have been undermined by 40 years of neo-liberal policies, the death toll will be very high. We must not forget the critical situation of the Iranian population, victim of the blockade imposed by Washington, a blockade that includes medicines and medical equipment.

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Editorial: Only a collectivist approach can solve the Covid-19 crisis

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15 March 2020 — Morning Star Online

The neoliberal orthodoxy which decrees that public services should be located in the marketplace, their functions subordinated to the profit nexus and service provision reduced to bare-bones delivery means the NHS has a limited number of intensive care units that — before the coronavirus epidemic really takes off — are already 80 per cent occupied.

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