What Comes After Neoliberalism?
The era of neoliberal globalization is drawing to a close. Yet for socialists, there might not be a light at the end of the tunnel.
Illustration by Yann Bastard.
French economist Cédric Durand, author of Fictitious Capital: How Finance Is Appropriating Our Future and How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism, believes that the long-anticipated demise of neoliberalism is finally at hand. Finance has been relying on state support to remain afloat since the 2008 crash, the United States has started to undermine the global economic institutions it did so much to create, and there’s been a revival of industrial policy as governments come up against the limitations of the market. Some aspects of the emerging post-neoliberal order offer promising conditions for workers and the Left, but intensified competition between the United States and China could have dangerous geopolitical consequences.
Daniel Finn
In very broad terms, how would you distinguish the neoliberal era from previous phases in the development of capitalism?
Cédric Durand
If we compare the neoliberal era with the postwar era of capitalism, sometimes referred to as the “golden age,” we can characterize it in terms of three pillars. The first is financialization, with the rise of incomes deriving from finance and the hegemony of financial interests over policymaking. The second is liberalization, an all-encompassing change in the rules to favor markets, both within countries and internationally through the liberalization of trade and investment. One important aspect of this is the liberalization of labor markets, which has led to a significant decline in union bargaining power. The third pillar is globalization, with an increase in the scale of imports and the development of global value chains. This leads to wage pressure for manufacturing workers in particular.
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