As we approach the ten year anniversary of the 2008 global financial crisis, it seems contradictory that rather than rein in neoliberalism, the overall response of the global elite has been to double down, intensify and even expand the catastrophic policies of deregulation, privatisation, liberalisation and financialisation.
What we see today is an acceleration of the neoliberal corporate power grab across the global economy, with ever more virulent opposition to social and political forces that dare put forward alternatives. The array of these forces go from those that timidly suggest putting brakes on the neoliberal project, if only to save capitalism from itself, to more strident calls to reverse or dismantle neoliberalism as a global economic model. Either way, it is clear that the global ruling elite do not intend to allow anyone or anything to get in the way of what is now a successful global enterprise of extraction, accumulation and massive enrichment.
Neoliberalism has successfully raised the ideology of the free market and the supremacy of private over public through bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements, through debt crises (World Bank and IMF), through propaganda and through out and out corporate capture of the state in one form or another. Both in the North and the South, there may never have been a time when the political class and the corporate elite were so embedded with each other. The mantra of “open for business” and “investor friendliness” from every politician is an indicator that governments have completely capitulated to the dictates of capital. In this sense, the role of institutions such as the G20, the IMF and World Bank and the WTO will continue to have even greater influence on national policy making, despite the self evident failure of their economic stewardship over the past four decades.
Neoliberalism has been able to pass itself off as a common sense, technical, apolitical, non-ideological and most importantly, nameless project—but with rising inequality and crises this is no longer possible and the game is up. With mounting social protests against economic injustice worldwide—even from the mainstream—the architects of neoliberalism have abandoned any pretence of allegiance to genuine democracy which could bring to power politicians who offer alternatives, even in the most limited forms. The aim now is to limit democracy and rising popular mobilization, if need be through authoritarian right wing regimes, in order to continue to bulldoze through policies that will remove the remaining obstacles to capital and effectively re-engineer the global world order to become completely subject to the open market. This includes tearing down all the social progress of the last century to create a world of shared responsibility and international solidarity in achieving human progress, particularly through a system of internationally binding norms and obligations that are managed through a vast network of agencies and linkages.
MULTILATERALISM AND NEOLIBERALISM
With all its problems, the multilateral system incarnated by the United Nations, has been an invaluable structure for creating universal frameworks for human rights, social and economic justice, equality and equity and self determination. Under this model of global governance, multilateralism squarely puts the responsibility for protecting and guaranteeing rights on the state through binding treaties against which governments agree to be held to account. Over the decades of its existence the multilateral system has been the vehicle for securing and indeed expanding civic, political, social, economic and cultural rights, from ending apartheid to setting labour standards or establishing gender equality. This work of constantly expanding rights and freedoms to those who have previously been denied them continues. However, the multilateral UN system is facing stiff competition in its governance and developmental role from older parallel institutions such as the Bretton Woods Institutions, but also newer arrangements such as the World Economic Forum and the G20. The concern of these organisations is not human rights at all but that of putting capital at the centre of governance and development. They are increasingly powerful and influential and have been skillful in putting themselves at the forefront of resolving global challenges, with an expanding remit of issues (environment, security, gender, labour, health or education) away from their supposedly primary economic mandate.
Unlike the United Nations system, that represents all the governments of the world, the IMF, World Bank and WTO do not operate within the legally binding rights framework of the UN, they are governed by a different set of imperatives and most importantly, they do not have the same global political legitimacy. Currently however it is these institutions that enjoy unwarranted positions of influence and global leadership, deployed to protect neoliberal globalisation rather than to check corporate power. An example from the WEF highlighted by the Civil Society Initiative on the SDGs, is its report on the Future of Global Governance “Global Redesign” which “postulates that a globalised world is best managed by a coalition of multinational corporations, governments (including through the UN system) and select civil society organisations (CSOs). It argues that governments are no longer the overwhelmingly dominant actors on the world stage” and that “the time has come for a new stakeholder paradigm on international governance.” The WEF vision includes a “public-private UN, in which certain specialised agencies would operate under joint State and non-State governance systems…”1
The saying goes “you don’t know what you’ve lost till its gone.” We can no longer have the certitude we once had that rights and entitlements established within in the multilateral framework (ie. international law) are irreversible. It is stunning to see how the neoliberal project has been successful in replacing priorities of human rights and development to narrow preoccupations around GDP growth, competitiveness and so forth, even changing the language of public policy and development to fit the market paradigm. The human rights agenda now faces an existential crisis as neoliberalism recasts values away from equality, tolerance, non-discrimination or justice towards business friendliness and openness, stock market confidence or shareholder value.
FRAMING AND REFRAMING OUR STRUGGLES IN THE CONTEXT OF NEOLIBERALISM
In the current global context, it is impossible for feminists to frame women’s rights struggles outside the framework of the global neoliberal political economy. Neoliberalism, even when pretending to champion women’s empowerment, is very much premised on the exploitation of women’s labour—both paid and unpaid—since the wholesale destruction of public provision of essential services relies on women’s unpaid and/or underpaid labour to avert a complete social meltdown. The weakening of national and international institutions and frameworks that women rely on to protect and deliver their rights further compromises women’s human rights, as does the increasing reliance on visibly authoritarian methods of governance which are always accompanied by an enablement of xenophobic, misogynist, racist and extremist forces.
Feminists from the South, understand acutely how capitalism, colonialism and imperialism as projects were fundamentally based on constructing divisions and hierarchies based on race, class, caste ethnicity and fundamentally, gender. Intersectionality is precisely about working simultaneously on these interlocking systems of oppression rather than dealing with them as separate struggles that themselves mirror the hierarchies deployed by imperialism in the way we address them. We also have to understand from what is happening today that like human rights or democracy, decolonisation was not the irreversible event we thought it was. It is all too easy to be sucked in by the rhetoric of supposedly progressive corporate elites and their institutions about women’s empowerment, or youth development or even climate change and inequality. These are merely tactics to divert and distract while the core agenda of globalised structural adjustment continues unchecked.
The world continues on a path towards violence, precariousness, insecurity, authoritarianism and militarism brought about by perfectly preventable crisis after crisis. It means we have to work together, clearly identify and target the powers that are driving us towards this destruction and continue to push alternatives that build on the progress of the past before it is all lost. Most of all, we need to be clear in naming what kind of world order we are facing: new forms of imperialism, colonisation and domination that we thought belonged to a by-gone era but are now back with a vengeance.
NOTES
1 Spotlight on Sustainable Development: Reclaiming Policies for the Public https://www.2030spotlight.org/en
This article is published in the DAWN Informs July 2018.