This lecture, my second before the Institute for the Critical Study of Society (ICSS), a US-based groups, distills my understanding of neoliberalism, developed over decades of studying it, beginning with my MA thesis on neoliberal think tanks in the UK, which was subsequently published as a long article in New Left Review, and going on to writing on right and left politics in the UK, US, India and elsewhere, I answer 5 questions. The first is simply, “what is neoliberalism really?” and the answer is not as simple as might seem. Going into its origins in the form of neoclassical economics particularly its Austrian version, and its formative denial of monopoly, I point out that under neoliberalism, what has advanced under the covering fire of rhetoric about markets and competition has been the power of giant monopoly corporations. The second question asks how neoliberalism fared before the 1980s and the answer goes into its surprising marginalization in the century between its origin, and the coming to power of the first neoliberal governments, those of Thatcher and Teagan. The third question is how neoliberalism came to be adopted in what circumstances and in preference to which other options and involves understanding the conjuncture of the 1970s. Fourthly, I ask what its results have been. I quickly list the familiar ones and discuss the unfamiliar ones in some detail. Finally, there is the question of the place of neoliberalism in the longer history of capitalism – the answer? It is the decaying stage of capitalism.
The Failure of Neoliberal Economics
