Breaking free of neoliberalism

Jordan Himelfarb, Opinions editor for the Toronto Star interviews ("My dad used to run Canada’s public service. As the Star’s opinion editor, I asked him what he got wrong, how he turned left — and why he keeps needling me about my work") his father Alex, on his new book, Breaking Free of Neoliberalism: Canada’s Challenge.

Neoliberalism is not unique to the United States or the UK, it is a world-wide phenomenon.

AH: You’re right that we are living in an age of crisis which itself ought to suggest there’s something very wrong about how we have organized ourselves. Add to that our collective tool kit to address those crises has rarely been weaker. The 1980s neo-liberal counterrevolution, when governments focused single-mindedly on growth and came to see their primary role as creating the conditions for business to prosper, stripping away as many barriers to profit as politics allowed, changed not just government but the country and for that matter us. 

Freedom — economic freedom and freedom from government — became a core value. Competition would sort out the winners and losers. Inequality was not only inevitable but right. Unsurprisingly, decades of flattened taxes, deregulation, privatization, offshoring and financialization — the neo-liberal policy suite — have led to increased inequality and insecurity — and a loss of trust in our public institutions. Just look at how few people vote irrespective of the stakes and how many seem ready to burn it all down.

JH: Your book is premised on the idea that neo-liberalism has created deep inequalities, constrained our collective capacity to meet big challenges and generally spread misery and anger by undermining solidarity and turning us against one another. If it’s so terrible, why does it persist? 

AH: Not that hate, exploitation and misery — even globalization — somehow didn’t exist “before neo-liberalism.” But neo-liberalism did upend the post-war settlement, when it seemed that capitalism and democracy could nourish each other, that high profits and high wages could coexist, that growth would benefit everybody. Instead we have corporate concentration and extreme economic inequality and insecurity. 

And so finally to your question, I argue that neo-liberalism contains the seeds of its own perpetuation because it has undermined our collective tool kit — taxes have come to be seen as a burden or punishment, regulations as red tape and a drag on the economy, so too unions, while trust in government, in political parties, even in democracy continues to decline. Most significantly trust in one another — essential if we are to solve problems together — has been in sharp decline. So even as many have lost faith in how things are they have also, it seems, lost faith in the idea of the collective, in the possibility of doing big things together.

JH: So then, how, as you say, do we break free? 

AH: Ha. Big change is hard. But the stakes are high. (Italian political theorist Antonio) Gramsci recognized that in these in-between times when there’s a “war for position” the outcome is uncertain, things could flip this way or that. When asked if he was optimistic Gramsci responded with “pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will” — optimism is a choice, despair is not an option. But there are many reasons for hope. Big change usually starts outside of government, outside of conventional politics — in civil society. And there are many people out there fighting for better. If they were to link up and find some common ground, see how their issues link together and to the larger public issues, who knows what’s possible. Research out of Harvard suggests that if 3.5 per cent of the population join together to fight — peacefully — for change, they almost always succeed. There’s no shortage of ideas and energy.