The End of Atomism: A Brief Critique of the Neoliberal Agenda

When I was little, my grandfather took me on his knee and explained the market to me. In theory, it was a way for people to invest in businesses and commodities that they saw had a future in the economy. For a handful of bills, we could own a tiny slice of a business. However, in the last decade this simple act has exploded into complexity, with over-the-counter derivatives, futures contracts, currency speculation, or tax credit default swaps.

Market finance became a new form of worship: What would the market think? What would the market say? Without even knowing why, the common person was suddenly exhorted to care very deeply about how the market “felt” about something. If the market was upset, something so unspeakably terrible would happen! Better to offer up our flesh and blood as sacrifice, cut social spending and our children’s futures short so that the market might be pleased. The high priests of power encourage us to trust them and to simply let them act in our best interest – whether or not we understand what is going on.

“Why”, might we ask, “is it so important to develop an understanding of the market and of neoliberal market theory?” There are two answers to this: First, it is not difficult to understand what is going on. There might be very confusing terms thrown about, but the confusion boils down to simple concepts. Secondly, the “Occupy ____” movement is a movement directed against the neoliberal agenda, although it does not always articulate its opposition in those terms. In order to cure an illness, we must first diagnose it. Only then will we be able to formulate the proper medication needed to get better.

Neoliberalism can be a confusing term. David Harvey defines it as “a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.” To put it simply: the market must be free, without government interference beyond enforcing private property laws. The confusion sets in when we remember that with all these bailouts, tax cuts, and slaps-on-the-wrist, the market isn’t really free at all! If anything, it is now intimately connected with the state. So neoliberalism is something that is inherently contradictory in its stated ideology.

Yet if we understand neoliberalism as an ideology that encourages the accumulation of assets and power through the free market, state involvement by way of bail-outs and austerity cuts suddenly seems more reasonable to prevent a growing imbalance between the marginalized many and the powerful few.

Neoliberalism assumes that the state has a new role in our lives. Instead of it being something that is elected by and for the people, it is now an institution that is the protector/enforcer of the market and its whims. In return for protecting the free market, the state gains an incredible amount of power. Under the auspices of “protecting private property”, governments now have the legal ability to intrude on your life in ways never before imagined.

Neoliberalism started out by attacking the most vulnerable among us: those who live hand-to-mouth in the third world, the poor, the mentally ill, the cold, and the hungry. Yet just as neoliberal capitalism demands more access to markets in order to expand, it also demands that new populations live according to its logic.

The United States is a fantastic example. A reckoning for the sins of the father came upon the United States in the form of rotting houses in New Orleans, empty factories in Detroit, and homeless veterans freezing to death in the streets of New York. The wealth gap grew as wages started to fall and jobs grew scarce. Suddenly, we began to notice that our social safety net had been cut from under us: No health insurance, unemployment compensation at £120 per week, houses being foreclosed on, and retirement accounts that suddenly became worthless. As social security and education are hauled up on the chopping block, forces that the US government helped to unleash consume our future.

Yet the most dangerous part of neoliberalism is that is pursues an atomistic view of society. According to that logic, society is simply made up of individuals whose primary democratic responsibility is consumption. This individualisation of humankind created not only a vacuous consumer culture, but also ended up isolating us to an astonishing degree.

The true achievement of the Occupy movement has been a reclaiming of public space and human solidarity. When was the last time you stood around and spoke to perfect strangers about how the world should be run? The Occupy movement has begun to refocus our attention on non-monetary values. The potency of those discussions is evident. This is why skulls get cracked in New York, flash bangs and gas gets thrown in Oakland, and why the police parade around with machine guns here in London.

It is the simple act of gathering and independent thinking that constitutes the biggest threat to the status quo. If the people have found a way to excuse themselves from their bleak existence by gathering and feeding and caring for each other, the system of speculative profit begins to crack.

Therein lies the real threat to the 1%. The danger lies not in health and safety violations, in fire codes or the loss of tourist money. Instead, it is a people who are self-actualised, who break the endless cycle of consumption. And therein may lie the cure to the disease of neoliberalism.

By Taryn Ladendorff