Neoliberalism is alive and kicking. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Grovelling governments of both sides (actually there’s only one side) keep falling over themselves in eagerness to please their masters. What’s at stake is their personal legitimacy in the eyes of the plutocrats who own them. They will never risk that. Bill Clinton didn’t risk it. Barrack Obama didn’t risk it, and Hillary Clinton would never have risked it. Howard, Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison – never. And, in the event of a Shorten Labor Government in Australia I think the plutocracy can rest easy.

Neoliberalism sets up default thinking which is biased in favour of benefiting the interests of a powerful few, not the many. For example, when considering whether to privatise a particular asset the default position is – if there’s any doubt privatise it and if there isn’t any doubt create some.  This thinking has led to a litany of privatisation fiascos, right across the neoliberal world – from Sydney to San Francisco.

John Menadue’s article "Privatisation is a Clear Example of the Failure of Neoliberalism" (24^th October 2018) on his website Pearls and Irritations, certainly provides some of the best examples of failed privatisations in Australia – ie failure in terms of stated objectives, impacts on consumers and the public more generally.  However, with neoliberalism, “failure” or “success” is in the eye of the beholder.  Perhaps the resultant bulge in the wallets of the often select few beneficiaries of privatisation is a better indicator of actual success. In Russia these few are called oligarchs, in the West they’re called entrepreneurs and CEOs.

Many academic economists and other assorted apologists for neoliberalism, often ensconced in right wing think tanks sponsored by large corporations and billionaires, argue privatisations often fail, not because they aren’t inherently good and sensible but because of failure of implementation and/or because of inadequate regulatory regimes.  This can be the case. But, the argument is a generalised and simplistic one which perfectly fits the neoliberal script – ie. when neoliberalism fails it’s the government’s fault, forever and always. Neoliberalism as defined by neoliberals is infallible. So, when it fails, it actually hasn’t, it’s because of something else the kakistocracy has or hasn’t done.

Why is it that lessons never seem to be learnt with respect to how to effectively implement projects such as privatisations of public assets? Perhaps it’s because sometimes the supposed “failures” aren’t failures at all in terms of actual intentions.

It seems strange that some very sophisticated neoliberals argue certain things like opera houses, art galleries and museums should not be privatised. Why? There are plenty of private providers in the area of arts and entertainment. So, perhaps, when it comes to privatisation it all depends on what your own biases are. Perhaps, some of our more refined and educated elites see the “public benefit” in institutions like museums and art galleries, but not so much in public education or publicly owned power utilities so average people have a chance to give their children a reasonable education and keep warm in winter. At the end of the day perhaps it’s all subject to individual perspective and biased thinking, despite the hubristic arrogance of what can loosely be described as the rational and objective economics profession.

The most fundamentally important privatisation of all, or at least the greatest sell-off and sell-out of all, was the bargain basement selling off of democracy to the corporate plutocracy during the late 1970s and 1980s. This was when neoliberalism was getting into full swing.

Anyone who doubts effective democracy has been sold out to the corporate oligarchy, the plutocracy, should familiarise themselves with the works of authors such as Jane Mayer inDark Money, David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Nancy MacLean in Democracy in Chains, or The One Percent Solution by Gordon Lafer.

Selling off of real democratic choice has enabled the sociopathy, absurdities, injustices, inefficiencies, inequality, inequities and hypocrisies of neoliberalism to proceed for 40 years, largely unencumbered. This is Thatcher’s TINA “There Is No Alternative” in practice. 

For those wanting further proof read Princeton University’s 2014 study on public policy decision making in America. The exhaustive study found there is almost an inverse relationship between what small people “individuals” want and what they get, when it comes to public policy, whereas there is a strong positive relationship between what the rich and powerful want and what they get. 

The Princeton study states “When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.”

In simple terms studies like this show effective democracy is essentially dead in the West.

The idea that neoliberalism’s days are over because of recent political upheavals on both the so called right and left is ridiculous. Neoliberalism should have been brought to heel during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2009. It wasn’t. And the oligarchy is waiting to gorge itself again at the public trough when the next crisis hits, which will be soon. No amount of public outrage or disgust will stop it. It doesn’t matter who is officially “running the show” when the plutocracy owns the lot of them.