Marxian And Keynesian Critiques Of Neoliberalism

Abstract

A Marxist examination of the material basis of neoliberalism throws light on several limitations of rival Keynesian critiques of neoliberalism. Two of these limitations are especially significant. First, Keynesians often argue that macroeconomic instability and frequent financial and balance of payments crises show that neoliberalism is fundamentally flawed. This is correct in exactly the same sense that, in the abstract, economic crises show that capitalism is a flawed mode of production. However, just as crises offer the opportunity to restore balance in capitalist accumulation, crises play a constructive--and even a constitutive--role under neoliberalism. They help to impose policy discipline on governments, and they compel both capitalists and workers to behave in ways that support the reproduction of neoliberalism. Perversely, economic and financial crises show that the system works, and they help to make it work more smoothly in the long-term. Second, it is widely known that most governments promising to introduce alternative policies have failed. These failures clearly show that transcending neoliberalism is difficult and costly. At a deeper level, they also show that moving away from, or beyond, neoliberalism is not primarily a subjective problem of selecting the 'correct' industrial, financial or monetary policies. Transcending neoliberalism will involve both economic and political transformations that can be addressed only through the construction of an alternative system of accumulation. These achievements cannot be resolved theoretically or through purely conceptual analysis: they are political problems, to be addressed strategically in the process of struggle for the emergence of a new working-class movement for the age of neoliberalism.