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Minqi Li asks what follows neoliberalism — empire, social democracy or socialism. He first sets out what the regime has consisted of since the early 1980s: monetarist policy to hold down inflation and balance budgets, usually by cutting public spending and raising interest rates; "flexible" labour markets, meaning deregulation and reduced welfare; trade and financial liberalisation; and privatisation — pressed on the periphery and semi-periphery as structural adjustment, shock therapy or reform. He reads this as an attack by the global ruling elites, finance capital above all, on working people everywhere, and one that has reversed decades of social progress: inequality at unprecedented levels, pauperisation across much of the world, whole countries reduced to misery, with the richest one per cent taking as much income as the poorest 57 per cent.
Précis by Red Mole.
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