“Sunlight”, as US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis proclaimed over a century ago, “is the best disinfectant”.
In this new exposé, George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison expertly shine the sunlight onto a “normalized ideology”, which has been lurking in the shadows. They urge that the vital first task is to finally name ‘That Which Shall Not be Named’ and empower the public to recognise the tactics used by the various anonymous dark money groups. Their aim is “to reveal what has been hidden. It is to speak their names”.
The authors begin the book by openly acknowledging that, “The dominant ideology of our times – that affects nearly every aspect of our lives – for most of us has no name”. The awareness that the public cannot readily name ‘neoliberalism’, or if they could identify this nefarious constructed ideology, they could not easily define its purpose, or divine its meaning, is core to its power and influence.
They solve this problem early in the text by clarifying exactly what this ideology is. “What is neoliberalism? It’s an ideology whose central belief is that competition is the defining feature of humankind. It tells us that we are greedy and selfish, but that greed and selfishness light the path to social improvement, generating the wealth that will enrich us all. It casts us as consumers rather than citizens.”
Or, in more everyday speech, ‘capitalism on steroids’. This then creates a secondary issue, of whether the public can confidently explain the origins of capitalism – but it does allow a sense of the power of neoliberalism to emerge. It would be foolish not to recognise the power of neoliberalism and its roots, which have spread across the globe. “Crisis after crisis unfolds, yet we fail to understand their common roots.”
Boom, bust, quit
Monbiot and Hutchison do not shy away from facing the past, which has been ‘whitewashed’.
“Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting.” They highlight the repeated pattern of exploitative resource extraction conducted by many imperial powers and companies and point out that we are quickly running out of the finite resources which feed this insatiable beast. They stress the dangers of this ideology on a planetary scale, as the complex earth systems cannot sustain the exerted pressures which we are experiencing, and environmental tipping points are coming closer.
“‘Boom, bust, quit’ is what capitalism does. The ecological crises it causes, the social crises it causes, the productivity crises it causes are not perverse outcomes of the system. They are the system.”
Monbiot and Hutchison evaluate the funding and propaganda tools of the capitalist interest groups and conclude that, “The fairy tale that capitalism tells about itself – that you become rich through hard work and enterprise – is the greatest propaganda coup in human history”. The ideology of named major countries in the world has been predicated on this ‘Big Myth’ – that capitalism must endure at all costs. Neoliberalism is a constructed ideology, despite its efforts to appear as “naturalized and normalized” foundations of a healthy society.
“Neoliberalism has often been imposed on people during great crises: at moments when they were too distracted to resist – or even notice – the new policies that governments were slipping under their doors.”
In these moments of crisis, when instability and insecurity are prevalent, the only ones who profit are oligarchs and dark money groups – whether in the guise of Russian oligarchs, the Koch brothers, or even Presidential candidates, who suddenly find their war chests balloon, if they adhere to the ‘party line’. “The dark money is neoliberalism’s fuel.”
It is calculated that, “Since 1989, America’s super-rich have grown about $21 trillion richer. The poorest 50 per cent, by contrast, have become $900 billion poorer”. Or, in easier terms, the rich pay less, while the poor pay more.
Brexit, Covid, and the NHS
We are led through multiple examples of crises, which were weaponised for some – not ‘us’– for profit reasons. Systemic failures and attitudes to neoliberalism drove the 2008 financial crash – whether lessons have been learned is certainly questionable, as it feels more like neoliberalism has retreated underground slightly rather than being overt.
This becomes very relevant when we realise the pressures on NHS dentistry and the NHS more generally, with private groups staring hungrily, waiting for the opportunity to strip the asset and to extract every single pound from it that they can, before moving on to the next prey – in a shocking example of life imitating the art of The Lorax.
“Profitable components of public services are wrung dry, while essential but unprofitable aspects are dumped. People with complex health conditions are either abandoned or returned to the state for treatment, sewage treatment plants are bypassed and left to deteriorate, bus services to smaller towns and communities are slashed.”
These sentences from The Invisible Doctrine reveal the strategy – one which is becoming more apparent in the UK in the wake of the water companies’ behaviour with regards to sewage pollution.
The writers remind us that:
“As a general rule, privatization is legalized theft from the public realm”.
They emphasise that the growth of private power needs to be checked and regulated and that we are still not heeding the warning from almost a century ago.
“In April 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt sent the US Congress this warning: ‘the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism’. It is a warning we would do well to remember.”
Climate systems cannot be compromised
The need and urgency for necessary global climate action has sadly become the latest battleground for the ideological advance of neoliberalism. Unfortunately, this is not a battle that we can lose. We can decide to choose a constructed ideology, which urges us to consume, consume, consume, or we can decide to choose the hope that comes from healthy global ecological systems.
“Our predicament – the greatest humanity has ever faced – is often characterized as a climate crisis…
“What we are witnessing is the breakdown, at astonishing speed, of our life support systems – driven by capitalism, accelerated by neoliberalism.”
Monbiot and Hutchison urge that it is past time to tell a new story, one which grants hope rather than stifles it, in order to allow a neoliberal programme to survive.
It appears that humans are the host for the pathogen of neoliberalism, but a new story could be the new vaccine. Social tipping points of community led programmes instead, could create new ‘commons’ for the 21st century, moving power away from dark money groups and moving it into the hands of an informed and engaged public.
“Our task is to tell the story that will light the path to a better world.”
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