Laurie Macfarlane’s story of privatisation began by tracing the roots of neoliberalism and the beginnings of the free market ideology. He clearly described the historical shift from the Keynesian economic model (regulated markets and state intervention to curb the instability of the capitalist system), to the final overcoming of this system by a previously marginalised group of free market economists, consisting of figures such as Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises. Although for many, the birth of neoliberalism came with Thatcher and Reagan’s implementation of these radical free market Hayekian doctrines within the 1970’s political sphere, it actually has a longer, more calculated history. As an economist giving a presentation about privatisation, its relationship to property, and finally, to Market Gallery’s property predicament, it’s understandable that the more pernicious aspects of the neoliberal project played only a background role in Macfarlane’s story. But it’s important to remember the class dynamic that propelled the doctrine, and the vested financial interests that enabled the Chicago School neoliberals to fund the creation of think tanks and lobby groups. It’s this aspect that is frequently left out of common definitions and uses of the term neoliberalism. Macfarlane rightly pointed out that it’s necessary to clearly define terms like neoliberalism, since it’s almost become jargon, lazily quoted in newspaper columns or blog posts such as this one. He called upon David Harvey, author of the influential A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005) for a precise outline, which alluded further to the multidimensional functioning of the neoliberal project:
“Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has no guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence, 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 (in areas such as land, water, education, healthcare, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture.”*
While there can hardly be any argument with this precise and encompassing description, the segment is abstract and does not answer the question of who is pulling the levers of state in this way. After all, the markets don’t function by themselves, nor are they in fact free in any strict sense. Infamously the state bailed out the banks during the 2008 economic crash for example; meaning that markets are able to be free for periods of time, until they need a cash injection from the taxpayer. Who benefited from this market rejuvenation? Who pulls the levers? Macfarlane pointed to how the Chicago School’s ideas were “adopted by the business community and wealthy industrialists.” He explained their relationship to neoliberal thought, that they “saw a way in this philosophy to relieve them of the tax regulations prevalent under the Keynesian model post-WWII. It provided an intellectual cover for them. So with the help of these industrialists the economists were able to form think tanks, and an international intellectual hub which came to be referred to as neoliberalism.” These few sentences revealed something about the enduring nature of power, and the ruling classes ability to eventually reconstitute itself and adapt in the face of state regulatory adversity. When so called liberal democratic parties, or even parties posing as “social democratic” embody neoliberal principles they almost by default uphold this contemporary ruling class of financiers. David Harvey refers to this relationship as “the state-finance nexus.” As it turns out, Harvey still offers one of the most scathing critiques of neoliberalism and its renewed forms of rampant capital accumulation and wealth extraction. During a recent panel discussion at The World Transformed Conference in Brighton, he provided a much more straightforward definition of neoliberalism than Macfarlane’s, and his own prior definition for that matter:
“Neoliberalism for me is very simple. It is a class project, and it was a class project from the very beginning, it was not about the market, it was about consolidating class power. It’s very interesting what’s happened, I tried to write that out in my Brief History of Neoliberalism, and there are lots of books coming out on neoliberalism right now; one tries to treat it as an ideology, another tries to treat it as about the market, about this and that, to the point where the concept becomes incoherent and half the people say you shouldn’t use it anymore. Which means ‘great, we don’t have to talk about the concentration of class power anymore’… Well fuck you that’s what we’ve got to talk about!”*
Laurie Macfarlane’s talk:
For David Harvey at The World Transformed:
Tom Holland (ex-committee member)
