neoliberalism

According to Saad-Filho and Johnston (2005:1), “we live in the age of neoliberalism”. Along with the other authors of the book, Neoliberalism – A Critical Reader, they share the quite 8 common, but not necessarily factually accurate, view that power and wealth are, to an ever increasing degree, concentrated within transnational corporations and elite groups, as a result of the practical implementation of an economic and political ideology they identify as „neoliberalism‟. On the volume‟s back cover blurb, the publisher of the book go even further, and describe neoliberalism as “the dominant ideology shaping our world today”. But in spite of its purportedly overshadowing importance, Saad-Filho and Johnston find it “impossible to define neoliberalism purely theoretically” (ibid.). It is not, according to another contribution to the same volume, possible to date the emergence of neoliberalism precisely, but its foundations can be traced back to the classical liberalism advocated by Adam Smith, and to the specific conception of man and society on which he founds his economic theories (Clarke 2005). Neoliberalism is, under this view,thought of as an entirely new „paradigm‟ for economic theory and policy-making – the ideology behind the most recent stage in the development of capitalist society – and at the same time a revival of the economic theories of Smith and his intellectual heirs in the nineteenth century. This line of argument is continued by Palley (2005), who argues that a „great reversal‟ has taken place, where neoliberalism has replaced the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes (1936) and his followers. Keynesianism, as it came to be called, was the dominant theoretical framework in economics and economic policy-making In the period between 1945 and 1970, but was then replaced by a more „monetarist‟ approach inspired by the theories and research of Milton Friedman (1962; Friedman and Schwartz 1963). Since then, we are led to believe that