{"id":716,"date":"2013-04-23T23:26:57","date_gmt":"2013-04-23T22:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theculture.net\/radio\/?p=716"},"modified":"2015-05-07T15:09:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T14:09:17","slug":"goodbye-cruel-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theculture.net\/radio\/goodbye-cruel-bird\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Cruel Bird"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Play\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>

the foulest legacy
\nBorn: October 13, 1925, Grantham
\nDied: April 8, 2013, London<\/p>\n

\n
\"article-2305747-192CE731000005DC-680_306x481\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\"vietnam_war\"<\/a> \"CATHY-FUCK-OFF\"<\/a>t <\/a>he solution<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
After neoliberalism:<\/div>\n
analysing the present<\/div>\n
Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey<\/div>\n
and Michael Rustin<\/div>\n
The founding editors of<\/div>\n
Soundings<\/div>\n
set out the framing<\/div>\n
analysis for our online manifesto.<\/div>\n
W<\/div>\n
ith the banking crisis and the credit crunch of 2007-8, and their<\/div>\n
economic repercussions around the globe, the system of neoliberalism,<\/div>\n
or global free-market capitalism, that has come to dominate the world<\/div>\n
in the three decades since 1980, has imploded. As the scale of toxic debt became<\/div>\n
evident, credit and inter-bank lending dried up, spending slowed, output declined<\/div>\n
and unemployment rose. The system\u2019s vastly inflated financial sectors, which<\/div>\n
speculate in assets largely unrelated to the real economy of goods and services,<\/div>\n
precipitated an economic crisis whose catastrophic consequences are still unfolding.<\/div>\n
We believe that mainstream political debate simply does not recognise the<\/div>\n
depth of this crisis, nor the consequent need for radical rethinking. The economic<\/div>\n
model that has underpinned the social and political settlement of the last three<\/div>\n
decades is unravelling, but the broader political and social consensus apparently<\/div>\n
remains in place. We therefore offer this analysis as a contribution to the debate,<\/div>\n
in the hope that it will help people on the left think more about how we can shift<\/div>\n
the parameters of the debate, from one concerning small palliative and restorative<\/div>\n
measures, to one which opens the way for moving towards a new political era and<\/div>\n
new understandings of what constitutes the good society.<\/div>\n
1<\/div>\n
For three decades, the neoliberal system has been generating vast profits<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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9<\/div>\n
After neoliberalism: analysing the present<\/div>\n
for multi-nationals, investment institutions and venture capitalists, and huge<\/div>\n
accumulations of wealth for the new global super-rich, while grossly increasing<\/div>\n
the gap between rich and poor and deepening inequalities of income, health and<\/div>\n
life chances within and between countries, on a scale not seen since before the<\/div>\n
second world war. In North America and Western Europe – hitherto dynamos of<\/div>\n
the global economic system – rates of<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
growth are now lower than during the early<\/div>\n
post-war decades, when there was a more even balance of power between the social<\/div>\n
classes. There has been a steep decline in manufacturing and a hot-house expansion<\/div>\n
of financial services and the service economy; and a massive shift of power and<\/div>\n
resources from public to private, from state to market. \u2018The market\u2019 has become the<\/div>\n
model of social relations, exchange value the only value. Western governments have<\/div>\n
shown themselves weak and indecisive in responding to the environmental crisis,<\/div>\n
climate change and the threat to sustainable life on the planet, and have refused to<\/div>\n
address the issues in other than their own – market – terms.<\/div>\n
Likewise, the financial crisis has been used by many Western governments as a<\/div>\n
means of further entrenching the neoliberal model. They have adopted swingeing<\/div>\n
\u2018austerity measures\u2019 which, they claim, is the only way of reducing the deficits<\/div>\n
generated during the bonanza period of the 1980s and 1990s. They have launched<\/div>\n
an assault on the incomes, living standards and conditions of life of the less well-<\/div>\n
off members of society. In the UK, the cuts programme has frozen incomes, capped<\/div>\n
benefits, savaged public sector employment and undermined local gover<\/div>\n
nment.<\/div>\n
It has encouraged private capital to hollow-out the welfare state and dismantle<\/div>\n
the structures of health, welfare and education services. The burden of \u2018solving\u2019<\/div>\n
the crisis has been disproportionately off-loaded on to working people, targeting<\/div>\n
vulnerable, marginalised groups. These include low-income, single-parent families;<\/div>\n
children in poverty; women juggling part-time employment with multiple domestic<\/div>\n
responsibilities; pensioners, the disabled and the mentally ill; welfare-benefits and<\/div>\n
low-cost public housing \u2018dependants\u2019; the young unemployed (especially black<\/div>\n
youth); and students. Youth facilities have been closed; and citizens who depend<\/div>\n
on public amenities for their social well-being find themselves ber<\/div>\n
eft. Apart from its<\/div>\n
punitive and regressive social effects, this is a strategy destined to fail even in its own<\/div>\n
terms, since its main consequence will be a serious fall in demand and a collapse of<\/div>\n
tax revenues, deepening the downward economic spiral, with little fall in the deficit.<\/div>\n
In other words, the crisis itself has been used to reinforce the redistribution<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Soundings<\/div>\n
10<\/div>\n
from poor to rich. Moreover, it has also provided the alibi for a far-reaching further<\/div>\n
restructuring of state and society along market lines, with a raft of ideologically-<\/div>\n
driven \u2018reforms\u2019 designed to advance privatisation and marketisation. It has<\/div>\n
encouraged private, individualised solutions to social problems.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
This makes it all the<\/div>\n
more important for the left to make the argument that it is time for a new moral and<\/div>\n
economic settlement.<\/div>\n
Global dimensions of neoliberalism<\/div>\n
This neoliberal hegemony, both in its pomp and in its crisis, has had global<\/div>\n
implications. Dynamic, expanding capitalist systems have their own strategic and<\/div>\n
geopolitical imperatives. Neoliberalism has sought a favourable climate towards<\/div>\n
business across the globe. It demands low tax regimes, limited state interference,<\/div>\n
and unimpeded access to markets and vital resources. It calls for internal<\/div>\n
security, the capacity to contain external enemies, and strong rulers in control of<\/div>\n
their populations, with whom bargains can be struck and influence exercised.<\/div>\n
It engenders hostility to more democratic and alternative experiments. These<\/div>\n
principles have guided the strategies and underpinned the network of alliances,<\/div>\n
blocs and bases that the West – led by the US – has constructed. The Middle East<\/div>\n
clearly demonstrates that maintaining generally favourable conditions of operation<\/div>\n
– securing spheres of influence (the US\/Israel alliance), dealing with military<\/div>\n
challenges (Iran, Pakistan), repressing political instability (the Horn of Africa) and<\/div>\n
defeating threats (the Taliban, al-Quaida, Afghanistan) – figures as much as do<\/div>\n
specific resource \u2018grabs\u2019, such as for oil (Iraq, the Gulf States).<\/div>\n
The particular global character of neoliberalism was part of its initiating<\/div>\n
armoury – for instance through the Washington Consensus from the 1980s<\/div>\n
onwards – and it is also an element of its historical specificity. It is a globalisation<\/div>\n
in which a new form of financial imperialism is crucial (and Lon<\/div>\n
don has been<\/div>\n
central in its invention and dissemination), and in which a key dynamic has been<\/div>\n
a planetary search for new assets in which to speculate (through, for example,<\/div>\n
exported programmes of privatisation, spiralling markets in commodity futures,<\/div>\n
the buying up of vast tracts of land).<\/div>\n
But neoliberalism never conquered everything. It operated within, and created,<\/div>\n
a world of great diversity and unevenness. Its early – classic – laboratory was Chile,<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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11<\/div>\n
After neoliberalism: analysing the present<\/div>\n
but the rise of South East Asian tigers was, critically, a state-aided development (by<\/div>\n
no means the official neoliberal recipe). And in spite of the Western triumphalism of<\/div>\n
1989, Russia also retains its specificities – a hybrid of oligarchic and state capitalism<\/div>\n
combined with authoritarianism. China, too, struggles to define a dif<\/div>\n
ferent model;<\/div>\n
it currently combines centralised party control with openness to foreign investment,<\/div>\n
and acute internal geographical dislocations and widespread social conflict with<\/div>\n
break-neck rates of growth and the lifting of hundreds of millions out of poverty.<\/div>\n
Indeed, conflict has erupted in many parts of the world where the neoliberal<\/div>\n
orthodoxy has been adopted. India, so frequently lauded for its embrace of the<\/div>\n
market consensus, exhibits both extraordinary rifts between the new elites and<\/div>\n
the impoverished, and multiple and persistent conflicts over its curr<\/div>\n
ent economic<\/div>\n
strategy. Other major sites of conflict have been the water and gas wars in Bolivia,<\/div>\n
and the struggle of \u2018the poors\u2019 in Thailand. The emerging articulations of progressive<\/div>\n
governments and grassroots social movements in Latin America are, in varying ways<\/div>\n
and in varying degrees, responses to the impact of previous neoliberal policies. The<\/div>\n
alter-globalisation movement has been vocal. This has not been a simple victory.<\/div>\n
In fact, its very diversity and conflict has been an element in neoliberalism\u2019s<\/div>\n
current fracturing. The economic (im)balance between China and the USA has<\/div>\n
been both a central mechanism of complementarity and, increasingly, a source of<\/div>\n
instability. The crisis in the Eurozone has also been a critical weak link in the global<\/div>\n
structure. Having failed to design a financial architecture that could address uneven<\/div>\n
development between constituent countries, the Euro-elite powers (the troika<\/div>\n
above all) now attempt to blame the inevitable disaster on the constituent countries<\/div>\n
themselves (or some of them). They thus set peoples against peoples, pr<\/div>\n
ovoking<\/div>\n
dangerous nationalisms, while the culpability of the elite is effectively obscured. It<\/div>\n
is a geographical conjuring trick that converts the political fr<\/div>\n
ontier from being one<\/div>\n
between conflicting economic and social interests into one between national peoples,<\/div>\n
and moulds those peoples\u2019 self-identifications along nationalist lines.<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, and over the longer term, a tectonic shift of economic power is<\/div>\n
taking place, to China and the other BRIC countries, bringing with it growing<\/div>\n
confidence and increasing claims for voice on the world stage. Trade, and indeed<\/div>\n
conversations and contacts more generally, increasingly bypasses the North Atlantic<\/div>\n
region altogether. At the same time, while the number of millionaires increases<\/div>\n
even in the poorest places, in many countries, most obviously in sub-Saharan<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Soundings<\/div>\n
12<\/div>\n
Africa, there is rising impoverishment, widespread malnutrition (partly a product<\/div>\n
of the speculation in food prices), ecological devastation and political instability.<\/div>\n
There are battles over the control of energy and mineral resources. In the face of<\/div>\n
overwhelmingly unfavourable external pressures and restraints, governments cannot<\/div>\n
deal with poor schooling, hunger, malnutrition, disease and health pandemics or<\/div>\n
resist western consumerism, the arms traders and freelance mercenaries.<\/div>\n
The \u2018squeeze\u2019 has triggered an increase in local, tribal, inter-ethnic and religious<\/div>\n
sectarian violence, civil wars, military coups, armed militias, child soldiers, \u2018ethnic<\/div>\n
cleansing\u2019 and genocidal rape; and these in turn have precipitated cross-border<\/div>\n
and international migration, as civilians flee war-zones, join refugee camps or seek<\/div>\n
asylum abroad. The \u2018failed (or failing) states\u2019 which Western strategists proclaim<\/div>\n
to be a major threat to security are themselves often the perverse consequences of<\/div>\n
neoliberalism and western intervention. And the very concept of failed state is often<\/div>\n
used as an ideological weapon.<\/div>\n
Most recently, the response to the crisis by the North Atlantic elites has made<\/div>\n
matters worse – for instance through its effects on prices and currency levels. The<\/div>\n
fact of global instability and looming crisis has by no means modified the neoliberal<\/div>\n
offensive. If Chile was the laboratory for the early phases, Greece has become the<\/div>\n
laboratory for an even more fierce implementation, while the Arab Spring may yet<\/div>\n
be recuperated to open up new fields for market forces. And in Latin America the<\/div>\n
recent US-sanctioned coups in Honduras and Paraguay have been swiftly followed<\/div>\n
by radical concessions to foreign capital.<\/div>\n
Ideologies and conflicts<\/div>\n
The present economic crisis is a moment of potential rupture. The welfare-state<\/div>\n
\u2018settlement\u2019 that preceded the neoliberal era in the North Atlantic world had<\/div>\n
crumbled in the 1970s, and, with the end of the Cold War, Thatcherite and<\/div>\n
Reaganite neoliberalism won the contest over which way forward would be taken.<\/div>\n
This outcome was not inevitable.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Conflicts between social settlements and the<\/div>\n
crafting of hegemonies are the product of contending social forces. During the<\/div>\n
welfare state era, the working class did make economic gains. Wealth was modestly<\/div>\n
redistributed, egalitarianism and social rights became more embedded. Capital\u2019s<\/div>\n
share of the surplus was significantly eroded. But this was a shift that could not be<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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13<\/div>\n
After neoliberalism: analysing the present<\/div>\n
tolerated. The expanded globalisation of its operation was partly (among its many<\/div>\n
determinants, and along with privatisation and financialisation) a means of r<\/div>\n
estoring<\/div>\n
the declining share of the surplus taken by capital. Resistance to Thatcherism\u2019s<\/div>\n
\u2018war on society\u2019, conflicts over democratic government in London and other cities,<\/div>\n
struggles in the global South, the rise of new social movements, opposition to the<\/div>\n
poll tax, and contests over the rights of organised labour everywhere – all these<\/div>\n
were critical moments in the struggle to determine what would follow<\/div>\n
.<\/div>\n
Social forces<\/div>\n
locked in conflict across different areas of social life have always been at stake.<\/div>\n
The current neoliberal settlement has also entailed the re-working of the<\/div>\n
common-sense assumptions of the earlier, social democratic settlement. Every social<\/div>\n
settlement, in order to establish itself, is crucially founded on embedding as common<\/div>\n
sense a whole bundle of beliefs – ideas beyond question, assumptions so deep that<\/div>\n
the very fact that they<\/div>\n
are<\/div>\n
assumptions is only rarely brought to light. In the case of<\/div>\n
neoliberalism this bundle of ideas revolves around the supposed naturalness of \u2018the<\/div>\n
market\u2019, the primacy of the competitive individual, the superiority of the private over<\/div>\n
the public. It is as a result of the hegemony of this bundle of ideas – their being the<\/div>\n
ruling common sense – that the settlement as a whole is commonly called \u2018neoliberal\u2019.<\/div>\n
But while commitment to neoliberal economic theory is a key part of the overall<\/div>\n
consensus, it is also the case that the theory itself plays a crucial role in legitimising the<\/div>\n
restoration and reinvigoration of a regime of power, profit and privilege.<\/div>\n
As we have seen, the rubrics of neoliberalism, embedded in a common sense that<\/div>\n
has enrolled whole populations materially and imaginatively into a financialised and<\/div>\n
marketised view of the world, are implemented when they serve those interests and<\/div>\n
are blithely ignored when they do not (the bail-out of the banks being only the most<\/div>\n
recent and egregious example). Likewise its attacks on the state and on notions of<\/div>\n
the public are propelled not just out of a belief in an economic theory but from the<\/div>\n
hope that they will lead to the reopening of areas for potential profit-making through<\/div>\n
commodification. This drive to expand the sphere of accumulation has been crucial<\/div>\n
to the restoration of the old powers.<\/div>\n
Origins and explanations<\/div>\n
Neoliberalism has its origins in eighteenth-century liberal political theory and<\/div>\n
political economy, from where it derives its touchstones. It has been revamped<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Soundings<\/div>\n
14<\/div>\n
and reworked to be appropriate to these times and geographies, and it is multiple<\/div>\n
in form in reflection of these expanded geographies. But its core propositions, of<\/div>\n
the free possessive individual engaging with others through market transactions,<\/div>\n
remain the touchstone. From the very beginning these propositions were the<\/div>\n
product of class interests – in the UK in the eighteenth century, of the rising agrarian,<\/div>\n
commercial, and later manufacturing, bourgeoisies. The attempt has always been to<\/div>\n
present them as eternal truths – concepts of markets and individuals being merely<\/div>\n
descriptive of an ideal state of nature. That this was not so has been demonstrated<\/div>\n
over centuries, as the \u2018free market\u2019 and the free-standing individual have had to be<\/div>\n
actively produced and imposed. Whether through Acts of Enclosure, impositions<\/div>\n
of \u2018structural adjustment\u2019, military interventions or attacks on public expenditure,<\/div>\n
market societies are products of intervention (and often by states).<\/div>\n
That market forces are imposed on some but not others has been true since the<\/div>\n
colonial metropole\u2019s \u2018free-labour\u2019 regimes were harnessed by the imperial system to<\/div>\n
the \u2018forced-labour\u2019 of plantation slavery. This contradiction became more evident<\/div>\n
when they collided in the slave revolts and the struggles over Abolition. Market<\/div>\n
forces are never universally imposed. There is no such thing as a fully marketised<\/div>\n
system. Capitalism relies on monopolies and \u2018socialised\u2019 risk, and on spheres that<\/div>\n
exist outside the logic of its operations – including that of the reproduction of<\/div>\n
people, and the natural world. Free wage-labour has always been augmented by<\/div>\n
unfree forms of exploitation such as serfdom, slavery, bondage, indenture, peonage.<\/div>\n
These mark the limits of \u2018the market\u2019s\u2019 generalisability.<\/div>\n
Indeed, much of what has gone on through globalisation over the last thirty<\/div>\n
years resonates with events in late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century<\/div>\n
England, when industrial and urbanised capitalism was first finding its form. The<\/div>\n
expulsion from their land of millions in the global South recalls the enclosures<\/div>\n
of the commons. The vast migrations to the ever-expanding cities are like the<\/div>\n
migrations of earlier industrialisations (these within-nation migrations being just<\/div>\n
as socially disruptive and potentially explosive as migrations between nations).<\/div>\n
There is the creation of a vast new force of \u2018free labourers\u2019 with all the personal and<\/div>\n
social wrenchings (as well as new freedoms) that that can entail, and the further<\/div>\n
commodification of land and labour. International migration itself (in part a result of<\/div>\n
all of these developments and their attendant geographically uneven ramifications)<\/div>\n
represents the creation of a free global labour force – just as the age of the Swing<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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15<\/div>\n
After neoliberalism: analysing the present<\/div>\n
rioters and of Peterloo saw the creation of a national labour market in Britain.<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, looking as it were in the opposite direction, from the UK outwards,<\/div>\n
while successive governments hang pathetically on to the coat-tails of a USA whose<\/div>\n
economic hegemony is itself under challenge from China and the other BRIC<\/div>\n
countries, the City of London – again building on its long assumption of supremacy,<\/div>\n
but now thoroughly internationalised and one of the fountainheads of neoliberalism<\/div>\n
– has found itself, at least for a while, a new imperial role.<\/div>\n
Neoliberalism\u2019s project, then, is a reassertion of capital\u2019s historic imperative to<\/div>\n
profit – through financialisation, globalisation and yet further commodification.<\/div>\n
Causes and complexities<\/div>\n
It is never easy to define what is cause and what is effect in conjunctures of this<\/div>\n
kind. There are legitimate differences of view about the causal emphasis that should<\/div>\n
be allotted to ideological, political and material factors, or the weight that should<\/div>\n
be given to the conscious actions of social classes versus the dynamic attributes of<\/div>\n
social structures. The picture is never simple. It is certainly true that class interests<\/div>\n
have been active in imposing neoliberalism on the world, and now refuse to concede<\/div>\n
the relative gains of the past three decades; and it is also the case that classes have<\/div>\n
shared economic interests – both those that are particular to specific sectors (for<\/div>\n
example, agriculture or manufacture), and those that are general – concerning the<\/div>\n
maintenance of stability and a favourable climate in which to \u2018do business\u2019.<\/div>\n
However, the shift in economic and social power over the decades since the<\/div>\n
1970s was not driven by a single motor. The economic is critical; but it cannot<\/div>\n
determine everything – even \u2018in the last instance\u2019, as Althusser famously argued.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Any given conjuncture represents, rather, the fusion \u2018into a ruptural unity\u2019 of an<\/div>\n
ensemble of economic, social, political and ideological factors where \u2018<\/div>\n
dissimilar<\/div>\n
currents … heterogeneous class interests … contrary political and social strivings\u2019<\/div>\n
fuse.<\/div>\n
2<\/div>\n
What has come together in the current neoliberal conjuncture includes<\/div>\n
class<\/div>\n
and other social interests, new institutional arrangements, the exercise of excessive<\/div>\n
influence by private corporations over democratic processes, political developments<\/div>\n
such as the recruitment of New Labour to the neoliberal consensus, the effects of<\/div>\n
legitimising ideologies and a quasi-religious belief in the \u2018hidden hand\u2019, and the self-<\/div>\n
propelling virtues of \u2018the market\u2019<\/div>\n
.<\/div>\n
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Soundings<\/div>\n
16<\/div>\n
Classes are also formations with complex internal compositions that change<\/div>\n
over historical time. Those among whom neoliberalism became the dominant<\/div>\n
tendency now constitute a global class that includes – alongside older echelons<\/div>\n
– the world\u2019s leading industrialists and businesspeople, CEOs of the great<\/div>\n
corporate firms, the new transnational, trans-ethnic speculators<\/div>\n
, directors of large<\/div>\n
financial institutions, hedge-fund operators, venture capitalists, as well as the<\/div>\n
senior executives who manage the system and have a major stake<\/div>\n
in its success.<\/div>\n
We must add, too, the key but subaltern archipelago of consultants, marketing<\/div>\n
experts, public relations people, lawyers, creative accountants and tax-avoidance<\/div>\n
experts whose fortunes are tied to its success. No doubt the huge privileges and<\/div>\n
immunities won by this formation explain why they seem so morally denuded,<\/div>\n
impervious to any sense of a wider community or responsibility for their actions,<\/div>\n
and completely lacking in any understanding of how ordinary people live.<\/div>\n
Their resistance to reform has been obdurate, their greed brazen. They reward<\/div>\n
themselves extravagantly, while insisting that \u2018we are all in this together\u2019, and<\/div>\n
that their real purpose is \u2018serving customers\u2019 and \u2018corporate responsibility\u2019, not<\/div>\n
protecting their own interests.<\/div>\n
Of course, the term class interests does not imply that classes are monolithic,<\/div>\n
that they appear on the political stage as unified actors, or are fully conscious<\/div>\n
of their interests and pursue them rationally. There are important conflicts of<\/div>\n
interest (for instance in the UK between, say, those of finance capital and those<\/div>\n
of small businesses, northern manufacturing and small farmers). These real<\/div>\n
contradictions may offer political opportunities. Furthermore, interests are<\/div>\n
always open to conflicting ideological interpretations, and their redefinition can<\/div>\n
have political effects.<\/div>\n
Nor is economic class the only salient social division. Gender, racial, ethnic<\/div>\n
and sexual divisions long predate the birth of capitalism, and still structure social<\/div>\n
relations in distinctive ways. They have their own binary categories (male\/female,<\/div>\n
masculine\/feminine, straight\/gay, religious\/secular, colonial\/metropolitan, civilised\/<\/div>\n
barbarian), and they figure differently from class in the distribution of social and<\/div>\n
symbolic goods (though they are articulated to class). They \u2018manage\u2019 their own<\/div>\n
systems of reward and scarcity (paid\/unpaid, legitimacy\/illegitimacy, normal\/<\/div>\n
abnormal, saved\/damned). They position the bodies of their subjects dif<\/div>\n
ferently in<\/div>\n
the Nature\/Culture continuum. They \u2018govern\u2019 different moments of the life-cycle<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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17<\/div>\n
After neoliberalism: analysing the present<\/div>\n
and attribute to people different subjective capacities (paternal\/maternal, emotional\/<\/div>\n
cognitive, duty\/pleasure).<\/div>\n
These social divisions each have privileged sites of operation<\/div>\n
(for example, home\/<\/div>\n
workplace, private\/public) and distinct disciplinary regimes (patriarchal power,<\/div>\n
property inheritance, unpaid domestic labour, control of sexuality, gendered and<\/div>\n
racially-differentiated wage rates). They deploy different modes of oppression (religious<\/div>\n
persecution, social and sexual discrimination, racialisation). They construct their own<\/div>\n
hierarchies of \u2018othering\u2019 and belonging, via discrimination, stereotyping, prejudicial<\/div>\n
speech, inferiorisation, marginalisation, abjection, projection, fantasying and<\/div>\n
fetishisation. When these social divisions operate within a capitalist system, they are,<\/div>\n
of course, profoundly shaped by it and articulated to it. But they retain their \u2018relative<\/div>\n
autonomy\u2019. This requires us to rethink social relations from another perspective (for<\/div>\n
instance reframing the exploitation of labour in production from the perspective of the<\/div>\n
reproduction of social labour, which is heavily gendered). These divisions have been<\/div>\n
reworked through the present settlement, sometimes being reinforced and sometimes<\/div>\n
refashioned in ambiguous ways.<\/div>\n
Thus, a general social and political heterogeneity is evident in the protest<\/div>\n
movements against the austerity cuts. They have been spearheaded in Britain by<\/div>\n
professional organisations as well as by the unions. New social movements like UK<\/div>\n
Uncut, Feminist Fightback or Occupy are characterised by complex class, gender<\/div>\n
and ethnic composition. The Green Party provides a bridge between environmental<\/div>\n
movements and mainstream politics. Mobilising resistance thus requires alliances of<\/div>\n
a sort which only a multi-focused political strategy can hope to construct.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Common sense, identity, and culture<\/div>\n
Ideology plays a key role in disseminating, legitimising and re-invigorating a regime<\/div>\n
of power, profit and privilege. Neoliberal ideas seem to have sedimented into the<\/div>\n
western imaginary and become embedded in popular \u2018common sense\u2019. They set the<\/div>\n
parameters – provide the \u2018taken-for-granteds\u2019 – of public discussion, media debate<\/div>\n
and popular calculation.<\/div>\n
Not all of this, though, is specific to the neoliberal settlement of r<\/div>\n
ecent decades.<\/div>\n
Even during the redistributivist welfare state, the basic tenets of free-market<\/div>\n
capitalism were not fundamentally challenged. Redistribution transformed the lives<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Soundings<\/div>\n
18<\/div>\n
of millions, but its project remained ameliorative. The very language of politics<\/div>\n
revealed this: we \u2018intervened\u2019 (i.e. took conscious social action) into \u2018markets\u2019 (i.e.<\/div>\n
the naturally pregiven state of affairs).<\/div>\n
One key strand in neoliberalism\u2019s ideological armoury is neoliberal economic<\/div>\n
theory itself. So \u2018naturalised\u2019 have its nostrums become that policies can claim<\/div>\n
to be implemented with popular consent, though they are manifestly partial and<\/div>\n
limited. Opening public areas for potential profit-making is accepted because it<\/div>\n
appears to be \u2018just economic common sense\u2019. The ethos of the \u2018fr<\/div>\n
ee market\u2019 is taken<\/div>\n
to licence an increasing disregard for moral standards, and even for the law itself.<\/div>\n
Commercialisation has cultivated an ethos of corruption and evasiveness. Banks,<\/div>\n
once beacons of probity, rig interest rates, mis-sell products, launder drug money,<\/div>\n
flout international embargoes, hide away fortunes in safe havens. They settle their<\/div>\n
\u2018misdemeanours\u2019 for huge sums that hardly dent their balance sheets. Similarly,<\/div>\n
when private firms that have been publicly contracted fail to meet tar<\/div>\n
gets they are<\/div>\n
allowed to continue. Graduates stacking supermarket shelves are told they don\u2019t<\/div>\n
need to be paid because they are \u2018getting work experience\u2019. Commercialisation<\/div>\n
permeates everywhere, trumps everything. Once the imperatives of a \u2018market<\/div>\n
culture\u2019 become entrenched, anything goes. Such is the power of the hegemonic<\/div>\n
common sense.<\/div>\n
But it is a common sense that has to be produced and maintained. The capture<\/div>\n
of political influence by corporate wealth and power serves to maintain their hold<\/div>\n
over the political process and state institutions (as in the phone-hacking\/<\/div>\n
News<\/div>\n
International<\/div>\n
scandals). Corporate ownership of dominant sectors of the media gives<\/div>\n
capital sway over the means and strategies of representation: the retinue of CEOs,<\/div>\n
public relations people and lobbyists who haunt the TV studios to reassure us that<\/div>\n
\u2018things have been put in place to prevent it happening again\u2019, have guaranteed<\/div>\n
access, and function as the primary definers of reality. Contrary views have a more<\/div>\n
fleeting visibility. A few intrepid journalists do an impressive job of unmasking,<\/div>\n
but the media more generally seems to find itself thinking within the groove of<\/div>\n
the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxies. Even where \u2018balance\u2019 is provided, this rarely<\/div>\n
questions the prevailing terms of debate, and there is usually a reluctance to pursue<\/div>\n
with any rigour the serious issues involved.<\/div>\n
The ideology of competitive individualism has also been imposed via the<\/div>\n
stigmatisation of the so-called \u2018undeserving\u2019 poor. \u2018Welfare scroungers\u2019, who cannot<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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19<\/div>\n
After neoliberalism: analysing the present<\/div>\n
provide for themselves through their own efforts, are labelled morally deficient<\/div>\n
– \u2018idlers who prefer a lie-in to work\u2019, \u2018living on benefits as a \u201clife-style\u00e2\u20ac\u009d choice\u2019.<\/div>\n
Similarly, everyone – parents, students, clients, patients, taxpayers, citizens – is<\/div>\n
expected to think of themselves as consumers of \u2018products\u2019 that will bring them<\/div>\n
individual economic advantage, rather than as social beings satisfying a human<\/div>\n
need, producing something of use, or participating in an experience of learning from<\/div>\n
which others as well as themselves may benefit. In these ways, neoliberalism has<\/div>\n
been engaged in constructing new entrepreneurial identities and re-engineering the<\/div>\n
bourgeois subject.<\/div>\n
Looking at the broader cultural picture, we detect similar tendencies: in<\/div>\n
consumer and celebrity cultures, the drive for instant gratification, the fantasies of<\/div>\n
success, the fetishisation of technology, the triumph of \u2018life-style\u2019 over substance, the<\/div>\n
endless refashioning of the \u2018self\u2019, the commercialisation of \u2018identity\u2019 and the utopias<\/div>\n
of self-sufficiency.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
These \u2018soft\u2019 forms of power are as effective in changing social<\/div>\n
attitudes as are \u2018hard\u2019 forms of power such as legislation to restrict strikes.<\/div>\n
It is the reassertion of the powers of capital that has produced the neoliberal<\/div>\n
world as we know it today, as its agents have taken command of the new circuits of<\/div>\n
global capital. The widening of inequalities is the main launch-pad of this restoration<\/div>\n
bid. And this has put into question the long-promised transfer of income, power and<\/div>\n
responsibility from rich to poor, men to women, centre to margin. Countervailing<\/div>\n
values – equality, democracy and citizenship – have been circumvented, and<\/div>\n
dissenting social forces fragmented and dispersed. The reinvigorated finance sector<\/div>\n
has been articulated with a new imperialism. These \u2018victories\u2019 ar<\/div>\n
e flaunted in brash<\/div>\n
material form – each new high-rise a middle finger raised.<\/div>\n
The future of the crisis<\/div>\n
This phase of free-market capitalism has now entered a serious economic crisis<\/div>\n
from which it cannot easily engineer an exit. But the shape of the crisis remains<\/div>\n
\u2018economic\u2019. There are so far no major political fractures, no unsettlings of<\/div>\n
ideological hegemony, no ruptures in popular discourse. The disastrous effects<\/div>\n
of the crisis are clearly evident; but there is little understanding of how everyday<\/div>\n
troubles connect to wider structures. There is no serious crisis of ideas. Indeed<\/div>\n
the crisis has been exploited as a further opportunity to reinforce the very<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Soundings<\/div>\n
20<\/div>\n
neoliberal narrative that has led to the system\u2019s implosion, and to push its project<\/div>\n
even further. Neoliberals dogmatically insist that it was the \u2018restraints\u2019 on, not<\/div>\n
the excesses of, the market that bear the responsibility for its manifest failure.<\/div>\n
Extensive work, backed by daunting resources, has gone into securing consent<\/div>\n
to this version of events. There are forensically targeted attacks on groups like<\/div>\n
Occupy London<\/div>\n
,<\/div>\n
the very unpretentiousness of whose tents, huddled between the<\/div>\n
monumental edifices of Mammon and God, gave it symbolic power. Its questions<\/div>\n
resonated. It had to go.<\/div>\n
And yet, there is no hegemonic closure – hegemonies, even the neoliberal one,<\/div>\n
are never totally secure. Materially, the cuts bite deep and hard, and there are more<\/div>\n
to come. There is growing distress, discontent, de-politicisation, scepticism and<\/div>\n
loss of confidence in the political class. The distress is palpable. But people feel<\/div>\n
puzzled about where to go next. Polls suggest that the drive for privatisation has<\/div>\n
not won the day: but are egalitarianism and social collectivism still alive and well?<\/div>\n
There is a sense that something is wrong with a system which distributes wealth in<\/div>\n
a 1%<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
– 99% way. Politicians feel obliged to reassure the public daily that the cuts<\/div>\n
are \u2018fair\u2019. There are other such resonances in popular consciousness. But who is<\/div>\n
nurturing them?<\/div>\n
Farther afield, in Europe, there is popular dissent, opposition to austerity<\/div>\n
strategies and support for \u2018growth-and-jobs\u2019 alternatives. There is the democratic<\/div>\n
awakening of the \u2018Arab Spring\u2019 and, in Latin America, explicit challenges to<\/div>\n
neoliberal hegemony. Hegemonies are never completed projects: they are always<\/div>\n
in contention. There are always cracks and contradictions – and therefore<\/div>\n
opportunities.<\/div>\n
However, in the UK, Labour, the official opposition, is in serious difficulties. It<\/div>\n
leads in the polls but it is not yet winning hearts and minds. It shuttles between<\/div>\n
conflicting ways forward. It seems afraid of its own (left) shadow, in hock to<\/div>\n
the old Blairite rump and a belief in the conservatism of the electorate, trapped<\/div>\n
in parliamentary rituals, mesmerised by electoral politics. It has been rendered<\/div>\n
speechless by the charge that it opened the door through which the Coalition is<\/div>\n
triumphantly marching. It seems unable to draw a clear line in the sand: a political<\/div>\n
frontier. It makes effective tactical interventions but appears tongue-tied when<\/div>\n
invited to enunciate an alternative set of principles, to outline a strategic political<\/div>\n
approach or to sketch out a compelling alternative vision.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\n
\n
21<\/div>\n
After neoliberalism: analysing the present<\/div>\n
A \u2018manifesto\u2019 by instalments<\/div>\n
Our purpose is to set out an agenda of ideas for a progressive political project which<\/div>\n
transcends the limitations of conventional thinking as to what it is \u2018reasonable\u2019 to<\/div>\n
propose or do. We will try to open a debate which goes beyond matters of electoral<\/div>\n
feasibility, or of what \u2018the markets\u2019 will tolerate. Electoral change<\/div>\n
is<\/div>\n
urgent, critical<\/div>\n
and necessary: but it will not change much if it means a continuation of the existing<\/div>\n
assumptions under a different name. As to practicality – \u2018what works affects lives\u2019<\/div>\n
– yes, but there must be a fundamental break with the pragmatic calculations<\/div>\n
which disfigure current political thinking. It is the maps, not the facts, which have<\/div>\n
disintegrated. The neoliberal order itself needs to be called into question, and radical<\/div>\n
alternatives to its foundational assumptions put forward for discussion. Our analysis<\/div>\n
suggests that this is a moment for changing the terms of debate, reformulating<\/div>\n
positions, taking the longer view, making a leap.<\/div>\n
For us, this is not a question of restoring the tried remedies of the post-war<\/div>\n
welfare-state settlement. Of course, that would not be an altogether bad place to<\/div>\n
start. But that compromise, for all its attempt to achieve a different balance of values<\/div>\n
and power from that dictated by markets, nevertheless accepted that the market<\/div>\n
sectors should still be left essentially free to generate profits, while a public system<\/div>\n
managed by elected governments would merely be allowed to redistribute some<\/div>\n
of the ensuing resources, and provide for some social needs which markets would<\/div>\n
otherwise neglect. (And by the 1970s, as the left itself argued, some of the other<\/div>\n
flaws of the welfare settlement, for example the state\u2019s frequent paternalism and<\/div>\n
lack of responsiveness, were contributing to the ebbing away of support.) The rise<\/div>\n
and crisis of neoliberalism should have taught us that that historical solution was<\/div>\n
not radical enough. In any case the political conditions of existence of the previous<\/div>\n
social democratic settlement are no longer operative. Debating how and why the<\/div>\n
terms of reference have changed is certainly worth doing. But such debate will<\/div>\n
only be fruitful if new transitional demands, framed in the light of the analysis of<\/div>\n
contemporary global realities, point us further ahead.<\/div>\n
This is a slightly edited version of our<\/div>\n
After Neoliberalism: the Kilburn Manifesto<\/div>\n
.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The \u2018manifesto\u2019 will be developed in monthly instalments, freely available online at www.<\/div>\n
lwbooks.co.uk\/journals\/soundings\/manifesto.html. We hope to engage in this project not<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n
Soundings<\/div>\n
22<\/div>\n
only friends and colleagues who have been closely associated with<\/div>\n
Soundings<\/div>\n
, but also<\/div>\n
a much broader public. We invite comments and reflections on this whole idea and its<\/div>\n
formulation. For more information (including on why Kilburn!), please go to the website.<\/div>\n
Notes<\/div>\n
1. Regular<\/div>\n
Soundings<\/div>\n
readers will recognise that this is a case we have been<\/div>\n
developing for some time. For more background to these arguments see our<\/div>\n
online book<\/div>\n
The neoliberal crisis<\/div>\n
: www.lwbooks.co.uk\/ebooks\/The_Neoliberal_<\/div>\n
crisis.pdf.<\/div>\n
2. Louis Althusser,<\/div>\n
For Marx<\/div>\n
, Verso 1969, Part 3, \u2018Contradiction and<\/div>\n
Overdetermination\u2019, p99<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the foulest legacy Born: October 13, 1925, Grantham Died: April 8, 2013, London t he solution After neoliberalism: analysing the present Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey and Michael Rustin The founding editors of Soundings set out the framing analysis for our…<\/p>\n

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