Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Neoliberalism in Crisis

Christoph Butterwegge | 07.11.2007 13:14 | Workers' Movements | World

Liberation theology warns the future of the first world is the third world. Everyday time is replaced by kairos time, the time of decision, when lawlessness masks as lawfulness. The language of proclamation runs crossway to the language of time. Cast your net on the other side! Perhaps the first global finance market crisis will help overcome market radicalism's control of public opinion and rehabilitate state intervention.

NEOLIBERALISM IN CRISIS

By Christoph Butterwegge

[This article published in: Ossietzky 10/26/2007 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://www.linksnet.de/artikel.php?id=3299. Christoph Butterwegge teaches political science at the University of Koln and is a member of the attac advisory board. His most recent book is titled “Kritik des Neoliberalismus” (Critique of Neoliberalism).]


The international finance crisis whose consequences are in no way mastered is a result of overly liberal credit awards of US mortgage banks and the inevitable result of a banking system redesigned according to neoliberal ideas. This system embodies “casino capitalism” (Susan Strange). The British economist John Maynard Keynes warned of this. Instead of industrial value-creation, highly speculative money investments are central. The banks develop ever more complex possibilities (derivatives). Inconceivable riches arose for a few financial magnates with more and more poverty in the so-called third world and in the consumer societies of the North. The neoliberal projects create social inequalities in a form unknown up to now while promising more prosperity, permanent economic growth and reduced mass unemployment as though a stock market crash and recession did not follow on the heels of every economic upswing.

The more hedge funds, private equity firms and neoliberal conglomerates dominate economic activity across the planet without public institutions, competent oversight boards and political regulatory mechanisms setting limits, the more unstable become the capital markets. A central controversial point lies here between neoliberals and their critics who see unfailing evidence in the frequent price drops for the failure of an economic policy that refuses nearly every demand for intervention measures, economic supervision and more rigorous controls on finance markets.

Unlike classical liberalism that as a progressive middle class movement was first directed against the feudal state or its remnants, neoliberalism – understood as an economic theory, social philosophy and political strategy raising the market into the general social regulation – fought all state interventionism putting political shackles on capital. Since the 1974/75 world economic crisis, criticism of the intervention state assailed the reforms realized by an SPD/FDP coalition under German chancellor Willy Brandt after the student movement and the extra-parliamentary opposition at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. The Lambsdorff paper of September 9, 1982 was important for the further development. This paper urged significant improvement of capital profits and a “cheapening of the factor labor” by lowering social benefits to the level of 25 years ago and led to the breach of the social-liberal coalition. The later reading of the memorandum suggests the paper was the official script for the economic- and social policy today and a crucial forerunner of neoliberal hegemony. Many measures pursued since then correspond to that catalogue of demands. From a temporal limitation of unemployment benefits to twelve months and introduction of a “democratic factor” to limit pensions to greater personal participation in the public health system, the Lambsdorff paper listed almost all the “social cruelties” realized by the subsequent German governments up to today.

After the change of government from Schmidt to Kohl, neoliberalism following the models of Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain and Ronald Reagan in the US changed in Germany from fundamental criticism of the intervention state to a rigorous “reform policy.” Since the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of all “command socialist” state systems in Eastern- and Central Europe, neoliberals and economic lobbyists strongly influenced the public opinion, social climate and political culture of Germany. With the unattractive system alternative, the last barrier fell against the transformation of the Rhine model of the social market economy to the depraved finance market- and shareholder capitalism that now prevails over nearly the whole world.

With deregulation of the markets and (re-) privatization of public goods and social risks, neoliberalism aims at “pure capitalism,” a market society without a developed welfare state and economic interventionism. While the intervention state is rejected, the market is promoted as the universal regulation mechanism even though it undermines society in the tumult of competition, splitting society in poor and rich and promoting rivalry and brutality among people. Being neoliberal means holding the market as the most efficient regulatory authority of society and distancing from the welfare state. Being neoliberal also means more than putting “private ahead of the state.” Ultimately neoliberal means being unsocial and insensitive to the growing social problems. In that more and more areas of society are systematically subjected to the principle of profit maximization, the sphere of the free decision of individuals degraded to “customers” and thus objects of the advertising industry diminishes along with the freedom of democratic institutions.

There are signs the welfare state is experiencing a renaissance and the period of privatization of businesses, health care and social risks is coming to an end. Nevertheless the neoliberal hegemony is unbroken, creates social asymmetry and remains a danger for democracy because it devalues the political processes of decision-making. Many young persons resign amid the apparent superiority of the economic in relation to the political and withdraw into private life instead of being engaged for a better world as attac envisions. Perhaps the first truly global finance market crisis will help overcome market radicalism’s control of public opinion and rehabilitate state intervention.


Christoph Butterwegge
- e-mail: mbatko@lycos.com
- Homepage: http://www.mbtranslations.com

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech