Play in the Ruins of Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is dead.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Neoliberalism actually has been dead for quite a while. The tombstone should read September 15, 2008, the date of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. There have been many attempts to commit the corpse to the ground over the past 16 years, but neoliberal’s loved ones would not let go and kept digging it up. Final interment occurred on November 5, 2024.
As the zombie of neoliberalism shambled along, populism rose in many places and guises, both conservative and progressive: The Tea Party movement of 2010; Occupy Wall Street and the 99% Movement in 2011; Black Lives Matter in 2013; and the 2016 election of Trump and the MAGA movement. Populist manifestations during this decade include anti-vaxxers and groups such as Moms for Liberty.
While the politics and goals of Black Lives Matters have very little in common with those of Moms for Liberty, they share fundamental characteristics that define populist movements more generally. First, they are both anti-establishment movements that loudly oppose and organize against hostile political elites who are claimed to perpetuate a self-serving and inequitable status quo. Relatedly, both movements position themselves as being both oppressed and virtuous, thus possessing moral superiority over corrupt elites. In combination, populist movements divide the world into a Manichean conflict between their virtuous in-group and allies (“us”) against an immoral elite in league with inferior out-groups (“them”).
Over the past two decades, populist groups have coalesced in response to economic, social and political conditions wrought by neoliberalism, whether or not they recognized the source of their concerns. As the finances, social status and lives of group members became increasingly precarious, they recognized that “the system” did not work for or respect them. It did not matter whether the country elected Republicans or Democrats as both parties of the elite abandoned any pretense of responding to their needs or interests.
Rather than punishing the bankers responsible for the near economic disaster of 2008, politicians bailed out the financial system and large corporations while allowing members of the working and middle class to suffer and lose their homes, savings and jobs.
Rather than funding a system that guaranteed high quality health care for all, politicians passed the Affordable Care Act that further shifted personal responsibility onto individuals for their health and pushed people into the health insurance market regardless of their wishes.
Occupy Wall Street protested tax policies that lessened the economic obligations expected from the wealthy and budget agreements that cut public services and insurance. Yet, despite organized protests across the country throughout the Fall 2011, few, if any, of their demands were incorporated into the political platforms of either the Republican or Democratic Party.
Black Lives Matter responded to the over-aggressive policing of communities of color. The problems of policing were especially egregious as many police departments essentially funded their enforcement activities through fines and other financial levies on the communities they were supposed to protect. Meanwhile, many state governments allowed public services to decline as they refused to increase tax rates on the wealthy.
To win election in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, Trump exploited fears of immigrants coming into the country, supposedly bringing crime and taking the jobs of the native born, and the grievances of industrial workers whose jobs emigrated from the country due to neoliberalism.
Covid exposed the dangers of a highly connected world as pathogens quickly spread and collapsed global, just-in-time supply chains. Together, the economic disruption spurred the greatest inflation since the 1980s. Additionally, Covid discredited public health officials, who in their uncertainty regarding a novel health threat, responded in what many perceived as unnecessary ways.
Moms for Liberty and other similar groups caterwauled against a culture that no longer respected their deeply held religious views and their prejudices against those who are different.
The grievances incubated by neoliberalism found expression through Trump, a man whose life has been driven by his sense of grievance despite being a beneficiary of neoliberalism. More a celebrity than an actual developer of real estate, Trump cultivated an unwarranted image of being a business savant through his book, The Art of the Deal and his television show, The Apprentice. (Really, who goes bankrupt owning casinos? The business model combines favorable math with people excitedly paying money for nothing except the hope of getting more money back despite unfavorable math).
Trump’s grievance-filled 2024 campaign connected to an enraged electorate that has been abused by neoliberalism over the past four decades. Particularly resonant was Trump’s hate-filled anti-trans ad, which, in a brilliant rhetorical slight-of-hand exploited a central pillar of populism by setting up an opposition between “us” and the trans pronouns “they/them.” More broadly, Trump painted a dystopian picture of America with immigrants flooding over the border to kill children, rape women, commit petty crimes and eat pets, LGBTQIA individuals grooming children for sexual exploitation and dominating female athletics, and families struggling against the economic woes produced by globalization and spiraling inflation. Rather than heeding the countless warnings by Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign with many coming from those serving in Trump’s first administration that Trump was a fascist and would destroy democracy, a significant portion of the electorate determined that Trump’s authoritarianism was desirable and that Trump would be their instrument to blow up a system that has hurt and exploited them.
Now as Trump begins a second term, the question rises to how we in PCS should respond in this new moment. Unfortunately, we have been among those who cannot allow neoliberalism to stay buried. Despite (or because of) our implacable opposition to the neoliberal project, we have kept it alive in our work. Neoliberalism has been central to our analyses of baseball stadium design, uber-sport, mega events like the FIFA Women’s World Cup and Olympic Games in London and Rio, the ways in which non-governmental organizations channel politics and meet societal needs, and in policies, design and provision of recreation programs (amongst many other projects). While many of us have embraced the new materialist frameworks that have risen to prominence during the two decades in which PCS has grown, we have been slow to grapple with the implications of the populism animating political movements on both the left and right. In this oversight, we have been missing essential elements within broader questions of political and cultural economy that are at the heart of societal power relations.
While neoliberalism may be dead, it retains significant residual potency, just as Keynesianism did not disappear during neoliberalism’s rise and has continued to inform government policy despite its eclipse and decline. From its origin, PCS has remains committed to policing the eternal crisis towards creating a physical culture (and, indeed, society) that is more equitable and just. This commitment is more critical than ever as Donald Trump takes office for the second time. However, to be effective, we must also take a step back to better understand the conjuncture.
From the original Corpus: please read The Decadence of Neo-Liberalism – by Michael Friedman (published 22 October 2010)