Jonathan Cook, journalist
An interesting piece arguing that the proof neoliberalism is dying can be found in the fact that staff working inside its enforcement mechanisms, like the IMF, have started admitting to themselves that it is a political ideology rather than simply the best economic policy - something many of the rest of us realised a long time ago, of course.
A new IMF report concedes that the results of imposing neoliberalism across the globe "have been terrible. Neoliberalism hasn’t delivered economic growth – it has only made a few people a lot better off. It causes epic crashes that leave behind human wreckage and cost billions to clean up. ... This is a remarkable breach of the neoliberal consensus by the IMF. ... At last a major institution is going after not only the symptoms but the cause – and it is naming that cause as political."
Aditya Chakrabortty's point is that for elites the dominant ideology - the one that benefits them most - is supposed to be invisible. We are meant to regard it the same way we do the air we breathe - simply as a necessary precondition for our existence. But growing economic instability, rampant inequality, and the enormous damage being done to the planet are making that illusion increasingly difficult to sustain - even for those who benefit from the system. That, he argues, is the strongest indication that neoliberal economies are in a death spiral.
One could add, though of course Chakrabortty doesn't except elliptically, that one of the key pillars supporting this self-destructive economic system has been the corporate media's active efforts to maintain the deception that there is no alternative to neoliberalism. In that sense, Chakrabortty's article in the Guardian is almost as significant as the IMF report itself.
‘You hear it when the Bank of England’s Mark Carney sounds the alarm
about ‘a low-growth, low-inflation, low-interest-rate equilibrium’.
Photograph: Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images
