E3W Literature | University of Texas

David Harvey

A Brief History of Neoliberalism

Oxford University Press, 2005

247 pages

$19.99 

Reviewed by Kristine Kotecki

The catch-term “globalization” appears across social science and humanities discourses, as well as in popular media. In A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey takes on globalization’s less referenced counterpart, “neoliberalism.” Based on an economic school of thought that prioritizes government non-intervention in the market, in trade and in private property, neoliberal policies involve government deregulation and the privatization of state sectors. While Harvey shows that neoliberal theories do not always line up with the economic and political practices instituted under its name, he nonetheless argues that the neoliberal ideol­ogy that arises from these practices has become hegemonic and thus considered to be common sense. He then chal­lenges assumptions that neoliberalism and democratic ideals complement each other by showing how the former’s poli­cies are often actually at odds with concepts like “freedom” and “democracy.” To expand on his thesis that neoliberal­ism and exploitative practices go hand in hand, Harvey invokes a Marxian critical tradition. Essentially “a politi­cal project to re-establish the conditions for capital accu­mulation and to restore the power of the economic elites,” neoliberalism widens class and social inequality. Harvey’s elite class—the CEOs and the largely successful commer­cial entrepreneurs like Wal-Mart’s Walton family—benefit from the redistribution of wealth that occurs via neoliber­alism, but little new wealth is created and economic gaps are thus widened. Harvey then challenges neoliberalism’s common-sense-ness by revealing its roots, historicizing its development and analyzing its various manifestations.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism begins by demystifying neo­liberalism, presenting it as being a constructed ideology that benefits the upper class. The middle chapters include analyses of specific instances of neoliberal policies and then instances of dissent against these policies. In the final chap­ter, Harvey calls for alternative economic approaches. In the early chapters, Harvey investigates the connection between “freedom” and neoliberal economic policies. He draws on press releases to demonstrate a popular political assump­tion that individual freedoms result from free market and trade policies. He then establishes the Mont Pelerin Society’s 1947 treatise as being a foundational neoliberal theoretical text, whereby beliefs in individual freedom were aligned with beliefs in Adam Smith’s anti-interventionist economics. Neoliberal theories began garnering more attention with the 1970s financial crisis, when rising unemployment and infla­tion threatened both political and economic elites. During this time, US governmental and elite Chilean interests in­fluenced a “test run” of neoliberal practices in Chile, which then led the way for the US and England to institute modi­fied neoliberalisms in their own countries. This shift towards neoliberalism marked a move away from “embedded liberal” economic practices, the regulations that Harvey refers to as “Keynesian” practices instituted by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Harvey also compares US intervention in Chile to their contemporary presence in Iraq, pointing to the former as a foundational neoliberal experiment and the latter as an example of neoliberalism’s current hegemony.

Harvey quotes Karl Polanyi, who warns that “freedom” can also mean the freedom to exploit or to abuse. He then moves into an investigation of how “freedom” developed into a common-sense value, although one not necessarily implying social justice. Basing his analysis on Antonio Gramsci’s work on consent-building, Harvey traces the development in the US of valuations of freedom. He critiques the student move­ments at Berkeley and elsewhere in 1968 for prioritizing in­dividual freedom over the social justice concerns of the tra­ditional “Left” and argues that the ensuing identity politics and diversity rhetoric obscure the dangers of an idealized “freedom” that Polanyi warns about. Harvey also describes how the Republican Party built consent for its neoliberal practices with members of the evangelical Christian com­munity by showing how Republican religious leader Jerry Falwell equated neoliberalism with moral righteousness.

Harvey follows these foundational chapters with case stud­ies showing the varying ways that neoliberal theories and neoliberal practices differ. His primary conclusion for each instance he describes is that financial gain for the economic elite ultimately takes priority over any ideologically ground­ed economic policies. He also devotes an entire chapter to a case study on neoliberalism’s rise and fall in China, and points to this as an example of the other neoliberalisms’ po­tential falls. Harvey draws comparisons between its fall in China and its impending fall in the US, and warns against the neoconservative nationalism that replaced neoliberalism in China. Yet Harvey finds the neoconservative alternative no more salient. He ultimately points to the necessity of building alternative social networks to fill in the gap left by the hegemony of neoliberal structuring and of the poten­tial power of expanding the discourse of “freedom” and “in­dividual rights” beyond its currently limited signification.

A Brief History of Neoliberalism provides an easy to follow and well-supported introduction to a history that might other­wise seem intimidating to non-economists. It also reinforces a more specifically economic reading of globalization, while maintaining this reading’s relevance for humanities schol­ars by incorporating the consent-building role of cultural texts. Figures and graphs throughout the monograph clarify Harvey’s evidence, although their relevance would be dif­ficult to understand without Harvey’s accompanying com­mentary. In general, the argument is accessible, although Harvey sometimes assumes an audience familiar with eco­nomics and international politics—he tosses around terms like “Keynesian” and names like “Deng Xiaoping” without immediately explaining them. Harvey’s introduction also proves somewhat misleading by detracting from the care­ful historicization that he provides in the rest of the text. By equating neoliberalism with the powerful politicians involved in establishing its ideological hegemony—Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, especially—he oversimpli­fies the many factors besides these figures that led to neolib­eralism’s rise. His discussion of US imperialism also might have been more clearly historicized. He describes neoliberal­ism as being the US’s version of imperialism, but does not follow up by historicizing either “imperialism” or how this US version compares and contrasts with other models, again covering over the complex histories behind these terms.

Overall, A Brief History of Neoliberalism provides an impor­tant introductory overview of “neoliberalism” for scholars interested in economic globalization, and especially in eco­nomic interventions and the structural adjustment policies associated with financial institutions like the World Bank and IMF—adjustments whereby lenders can profit with­out risk. In light of the recent “1968” conference at The University of Texas at Austin, Harvey’s critique of the in­dividual freedom ideology underlying the 1968 student movements also invites further discussion. Finally, Harvey’s predictions about the fall of neoliberalism via a future fi­nancial crisis and his emphasis on the importance of de­veloping new models for “freedom” as an alternative to the rise of neoconservatism appear especially relevant in light of the current economic problems in much of the world. While the recent outcry against the US government’s inter­vention in failing businesses reflects neoliberal ideology, the concurrent distrust of these businesses’ CEOs also points to a reaction against the social inequalities of this system.