Neoliberalism: Conflicting Definitions and Competing Interests by Suk Koo Rhee (original) (raw)

2018, Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context

Since the early 1980s, with the ascent of Ronald Reagan to the US presidency and Paul Volcker to the Chair of the US Federal Reserve, neoliberalism has increasingly placed the world under its ideological sway. By means of their obeisance to such key international institutions as the IMF and the World Bank, more and more developing nations have found themselves being systematically integrated into the US imperial order. Neoliberalism is commonly associated with such features as "free trade, free capital movements, reduced government or equivalently free markets." 1 To quote Harvey's famous observation on the role of the state in a neoliberal era: "The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defense, police and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist … then they must be created, by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture." 2 It is worth noting that not everyone agrees with the neoliberal idea of "small government." Even the model of the state encapsulated in Harvey's observation strays quite far from the model of a minimalist state regime, and the neoliberalism of both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher offer testimony to this point of view. As Saad-Filho argues, "Neoliberalism is based on the systematic use of state power to impose a hegemonic project of recomposition of the rule of capital under the guise of 'non-intervention.'" 3