It was a question I was once asked while during a class for my undergraduate degree, and to be honest I really could not define it very well beyond it being the modern form of market economy in liberal capitalist democracies and many other states, such as China.

Yet, doubts remained in my mind.

Neoliberalism always had a certain resonance to me, exploitation, imperialism, colonisation and so on: But I was also conflating it with liberalism and terms like liberal, equality and human rights. Were these not good things?

Well no, because, as Marx (1844) argues in On the Jewish Question, rights; equality, liberty, security and property; are limited, defined by law and tied to the political rights of the  individual in a capitalist society. For Marx they define and legitimate the right of the individual to attain liberty through the accumulation of property. These are rights accrued thorugh the law instead of society and are the basis of civil society. Leaving us with a society that prefers individual solutions over communal ones.

Excuse the diversion, but it is important to clear up these things because there is a lot of misunderstanding, including my own, around capitalism, liberalism and neoliberalism in general.

Therefore the articles below will define neoliberalism as it evolves as a concept for my research. It will be an ongoing project where new articles will added, some deleted and others rewritten as the answer to the above question develops.

Because if there is one thing that I have learned about capitalism/neoliberalism is that the answer is always evolving, and in surprising ways.

Articles

First there will be a recounting of neoliberalism as the term developed in order to give a definition of the term neoliberalism. This is useful in understanding the above dilemma I had between bad “neoliberalism” and good “liberalism”.

In essence neoliberalism is defined by its core tenets: the market is a vast processor of knowledge with no superior, the takeover of the state in order to create an environment that encourages the development of new markets, and the propagation of  system of cultural propaganda and noise that limits resistance to the first two assertions.

After that the story turns away from the history of the neoliberal movement to focus on its development as a global form of economy: tracing it backwards and forwards from 1972.

Next, the evolution of the legal/surveillance mechanisms of neoliberalism in terms of re-regulating capital, civil society and citizens will be addressed.

While fourth, the future of neoliberalism will be discussed in the context of Covid 19? (Mirowski: 2020 Politics theory other podcast *85).

Liberalism Vs neoliberalism: is there a difference. A note on the ideological development of capitalism.