Book review: Philip Mirowski Never Let a Serious Crisis Go To Waste, How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Crisis (original) (raw)
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Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown
2015
Review of Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown, New York, Verso, 1st edition, 2013, ISBN: 978-1-781-68079-7, 384 pagesPhilip Mirowski's work is an important contribution to the post-2008 crisis economic literature. The book aims to show how Neoliberalism (or the Neoliberal Thought Collective - NTC, as it is referred to here) took over aspects of society beyond the economy and became integrated in everyday societal life, to the degree to which neoliberal thinkers were able to manipulate evidence and realities.One of the great themes of the book is the concept of 'Russian dolls'. In order to explain how Neoliberalism became so influential, Mirowski introduces the 'Russian dolls' as a concept, essentially agents of influence in favor of Neoliberalism that operate at the societal level in the United States, from think-tanks, to politicians to the media. The doll in the very core of this interlockin...
Review Of The Scourge Of Neoliberalism By Jack Rasmus
World Review of Political Economy
In approximately the last four decades, neoliberalism has reigned as the structure of Western economies, chiefly the United States. However, neoliberal capitalism and an environment synonymous with deregulation, “free” markets, and limited government intervention in economic matters has repeatedly led to crises and crashes in history. The Scourge of Neoliberalism examines the actions of past presidential administrations since 1980, and explains how neoliberalism’s allure has kept it afloat for so many years.
Neoliberalism Since the Crisis
Among critical social scientists and progressive activists alike, analysis of neoliberalism has become inseparable from the examination of the crisis that has engulfed the global economy since 2007. When the crisis began, it was interpreted by many, not least the mainstream media and even some of the staunchest advocates of neoliberalism, as a crisis of the model of capitalism that had dominated global economic policy for the previous two-and-a-half decades. Moreover, neoliberal policies promoting financialization were widely held to be responsible for the onset of crisis. As states responded to the crisis with (what appeared to be) new restrictions on finance capital and the nationalization of some of the world's largest banks and financial corporations, many thought it reasonable to conclude that the neoliberal era was coming to an end. Yet, as the global economic crisis continues, so does the rollout of recognizably neoliberal policies of austerity, privatization, deregulation and more and more features of the welfare states built in the postwar era. They have been used as tools of crisis management, even as states have experimented with new forms of economic regulation, such as quantitative easing. Particularly in those countries worst hit by recession, such tools have deepened and (provisionally) channelled abroad the economic crisis, instead of resolving it, while contributing to the stagnation of demand and miring ordinary people in perpetual austerity. It is perhaps unsurprising then that contestation over post-crisis neoliberalism is evident in many of the recent seismic political developments across the globe. Most obviously, the rise of radical left-wing parties in Greece, Spain, Portugal and elsewhere, and the popularity of leaders such as British Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, or Bernie Sanders in the USA, are direct reactions to the devastating effects of enforced neoliberal austerity. These follow earlier political movements against some of the harshest forms of neoliberalism in the Global South – such as the so-called 'Pink Tide' that carried a series of (more-or-less radical) left-wing parties to government across Latin America. But the echoes of dissent against neoliberalism, however distorted, can also be heard in the successful 'leave' campaign in the British referendum on its EU membership, in some of Donald Trump's economic policies (even as he is so obviously one of the world's leading beneficiaries of neoliberalization), and in the rise of the National Front, in France, alongside the mobilization of racial prejudices and national imaginaries in many countries. The premise of this special issue of Critical Sociology is that an understanding of neoliberalism since the crisis is crucial for comprehending the contradictions, conflicts and social forces reshaping the contemporary global political economy. Despite scholarship on, about and around neoliberalism having burgeoned since the onset of the global crisis, a settled definition of neoliberalism remains
A collection of essays that seeks to understand the current fi nancial crisis as a potential moment of rupture in the neoliberal regime.
2012
"There are many key questions concerning the current status of the notion of neoliberalism. What is it? Is it an appropriate concept to describe a political and intellectual movement or form of state? What are its prospects as a framework of public policy after the global financial crisis? The article proposes a way of answering these questions by regarding neoliberalism as a definite ‘thought collective’ and a regime of government of and by the state. It exemplifies these by shifts within neoliberalism regarding the question of monopoly, its relationship to classical liberalism and its approach to crisis management. In regard to the latter, it further proposes an emergent rationality of the government of and by the state concerning the fostering of resilience in the anticipation of catastrophe."
The Resilience of American Neoliberalism
The Crisis and Renewal of American Capitalism: A Civilizational Approach to Modern American Political Economy, edited by Laurence Cossu-Beaumont, Jacques-Henri Coste, and Jean-Baptiste Velut, 2016
This chapter explores some of the main reasons for the resilience of the neoliberal economic model in the United States since the 2008 crisis. Part one argues that, contrary to common conception, federal intervention to contain the financial crisis is actually consistent with neoliberal ideology. A dichotomous view of government as being either interventionist or noninterventionist is unsatisfactory and fails to understand the nature of what can be called neoliberal interventionism. Part two shows how financial power, a centerpiece of the neoliberal economy, has not been diminished by the crisis nor threatened by new federal policies. This is quite different from what happened during the Great Depression, when financial institutions lost their hegemony and New Deal policies were put in place. Part three illustrates how neither Republicans nor Democrats propose a serious break with neoliberalism, and how there are no organized social movements powerful enough to threaten the established order or provoke significant change.