Faced with the near certainty of global ecological catastrophe resulting from deliberate human choice, we must free ourselves from the ideological constraints of neoliberalism or face extinction.
By Fred Guerin
In his seminal political essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” the dissident playwright and philosopher Vaclav Havel argued that becoming empowered requires us to “live in truth,” which means facing up to the uncomfortable reality that we are not solely victims of the political and economic order we live under, but sometimes also enablers who play into its myths and cover up its lies. We turn the lies into truth and come to believe it is the only way to get through, the only way to survive in what we are told again and again is a “dog-eat-dog” world.
It is this uncomfortable truth that inevitably raises the question: Why has neoliberalism succeeded so well? The answer is unsettling precisely because it implicates all of us — at least all of us who live in industrial capitalist countries. Even if we are not equally blameworthy in creating such a monstrous ideology, we have all, in some measure, been co-opted into accepting neoliberal capitalism’s false premises and promises.
It is quite true that domestic and international economic and political structures that legitimize neoliberal capitalism are oriented by, and in the interest of, an elite corporate class. Yet in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis — the worst economic crash since 1929 — there has been no massive global uprising or any sustained call for radical institutional reform (with the exception of the short-lived grassroots Occupy Wall Street movement, and to some extent, France’s Yellow Vests movement).
Continuous rebellion and dissent leading to revolution has not happened because we appear to have tacitly bought into an ideology that ensures our own powerlessness to transform ourselves or our societies. The good news is that this is changing. In the last few years, many have become conscious of the fact that civilizational collapse as a consequence of human-caused climate disruption is directly attributable to an economic and political system that views the Earth and everything that lives on it as an inexhaustible means for individual and corporate profit.
For the first time in human history, we are confronted by the near certainty of global ecological catastrophe and its resulting political and economic breakdown — not as a consequence of natural causes, nor the vengeful act of a deity, but as a result of deliberate human choice. The brutal reality is that the present world of neoliberal economics and politics simply could not have survived had we not gradually acquiesced to it. So how did this happen?
THE BEGINNINGS OF NEOLIBERAL THOUGHT
Let’s begin with the following truism: When compared to more brutalizing regimes of dominance and militaristic authoritarianism throughout history, we do have a greater measure of freedom today. With the emergence of liberal social rights and the United Nations recognition and validation of international human rights after the horrors of two world wars, the corporate power elite and the governments that do their bidding implicitly understood that there would no longer be any toleration for political ideologies whose goal was to brutally repress human beings. So, the question for the latter was always how to ensure that the right class continued to be in a position of control and dominance, while at least providing the appearance of freedom and democracy for everyone else.
First, what is required is the semblance of choice and economic power — an ersatz form of freedom realized through the mythical “self-organizing” and “self-correcting” “free market.” Free-market laissez-faire monopoly capitalism is expressly designed to counter any attempts by government to impose regulations on behalf of the public good that might impede profit, and to redefine citizens wholly as consumers. Human well-being is thereby reduced to a purely economic index.
Secondly, what is required is the semblance of democracy by way of electoral representative politics organized and paid for by moneyed interests. Lastly, what is required is the semblance of liberal institutional arrangements (education, social security, health care, policing, environmental and labor regulatory bodies) that increasingly do not serve public interest, but protect and serve private profit and business interests.
In conjunction with ersatz freedom of choice, democracy and the semblance of public institutions which appear to further or protect the public good, there is also what Havel might have called the semblance of liberal dissidence — those persons, regulatory bodies and political parties who make a pretense of fighting on behalf of the public good and in favor of health, labor and environmental rights, while continuing to forward a corporate rights agenda behind the backs of citizens.
In the contemporary world, the corporate capitalist class and the neoliberal governments that do their bidding have been able to maintain the upper hand not through sheer force or brutality, but because they have gradually been allowed to corrode democratic institutions and eviscerate the commons and, therefore, any sense of mutual obligation and responsibility humans have toward each other.
NEOLIBERALISM AND INSTRUMENTAL REASONING
It is crucial to recognize here that modern capitalism from the 19th century emerged in tandem with a particular sort of instrumental reasoning — the sort of use-oriented reasoning that seems innocuous and practical because it enables us to “get things done.”
Please continue this article here: https://truthout.org/articles/we-must-end-neoliberalism-or-neoliberalism-will-end-us/
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