Thread by @docrussjackson

#Neoliberalism has decimated labour rights, imposed rigid limits on fiscal deficits, given massive tax breaks & bailouts to big capital, sacrificed local production for multinational supply chains, & privatized public sector assets at throwaway prices.

bostonreview.net/articles/why-n…

No matter who comes to power, no matter what promises are made before elections, the same economic policies are followed.

Since capital, especially finance, can leave a country en masse at extremely short notice—precipitating a financial crisis if its “confidence” in a country is undermined—Govts dare not upset the status quo, so pursue policies favourable to finance capital & indeed demanded by it.

The 'will' or 'sovereignty' of the people is a (Brexit) myth. It has been replaced by the sovereignty of global finance and the domestic corporations integrated with it.

This abridgment of democracy is usually justified by political and economic elites on the grounds that neoliberal economic policies usher in higher GDP growth.

But such growth doesn't benefit the bulk of the people, of course.

In fact, neoliberal policies are even more highly associated with the growth of income inequality than with the growth of GDP.

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1570832839318605824?s=20

But neoliberals have sold a powerful response to this objection: a rise in income inequality should be considered an acceptable price to pay for more rapid growth, for it still might occasionally mean an absolute improvement in the conditions of the worst off.

The fundamental ideological conceit of neoliberalism has been that growth will lift all boats, even if some boats rise much more than others.

There is perhaps no better counterexample to this claim than India, where neoliberal policies were introduced in 1991—spurring both a dramatic rise in inequality and, at the same time, an increase in certain measures of absolute poverty and a decimation of peasant agriculture.

In 1982, after more than six decades of strong income taxation, the top 1 percent of earners accounted for just 6 percent of national income, according to Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty. By 2014 that figure had ballooned to 22 percent, the highest it had ever been in a century.

Poverty also went up. In rural India, where the norm for defining poverty has been lack of access to 2200 calories per person per day, the proportion of the poor in total population increased from 58 percent in 1993–94 to 68 percent in 2011–12.

Despite these and other cracks in the rising-tide argument that had become all too apparent by the turn of the century, the narrative that neoliberalism would benefit everyone retained a certain currency until the early 2000s, for at least two reasons.

First, neoliberal globalization was said to have contributed to the astonishing reduction of poverty in China—the economist Pranab Bardhan has forcefully questioned this conventional story in these pages—and a significant segment of the global middle class did do well:

Its opportunities expanded, thanks to the outsourcing of a range of activities from advanced countries and to a rise in the share of economic surplus, caused by  languishing wages but increased productivity of the working class.

Second, even those hurt by the neoliberal regime often nurtured the hope that persistent high growth would sooner or later “trickle down” to them—a hope fed incessantly by a media establishment dominated by the middle and upper classes.

This hope more decisively receded, however, as the high-growth phase of neoliberal capitalism ended in 2008 with the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble, giving way to protracted crisis and stagnation in the world economy.

As the old prop of trickle-down economics lost its credibility, a new prop was needed to sustain the neoliberal regime politically.

The solution came in the form of an alliance between globally integrated corporate capital and local neofascist elements.

This dynamic has played out in countries around the world, from the rise of Narendra Modi in India and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Donald Trump in the United States.

To some observers, aspects of the Trump administration—his protectionist proposals, his support of Brexit—reflect a departure of neofascism from neoliberalism.

But this analysis overstates the significance of Trump’s breaks from neoliberal orthodoxy at the same time that it neglects the distinctive link between neofascism and neoliberalism in the developing world.

For evidence of the connection between neofascism and neoliberalism, we need look no further than the fact that no neofascist political formation has actually imposed controls over cross-border financial flows.

Ultimately, it is only by implementing such controls—along with strong domestic welfare policies—that we can escape this alliance.

To assess the prospects for such a shift, it is essential to appreciate the distinctive features of the new fascism.

Neofascist groups exist, but typically only as fringe elements. They take centre stage in periods of crisis only with the backing of corporate capital, which provides access to massive financial resources & control over the corporate-owned media & other means of opinion-making.

A characteristic strategy of neofascism, like its classical predecessors, is to demonize the “other,” whether Muslims in India, or racial and sexual minorities in the US & Brazil - or asylum seekers in the UK.

How exactly this occurs varies from country to country, of course.

Such vilification can take multiple forms: it might make no mention of economic crisis at all, concentrating instead on the majority community’s need to get back its “self-respect” that has been allegedly damaged by the minority in the past.

Or it might hold the minority responsible for economic woes, quite apart from its alleged role in damaging the majority community’s self-respect.

Non-fascist governments are accused of “pandering” to this minority by playing the politics of “appeasement.”

In addition to its attacks on the “other,” neofascism also echoes classical fascism in attacking any and all its critics.

It calls them “anti-national” by falsely equating criticism of the government with treachery to the nation.

It alleges all kinds of malfeasance in opposition parties & creates a pervasive atmosphere of fear—by browbeating or weaponizing the judiciary; by abrogating constitutional rights of the people; by outlawing protest; by subverting the independence of state institutions, etc.

In all this, neofascism is helped by a pliant and docile media.

And through it all, it uses its ascendancy to help the corporate sector attack the rights of workers won through decades of struggle.

While all these elements draw on classical fascism, neofascism also departs from its historical predecessors in significant ways. Classical fascism emerged before capital had been globalized, in the sense that it more clearly bore the stamp of its national origin.

Classical fascism was engaged in intense inter-imperialist rivalry with capital from other advanced countries, a rivalry in which it enlisted the support of its own state. The fascist goal was to re-partition a world already partitioned into economic territories.

Today's neofascism occupies a regime of globalized finance where inter-imperialist rivalry is muted by the free flow of capital. Globalized capital needs the whole world open for its free movement, so discourages rivalry & the fragmentation of the world into rival economic zones.

India provides a vivid illustration of the relation between neofascism and neoliberalism. For one thing, the neofascist Hindu supremacists that came to power in 2014 never had anything to do with India’s anti-colonial struggle (one of them even assassinated Mahatma Gandhi).