What Is Neoliberalism?

• In Event: 25.036 - When Education-Focused Neoliberalism Comes to One City, Indianapolis, Local Scholar-Activists Join the Community-Based Resistance

Abstract

Neoliberalism is typically categorized by its economic implications, privatization, fiscal asceticism, deregulation, and free trade, economic policies that serve to increase privatization in the economy and, by extension, society as a whole (Anyon, 1997; Leyva, 2012; Lipman, 2011). This belief in free-market capitalism and competition positions citizens solely as consumers, demands competition and individual responsibility, and requires the privatization of public services (Anyon, 1997; Giroux, 2003; Kozol, 2005). The belief is that increasing the scope and frequency of the market will “maximize the social good” (Harvey, 2005, p. 3), making neoliberalism the first example of a political economic theory that suggests that human well-being is best secured by creating a market-based competitive social environment (Harvey, 2005).

At the center of neoliberal theory is the supposition of a level playing field. However, Harvey (2005) explains that this is “either innocently utopian or a deliberate obfuscation of processes that will lead to the concentration of wealth and, therefore, the restoration of class power” (p. 68), the latter being more likely. Importantly, neoliberal theory rhetoric have become so ingrained in the social hegemony that it has become the “common sense” discourse of everyday life, though common sense is always socially constructed and can “be profoundly misleading, obfuscating or disguising real problems under cultural prejudices,” including racism (p. 39).

Despite the inherent biases of “common sense,” neoliberalism is touted for its supposed neutrality. Through the espousal of racially “colorblind” policy making (Straus & Lemieux, 2016) neoliberal theory purports that the policies being proposed are only restrictive by merit, i.e., people are only denied what is not earned (Anyon, 1997; Giroux, 2003; Lipman, 2011). Thus, neoliberal policy makers aim to create environments where the means to succeed appear to be racism-free and rooted only in an individual’s ability to fight for themselves, exploit every possible advantage, and compete equally (Cucchiara, 2008; Straus & Lemieux, 2016). Individual successes or failures are then“ interpreted in terms entrepreneurial virtues or personal failings (such as not investing significantly enough in one’s own human capital through education) rather than being attributed to any systemic property” (Harvey, 2005, 65-66).

Also, neoliberal theory asserts the need for an accountability system. Early neoliberal accountability sought to create policy that would further the cause for cultural reconstruction and produce social conditions optimal for market culture (Aggarwal, Mayorga, & Nevel, 2012; Ambrosio, 2013). Yet, the other product of the neoliberal accountability system is the maintenance and reproduction of racial and class power systems that control individual behavior and produce a highly subjective narrative within which everyone is meant to abide. These narratives, cloaked in the language of independence, serve to maintain the existing racial and class hierarchy, “Despite the rhetoric of individual freedom and limited government, neoliberalism employs centralized state power to create the social and economic conditions needed to engender forms of subjectivity that justify and legitimize its presuppositions about human nature” (Ambrosio, 2013, 321). This, then, highlights the central paradox of neoliberalism where theoretical anti-statism gives way to control by elites (Harvey, 2005).

Author

• Elena Hatton Silverman, Indiana University - IUPUI