Neoliberalism as the Ideology of the Market and Private Interests

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Thesis Statement
China’s neoliberals counter revolution
Works Cited

Introduction

In the last twenty years of the 20^th century and the previous decades since World War II there was a dramatic difference and it was not uncommon to give details of the last twenty years of capitalism as neoliberalsm. During the change between the 1970s and 1980s the functioning of capitalism was deeply transformed both within countries of the center and in the periphery. The earlier capitalist configuration was often referred to as Keynesian compromise.

Such years could be characterized in the center countries like United States, Europe, and China by large growth rates sustained technological change, an increase in purchasing power and development of a welfare system concerning in particular health and retirement and low unemployment rates.

The situation deteriorated during the 1970s as the world economy in the wake of the decline of the profit rate entered a structural crisis. Its main aspects were diminished growth rates, a wave of unemployment, and cumulative inflation. This was when the new social order, neoliberalsm emerged, first within the countries of the center beginning with the United Kingdom and the United States and then gradually exported to the end. The nature of neoliberalsm was explored and its balance sheet after nearly a quarter of a century.

Neoliberalsm was often described as the ideology of the market and private interests as opposed to state intervention. Although neoliberalism conveyed an ideology and a propaganda of its own, it was fundamentally a new social order in which the power and income of the upper fractions of ruling classes was reestablished in the wake of a setback.

The conditions which accounted for the structural crisis were gradually superseded, as most of the world economy remained plagued by slow growth and unemployment, and inequality increased tremendously. This was the cost of a successful restoration of the income and wealth of the wealthiest (Brown).

Thesis Statement

Neoliberalism describes a market driven approach to economic and social policy based on economics neoclassical theories that stresses the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, which seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the state.

According to Larner (63) neoliberalism is used to describe an internationally prevailing ideological paradigm that leads to social, cultural, and political practices and policies that make the use of markets, efficiency, consumer choice, transactional thinking and individual autonomy to shift risk from governments and corporations onto individuals and to extend the market logic into the realm of social and affective relationships.

Neoliberalism transfers control of the economy from public to the private sector, in the sense that it will produce a more efficient government and improve the economic health of the nation. In the 1970s an economic systems that prevailed after the World War II dominating the non-economist global economy was referred to as embedded liberalism. At the end of the war, David Harvey postulates that the main agenda was to establish an economic plan wary of preventing a recurrence of the great depression witnessed in the 1930s.

Pegging the fixed exchange on the US dollars convertibility at fixed price into gold, Harvey further assured that the new system would be greatly regulated and secure. Fixed exchange rates were incompatible with free flows of capital. Harvey argues that embedded liberalism led to the surge of economic prosperity that came to define the 1950s and 1960s (Prasad 328).

The free market policies of reform were favored in the 1980s, due to curtailed state intervention by political intervention as the decade came to a close after the collapse of the Communist bloc and the dire economic crisis of the 1980s. Between 1970 and 1980 changes begun to take shape when majority of world governments democratically focused on the roles of governments in regulating relative free trade, rules of law, and economic individual rights.

The market became more important when governments through organized labour groups adopted much stronger stances in counteracting trade barriers, eventually reducing government intervention. Therefore industries increasingly shifted globally with integrated knowledge boosting the economy (Campbell and Ove 288).

The desire for hemisphere integration to improve economic well-being of the people reflects the need for understanding free trade as a human right. Primary in their agenda was to protect human rights, promote good governance and strengthen representative democracy. In turn, greater economic opportunities would be created leading to prosperity and achieving the social justice of human potential. From the above, reflection, the development of human rights therefore necessitates the integration of markets

The World War II paved way for the Stalinists to maintain control over China. This was however, not a lasting regime as battles regained the cities that were under their rule. Opposition was imminent despite the Stalinists’ “democratic” reform and agrarian movement especially as they concentrated their energy in opposing the Chiang’s Kuomintang regime.

Close to two decades later, the capitalist press does not recognize the rise of the working-class across major cities. The class polarization process is made worse by the rejuvenation of the Chinese working-class coupled with increased infiltration of the face of the country by pent-up forces of civil war.

The Chinese industry was paralyzed by the capitulation of Japan; with majority of Shanghai factories closing down and suspended operations by plants internally. The Chinese proletariat was dealt another blow as their economic position was under threat due to the business failures.

The social counter-revolution after the Maoist-Stalinisr bureaucratic change in the last two decades allowed for a shift to capitalism from central planning. The beneficiaries of the transformation were undoubtedly the bourgeoisie both within China and in the global arena. 1949 witnessed the Chinese revolution forces achieve the class balance of international forces (Johannes and Jacques 69).

As a result of blurred market and social values, the revival of class rules the social rekindling of neoliberalism. Considered as a domino-effect, neoliberalism on one end could not be controlled once the private sector is honoured with a publicly-owned industry. Because of reduced regulation and government interference, a publicly-owned industry in the hands of the private sector cannot be monitored to measure the influence by the owners to fit into their economic benefits.

In a similar manner, governments that adopted neoliberal policies proceeded to model and expand them in pursuit of the expected positive benefit. As such, in the equation of current era of market globalization, where neoliberalism was considered a constant, and an economic benefit although it varied depending on the geographic location.

China’s neoliberals counter revolution

The historical trajectory led up to china’s capitalist form of engagement with the neoliberal counter revolution. In 1949, immense pressure leveled against the Maoist state sensing the wave of revolution that was approaching was forced into providing great social improvements to cater for the communities’ housing, educational standards, healthcare, and poverty situations.

Consequently, the regime went ahead and adopted socialistic policies by nationalizing the land, a move that received little oppositions from the public; despite occasional land privatization cases due to partial land reforms while the government remained as the chief owner of national land.

According to Lenin land nationalization does not in itself constitute a barrier to capitalism. The move to attempt reversing the land tenure policies despite representing a perfect from of capitalism was an impossible task for the skeptics. However, the policies remained unchanged considering China’s economic foundations that were grounded on centralized planning and nationalized property dictated by the narrow national-bureaucratic limits.

Consequently, the Chinese masses resorted to the prevailing Stalinism policies and rules that featured absence of social safety net and extreme manpower exploitation, in addition to absent elementary democratic rights and police terror. Unlike other ex-Communist states, China is considered more integrated into the capital world. Foreign capitalists today control a quarter of China’s industrial production (Johannes and Jacques 76).

Central planning was not allowed to take center stage by the capitalist nature of renationalization. The now powerful capitalist economic foundations common within China could entirely be brought down by a massive revolutionary force of direly oppressed peasants and workers, despite the economic foundations’ close ties with global capitalism.

The process of counter revolution in China has been complex and sometimes extremely contradictory. It is only through a new proletarian social revolution that China’s capitalist counter-revolution can be reversed as a qualitative change that manages to expropriate foreign capitalists and Chinese, who are the main beneficiaries of an overthrown present state.

The Chinese experience is one of shifting from one national policy to the other; with the outstanding Chinese peculiar type having been fully restored. The restoration commenced in 1970s when the search for an exit from the economic and political crisis prompted the Stalinist regime in an empirical reflex exercised the civil war elements inherited from the Maoists.

The initial stages of the empirical reflex strategy sought through Stalinist state-owned economy, customize some market mechanisms. But such processes have logic of their own especially given the delay of the world socialist revolution, the crisis and collapse of Stalinism worldwide, and the ferocious acceleration of neo liberal globalization (Larner 67).

In the present state of uncertainty and political flux, the influence that the Stalinists enjoy is the main focus, after their abandonment for the proletariat 19 years ago in a revolutionary defeat. In an attempt to increase their social base, the Stalinists are targeting the revival of the labour movement.

Additionally, the move in strategic sector of the economy, will also avail an opportunity to convince the ‘national’ bourgeoisie of their capabilities to maintain the status of social status and furthermore open a road towards a peaceful capitalist development. However, the role of Stalinists in China just like any other part of the world is to hamper with the process of revolutionary movement, and instead revert back to class collaboration (Larner 72).

In conclusion existing Chinese state cannot be reformed in any fundamental way to serve the masses’ interests; instead in reflection the common traits of most capitalist states, China attends entirely to the ruling class. A working class should be implemented to replace the existing ruling-class-oriented capitalist China through organized institutions, revolutionary party, factory committees, and workers’ councils.

Works Cited

Brown, Wendy. “Neoloberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy” in Edgework: critical essays on knowledge and politics Princeton University Press, 2005, ch 3.

Campbell, John L., and Ove K. Pedersen, eds. The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis Princeton University Press: London, 2001. P. 288

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press: Oxford. 2005

Johannes Dragsbaek S. and Jacques Hersh, Neoliberal globalization: Workfare without welfare, Globalizations, 1474-774X, Vol. 3 (1), 2006, Pp. 69 – 89.

Larner, Wendy. “Neo-liberalism: policy, ideology, governmentality,” Studies in political economy, 2000, p. 63-72.

Prasad, Monica. The Politics of Free Markets: The Rise of Neoliberal Economic Policies in Britain, France, Germany and the United States. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2006. P. 328.

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Neoliberalism as the Ideology of the Market and Private Interests

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