The Last Few Years of Neoliberalism

When Margaret Thatcher became the British leader in 1979, and introduced neoliberalism to Western democracies. Her Tory (conservative) Party sold government-owned and run services to private enterprises and went to war with the union movement. The miners union in particular fought a year-long battle before they were defeated. Economically for the workers of Britain, Thatcher was a disaster. Poverty and inequality rose and unemployment increased to its highest level since the Great Depression. Thatcher attacked union rights which had a disastrous impact on workers’ wages and conditions. The wealthy however, benefitted. Tax cuts resulted in the rich getting richer at the expense of workers. Shortly after Ronald Reagan was elected president of the US in 1980, he cut public services, sold off government-owned utilities and reduced taxes for the wealthy. Profit, self-aggrandising and greed was all that mattered. Under Reagan, CEOs salaries were at least 58 times higher than the average workers wage. Prime Minister Bob Hawke introduced neoliberalism after he was elected in 1983. The Prices and Incomes Accord was the centrepiece. Neoliberalism in Australia differed somewhat from the ‘dog eat dog’ free markets created by Thatcher and Reagan. It wasn’t until John Howard was elected Prime minister in 1996 that established these practices. After a decade of eroding government services and outsourcing public services to consultants, the lasting legacy of neoliberalism is clear. Some of the lowlights include devastating impact on the climate, destruction of the Amazon  Rainforest and other carbon sinks while the use of fossil fuels continues unabated and governments drag their feet over renewables. Economically neoliberalism led to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis which bailed out banks to the tune of trillions of dollars, where executives were awarded seven figure bonuses while workers lost their jobs and their houses.

 

“As the entrepreneur of its own self, the neoliberal subject has no capacity for relationships with others that might be free of purpose. Nor do entrepreneurs know what purpose-free friendship would even look like. Originally, being free meant being among friends. ‘Freedom’ and ‘friendship’ have the same root in Indo-European languages. Fundamentally, freedom signifies a relationship. A real feeling of freedom occurs only in a fruitful relationship – when being with others brings happiness. But today’s neoliberal regime leads to utter isolation; as such, it does not really free us at all. Accordingly, the question now is whether we need to redefine freedom – to reinvent it – in order to escape from the fatal dialectic that is changing freedom into coercion.”   
Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power