Could it be that the free-market policies that have dominated policymaking for the past 40 years are finally on their way out? In the past six months, the Conservative government in the UK has nationalised a steelmaker, threatened major football clubs with fan ownership, and moved to block the sale of silicon chip designer ARM to a US manufacturer. Such moves towards more assertive state intervention are not limited to the UK.
In Europe, the EU is in the process of overhauling its State Aid rules to allow greater government support to industry, citing the need to meet competition from China. In the US, Joe Biden’s administration is not only committing $3.6trn to spend on health and education – it is expanding trade union rights, raising taxes for the rich and corporations, and has successfully led the push for the introduction of a global minimum corporation tax. None of this would fit easily into the ‘neoliberal’ playbook of previous decades, when anti-union, tax-cutting and market-first policies dominated government thinking.
Debate over neoliberalism’s future is not new, and has been reignited since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted economies across the world. But this isn’t simply an academic matter: whether we think neoliberalism is dead, dying, or in rude health has strategic consequences for political activity. If neoliberalism – meaning the way in which capitalism has been run for the past three decades (and in some parts of the world, for longer) – is really on its way out, we need to be alert to the ways in which the system is changing, and perhaps update and refresh our own slogans and demands and strategies accordingly.
