Neoliberalism Is at a Tipping Point

Its warts have only been laid bearer in recent years, with the need for urgent remedies ever-pressing.

From a Proud Boys rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. Courtesy of Flickr by Anthony Crider. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

As a cabal of Trump loyalists stormed the DC Capitol on Wednesday, it was becoming clear that the current state of things is all but untenable. Neoliberalism promised a world where conflict ceases as liberal democracy fueled by the engine of capitalism would take hold, but it has only taken a mere few decades from the time that thesis was upheld to finally witness its abject failure.

To say that the last decade in neoliberal politics has been unsuccessful would be selling it short–regimes across the global northwest assumed the struggle was done once the Cold War was over, but it was all resting on tenuous geopolitical ground. Compounded with an economic crisis in the latter half of the 2000s, neoliberal powers kept shrinking and expanding as populaces grew tired of an endless flip-flop between short-lived prosperity and crushing austerity. While means-tested welfare and job guarantee programs thrived, those who struggled to make ends meet were left wandering with an ever-bottoming abyss of online literature that seeks to explain their dire straits–that’s the intellectual void from which the New Right has sprung into being, and appeasing its ludicrous demands has been our main…