資本主義已經途窮，前路通往何方？（二）_風聞

美國社會主義雜誌《每月評論》網站2月1日刊登俄勒岡大學社會學教授約翰·貝拉米·福斯特文章《資本主義失敗了，接下來呢？》，由於篇幅較長分為三部分，今天推送第二部分。

文：John Bellamy Foster

譯：由冠羣

上篇文章裏提到的資本主義的種種敗象已經眾所周知。然而，這些失敗常常不被歸咎於資本主義作為一種制度的失敗，而只是被當作新自由主義的失敗，而新自由主義則被視為資本主義發展過程中一種可以被取代的範式。在許多左翼人士看來，要告別新自由主義或災難資本主義就必須迴歸福利國家自由主義、市場監管或某種形式的有限社會民主主義，從而通向更理性的資本主義。他們不認為問題的根源是資本主義本身已經失敗，而認為失敗的是新自由主義式的資本主義。

相反，馬克思主義傳統將新自由主義視為戰後晚期資本主義（late capitalism）的必然產物，與壟斷金融資本佔據統治地位緊密相關。因此，對新自由主義進行批判性歷史分析是至關重要的，既可以為我們奠定理解當代資本主義的基礎，也可以揭示為什麼新自由主義及其資本主義絕對論是無法在這種制度內部找到替代品的。

“新自由主義”一詞起源於20世紀20年代早期，出現在馬克思主義者對路德維希·馮·米塞斯的《民族、國家和經濟》（1919年）和《社會主義：一種經濟和社會學分析》（1922年）兩書的評論中，這兩本惡毒攻擊社會主義的小冊子構成了新自由主義-資本主義意識形態的基礎。當時受聘於維也納商會的米塞斯在這些著作中堅稱，“舊自由主義”必須以這種方式“交棒”給新自由主義才能戰勝社會主義。在這一過程中，他將社會主義等同於“破壞主義”，堅稱壟斷符合資本主義自由競爭，為不受約束的不平等現象辯護，並提出消費者可以通過購買行為行使“民主”權利，因此購買就相當於投票。他強烈譴責勞動立法、強制性社保、工會、失業保險、企業社會化（或國有化）、税收和通貨膨脹，認為它們統統不利於由他翻新的自由主義。米塞斯的新自由主義觀點是如此極端，以至於他明確支持狄更斯小説《艱難時世》裏愚鈍的功利主義教師麥卻孔掐孩，反對桀驁不馴的青年女主人公西絲·朱浦。米塞斯聲稱狄更斯“教唆千百萬人憎恨自由主義和資本主義。”

1921年，奧地利馬克思主義者麥克斯·阿德勒創造了“新自由主義”這個詞，專門用來描述米塞斯試圖用市場拜物教這種新意識形態來翻新衰落的自由主義秩序的舉動。隨後，才華橫溢的奧地利馬克思主義者海倫·鮑威爾（譯註：奧托·鮑威爾的合作人、妻子）於1923年對米塞斯的新自由主義思想進行了尖鋭的批判。1924年，德國馬克思主義者阿爾弗雷德·穆塞爾為德國主要社會主義理論雜誌《社會》（Die Gesellschaft）撰寫了一篇批評米塞斯的長文，題為《新自由主義》（Der Neu-Liberalismus），編輯是魯道夫·希法亭。

通過大量的馬克思主義理論分析，阿德勒、鮑威爾和穆塞爾抨擊了米塞斯的主張，即：不受管制的資本主義是唯一理性的經濟制度，以及社會主義等於破壞主義。他們強烈質疑米塞斯不符合歷史的描述，即和諧的資本主義通過市場機制促進了自由交換和自由貿易。他們認為米塞斯的分析有嚴重的邏輯缺陷，新自由主義意識形態內部存在固有的系統性分歧，因此把工會視為對貿易的限制，卻替僱主協會和壟斷企業辯護，稱它們符合自由競爭規律。還值得注意的是，米塞斯主張建立強大的國家，以自我調節的市場制度為名鎮壓工人階級的鬥爭，儘管他譴責國家為工人伸張權利的行動是反自由市場的，是階級恐怖的一種形式。對穆塞爾來説，米塞斯是“流動資本家或國際金融資本的忠實僕人”。此後在1926年，原始法西斯主義（protofascist）經濟學家奧特馬爾·施潘批評了這種迴歸某種更極端的古典自由主義的返祖企圖，他在《經濟理論類型》一書中將其稱為“新自由主義趨勢”。1927年，米塞斯在其著作《自由主義》中將“更早的自由主義”與“新自由主義”加以區分，其依據是舊自由主義許諾平等，而新自由主義除了機會平等以外否定其他平等。

1920年代，誕生於米塞斯筆下的新自由主義被馬克思主義批評家（甚至還有一些右翼人士）視為一種使壟斷或金融資本合理化的企圖，這極大背離了古典自由主義的信條。構建新自由主義就是要為資產階級福祉提供理論基礎，它不僅要對抗社會主義，還反對一切社會監管和社會民主：這是一場對工人階級不留餘地的攻擊。

米塞斯及其門徒弗里德里希·哈耶克對社會主義的攻擊，部分源於他們對受阿德勒、奧托·鮑威爾和卡爾·倫納等人啓迪的紅色維也納時期（譯註：指1919年至1932年奧地利馬克思主義主導奧地利政壇的時期）大感失望。相反的，紅色維也納時期的政治環境也啓發了卡爾·波蘭尼，他受阿德勒、鮑威爾思想的強烈影響，毫不留情地批判了新自由主義對市場自我調節的迷信，這為他後來寫作《大轉型》（1946）奠定了基礎。

20世紀30年代至60年代，在大蕭條和第二次世界大戰之後，新自由主義意識形態在資本主義危機不斷深化的背景下逐漸衰落。30年代初，歐洲陰雲密佈，米塞斯在納粹接管奧地利之前曾在奧地利法西斯政府擔任總理兼獨裁者恩格爾伯特·陶爾斐斯的經濟顧問。他後來移民到瑞士，然後移居美國，接受洛克菲勒基金會的資助，在紐約大學任教。與此同時，哈耶克也在英國早期新自由主義經濟學家萊昂內爾·羅賓斯的慫恿下，接受了倫敦經濟學院的聘書。

在西方，二戰後的一段時期被稱為凱恩斯時代。受國家支出（尤其是冷戰時期的軍費開支）增加、歐洲和日本經濟重建、營銷規模擴大、美歐汽車普及，以及亞洲兩場地區性戰爭的刺激，資本主義經濟在四分之一個世紀的時間裏飛速發展。同時，西方面臨以蘇聯為代表的另一種模式的威脅，而且及工會經過30年代和40年代發展得十分強大，因此社會朝着凱恩斯主義、社會民主主義和福利國家的方向發展。

然而，1930年代就已暴露出來的經濟停滯問題仍然是資本主義體制難以解決的結構性缺陷，它只不過暫時被二戰後經濟高速增長、工人收入提高的所謂“黃金時代”掩蓋了起來。無論相對而言還是絕對而言，壟斷資本主義下的大企業都挪用了更多剩餘價值，財富集中在更少數人手中，導致資本過度積累和製造業產能過剩。儘管大規模拓展營銷、軍國主義和帝國主義能部分抵消這種趨勢，但它對經濟的刺激作用卻越來越小。

美國的帝國主義行徑和美元在世界範圍內的擴散導致了佈雷頓森林體系的崩潰，該體系在戰後初期曾對世界貿易起到了穩定作用，它的崩潰迫使理查德·尼克松在1971年結束了美元金本位制。這與60年代末越南戰爭結束後美國經濟放緩有關，造成70年代中期資本主義體系的結構性危機，開啓了幾十年經濟停滯和發達資本主義經濟體經濟增長率長期下降的趨勢。刺激二戰後經濟繁榮的主要因素都已減弱，這使發達的資本主義經濟體處於低迷狀態。

為了應對1970年代出現的資本主義體系結構危機，第一項應對措施是利用凱恩斯主義“增加需求促進經濟增長”理論擴大政府開支。尼克松執政時期，美國政府民用開支在商品和服務上的支出佔國內生產總值的百分比達到了頂峯。美國政府加大支出，再加上危機時期工會為維持實際工資而進行的鬥爭，以及壟斷企業大幅漲價以提高利潤率，導致了一段時期的滯漲（經濟停滯加上通貨膨脹）。

通貨膨脹使以貨幣資產形式持有的累積財富貶值，它給資產階級地位帶來的威脅比經濟停滯要迫切得多，而對工人階級來説情況則剛好相反。其結果是在資產階級內部出現了一場反凱恩斯主義運動，反對者採用哈耶克《通往奴役之路》中的理論，將任何比極端新自由主義學説稍微偏左翼一點的內容統統打上社會主義或極權主義的標籤，並試圖扭轉幾十年來向工人階級適度讓利的趨勢。一開始是在貨幣主義和供給側經濟學的偽裝下向經濟緊縮和經濟結構調整方向急劇轉變，隨後則採取了更難以捉摸的自由市場政策。政治、經濟和司法手段被整合起來聯手摧毀工會，剷除了美國新制度學派經濟學家約翰·肯尼斯·加爾佈雷斯在《美國資本主義》一書中所説的勞工的“抗衡力量”。

二戰後新自由主義之所以能夠重出江湖，以瑞士度假聖地命名的“朝聖山學社”發揮了重要作用。1947年米塞斯、哈耶克、羅賓斯、米爾頓·弗裏德曼、喬治·斯蒂格勒、雷蒙·阿隆等人在朝聖山會面，共同推廣新自由主義政治學和經濟學理念。朝聖山學社的成員一般自稱為歐洲的古典自由主義者。毫無疑問，他們沒有忘記20年代馬克思主義者是如何鞭辟入裏地批判新自由主義意識形態的，所以迴避了“新自由主義”這個標籤。“新自由主義”這個名詞是米塞斯1927年使用過的，1938年它在有米塞斯和哈耶克參加的巴黎沃爾特·李普曼討論會上被正式提出。在朝聖山學社，新自由主義的主要支持者們並沒有將其當作一種獨立的政治意識形態，而是把它視為古典自由主義的延伸，並且可以歸結為人性的內在特徵。就這樣，正如米歇爾·福柯所説，新自由主義被轉化成了一種生命政治學（biopolitics）。

儘管放棄了新自由主義的名號，但朝聖山學社和芝加哥大學經濟系仍然成為了新自由主義意識形態的堡壘，而這裏的新自由主義和戰間期萌發出的新自由主義毫無二致。在20世紀50年代和60年代的凱恩斯主義時代，米塞斯、哈耶克、弗裏德曼和詹姆斯·布坎南等人儘管接受了私人基金會的大量資金，但學術上仍處於邊緣地位。可隨着70年代經濟再次出現停滯，壟斷資本頂層為了通過企業行動重構資本主義經濟，積極招募了這些新自由主義知識分子來提供意識形態基礎，其主要針對目標包括勞工、國家，以及全球欠發達的發展中經濟體。

從一開始，新自由主義哲學的核心內容就是捍衞集中的企業資本和階級制度，認為這兩個特點體現了自由市場競爭和企業家精神。新自由主義的反社會主義理論想要將社會生活完全市場私有化，這正是該理論的極其惡毒之處。在瑪格麗特·撒切爾執政的英國和羅納德·里根執政的美國，哈耶克和弗裏德曼這樣的人物成為新自由主義時代的象徵，這段時期有時被稱為哈耶克時代。1969年瑞典銀行設立的所謂諾貝爾經濟學獎，即“紀念阿爾弗雷德·諾貝爾的瑞典銀行經濟科學獎”，從一開始就由極端保守的新自由主義經濟學家把持。1974年至1992年期間，包括哈耶克、弗裏德曼、斯蒂格勒和布坎南在內的七名朝聖山學社成員獲得了該獎項，而即便再温和的社會民主主義經濟學家也都被排擠在外。

新自由主義作為一種經濟意識形態，以它在促進經濟增長方面乏善可陳的記錄來判斷，在正常的經濟政策條件下基本上是無效的，因為它就像新古典經濟學本身一樣，試圖否認（或合理化）經濟由大企業和集權主導的現實。但是，在壟斷-金融資本試圖控制社會所有貨幣流通的時代，新自由主義對大型企業和新興億萬富翁階層而言，不失為一種有效的政治-經濟策略。儘管資本主義經濟體持續處於停滯狀態，幾十年來經濟增長率不斷下降，但商業富豪手中的剩餘資本（surplus capital）不但增加了，而且還藉助金融化、全球化和數字技術革命，創造出聚斂財富的新方式。金融化是指經濟相對從側重生產向側重金融轉移，它為投機和形成財富開闢了無數新途徑，卻偏離了實際資本的積累，導致用於投資新生產能力的資本相對不足。

全球化不僅意味着新的市場，更重要的是，它藉助全球勞動力套利這種形式，使邊緣國家低薪勞動力受過度剝削而產生的鉅額經濟盈餘最終流入富裕國家跨國企業和富豪的賬房。過去由於發達國家主導了生產，處於資本主義經濟中心的工人們能獲得就業和工資方面的增量收益，但如今帝國主義已無法繼續提供這個好處，充其量可以説由於跨國企業生產外包它有助於降低物價，典型例子就是沃爾瑪的崛起。與此同時，數字技術為新的、全球化的監控資本主義（surveillance capitalism）奠定了基礎，監控資本主義在營銷的驅動下買賣人口信息，從而形成了嚴重的信息技術壟斷。

不平等現象和財富積累的大幅加劇被認為是創新的回報，因此是合理的，而創新則往往被認為是少數人的成就，而不是社會的集體成果。在新的橫徵暴斂時代，一切都是供人爭奪的：教育、醫療、交通、住房、土地、城市、監獄、保險、養老金、食品和娛樂。社會上的所有交換都要充分商品化、企業化和金融化，資金流入金融中心，通過債務槓桿推動資本投機獲利。人與人之間的溝通也被變成了一種商品。所有這一切都是以社會自由市場化的名義發生的。

對於這種現象背後的各種權力來説，這一策略是非常成功的。儘管有亞當·斯密的《國富論》，但資本主義對國家財富的關心遠遠不如對資產階級財富的關心。金融化進程對經濟停滯起到了一定遏制作用，但代價是在正常商業週期之上出現週期性的金融危機。儘管如此，社會頂層聚斂財富的速度仍在不斷加快，金融危機本身導致了更大規模的金融集聚和集中化。在這種情況下，新自由主義的邏輯越來越偏向金融化的征斂和積累。

國家也被金融化政策所綁架，其整體作用變成了保護貨幣價值。在2007-09年的金融危機中，大銀行和大企業幾乎都得到了政府救助，而普通人的死活則沒有人在乎。那場巨大的金融危機不但沒有成為新自由主義本身的嚴重危機，反而進一步推動了它的發展，反映出新自由主義政治已經成為無所不包的金融征斂制度的意識形態表述。

這個金融化積累的新時代的特徵之一是，它逐步脱離現實的生產和使用價值，在整個生產和積累的過程中加劇了交換價值（價值形式）和使用價值（自然形式）之間的衝突。其結果是使我們的星球進入“社會和生態緊急狀態”。最明顯的例子就是自然環境的迅速惡化。化石燃料即使只是埋藏在地下的儲量資源，也被當作金融資產記入公司的賬簿。這樣，它們就成了壟斷資本主義整個金融化積累過程的一部分。因此，數萬億美元的華爾街資產與化石資本聯繫在一起。這使人們更難從化石燃料的開採和使用轉向更可持續的替代品（如太陽能和風能）。沒有人對陽光和風享有所有權。因此，這些能源形式中就沒有多少既得利益。當代資本主義比以往任何時候都更注重當下利潤和未來潛在利潤，即使犧牲人類和地球也在所不惜。人類似乎無能為力地站在一旁，眼睜睜地看着氣候遭到破壞，無數物種消失，所有這些都是市場化社會壓倒一切的力量造成的。

新自由主義一向明確反對嚴格意義上的自由放任經濟，因為它一直強調國家要扮演有力的、具有干預性和建構性的角色，從而直接服務於私有資本和市場威權主義，這便是詹姆斯·K·加爾佈雷斯在著作中所批評的“掠奪型國家”（predator state）。按照新自由主義的觀點，資本主義專制制度（capitalist absolutism）不是自發形成的，而必須是人為創造的。國家的作用不單單是亞當·斯密所主張的保護財產，而是福柯在其作品《生命政治的誕生》中精闢解釋的那樣，要積極建構市場對生活的全方位主宰。這意味着要以企業或市場為模型再造國家和社會。

正如福柯所説，“新自由主義的問題是……如何模仿市場經濟的原則來全面行使政治權力。”國家不應該糾正市場對市場之外的“社會”造成的“破壞性影響”，而應該利用這些破壞性影響來採取進一步措施擴大市場覆蓋面和滲透力。新自由主義的目標不是要徹底超越國家，而是要將國家綁定在資本的壟斷-競爭目的上，這是布坎南大力宣傳的一種觀點。在被壟斷-金融資本主導的新自由主義國家，國家政府被特殊手段束縛起來，不得作出任何可能對貨幣價值產生負面影響的改變。因此，當國家考慮通過財政和貨幣政策打破既得利益時，這兩種工具便越來越脱離政府的掌控範圍。在新自由主義國家，央行幾乎變成了獨立於國家政府的自治分支機構，它的實際控制權在銀行手裏。監管機構被壟斷-金融資本攻陷，它們的行動在大多數情況下直接服務於不受政府控制的企業利益。

波蘭尼有力地向我們證明，試圖建立所謂的自我調節的市場化社會——實際上需要國家代表資本進行持續干預並最終建立掠奪型國家——其結果就是對社會和生活的基礎造成破壞。但是，就當今的資本主義而言，已經沒有回頭路可走。停滯、金融化、私有化、全球化、國家的市場化、人向“人力資本”的蜕化，以及自然向“自然資本”的蜕化，使新自由主義政治成為壟斷-金融資本不可抹除的特徵，只有反資本主義政治才能正本清源。

在資本主義發展到全球壟斷-金融資本主義階段並陷入結構性危機的背景下，新自由主義已經與資本主義制度融為一體。它將這種結構性危機擴展到社會的各個層面，使其在資本主義制度中無處不在且不可克服。資本主義每遭遇一次失敗，解決方式都是按過去的方式變本加厲，這便是市場原則的魅力，將造成問題的弊病看作解決問題的良藥，而資本主義的每一次失敗都會為少數人開闢新的盈利空間。這種非理性邏輯的結果不僅是經濟災難和生態災難，而且會導致自由民主國家逐漸消亡。因此，新自由主義不可避免的導向市場威權主義甚至新法西斯主義。就此而言，不能把唐納德·特朗普的出現看作一次偶發的“脱軌現象”。

正如米塞斯1927年在《自由主義》中公開宣稱的那樣：“不可否認的是，法西斯主義和旨在建立獨裁政權的類似（右翼）運動有着高尚的目的，而且就目前而言，他們的干預拯救了歐洲文明。因此，法西斯主義為自己贏得的功績將被歷史永遠銘記。”哈耶克與弗裏德曼、布坎南等新自由主義者一起，積極支持奧古斯托·皮諾切特將軍1973年在智利發動政變，推翻民選的薩爾瓦多·阿連德社會主義政府，並實施經濟休克療法。在這種背景下，哈耶克1978年訪問智利時，親口告訴皮諾切特要警惕“不受限制的民主”復活。1981年第二次訪問時，他説，“獨裁政權……在政策上可能比民主大會更自由。”他在1949年的《個人主義與經濟秩序》一書中寫道：“我們必須面對這樣的事實，即：保持個人自由與充分滿足我們的分配公平觀之間是不相容的。”

簡言之，新自由主義不單是一種可以被摒棄的範式，它還代表了壟斷金融時代資本主義制度的絕對專制傾向。正如福柯指出的那樣，只有將其經濟邏輯單一地應用於所有社會學意義上的存在，資本主義才能“苟活”一時。然而，將資本主義簡化為純粹的點石成金術，它最終只能摧毀與其接觸的一切事物。然而如果説時至今日資本主義已經宣告失敗，那麼問題就在於：未來在何方？

（未完待續）

Capitalism Has Failed—What Next? (Part II)

Neoliberalism and Capitalist Failure

Many of the symptoms of the failure of capitalism described above are well-known. Nevertheless, they are often attributed not to capitalism as a system, but simply to neoliberalism, viewed as a particular paradigm of capitalist development that can be replaced by another, better one. For many people on the left, the answer to neoliberalism or disaster capitalism is a return to welfare-state liberalism, market regulation, or some form of limited social democracy, and thus to a more rational capitalism. It is not the failure of capitalism itself that is perceived as the problem, but rather the failure of neoliberal capitalism.

In contrast, the Marxian tradition understands neoliberalism as an inherent outgrowth of late capitalism, associated with the domination of monopoly-finance capital. A critical-historical analysis of neoliberalism is therefore crucial both to grounding our understanding of capitalism today and uncovering the reason why all alternatives to neoliberalism and its capitalist absolutism are closed within the system itself.

The term neoliberalism had its origin in the early 1920s, in the Marxian critique of Ludwig von Mises’s Nation, State, and Economy (1919) and Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis(1922), both of which were written as virulent anti-socialist tracts, constituting the foundational works of neoliberal-capitalist ideology.45 In these works, Mises, then employed by the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, insisted that the “old liberalism” had to be “relaid” in such a way as to defeat socialism. In the process, he equated socialism with “destructionism,” insisted that monopoly was consistent with capitalist free competition, defended unlimited inequality, and argued that consumers exercised “democracy” through their purchases, which were equivalent to ballots. He strongly condemned labor legislation, compulsory social insurance, trade unions, unemployment insurance, socialization (or nationalization), taxation, and inflation as the enemies of his refurbished liberalism.46 So extreme were Mises’s neoliberal views that he explicitly took the side of the crass, utilitarian pedagogue M’Choakumchild against the defiant young heroine Sissy Jupe, as portrayed by Dickens in Hard Times. Dickens, Mises claimed, had “taught millions to hate Liberalism and Capitalism.”47

In 1921, Austro-Marxist Max Adler coined the term neoliberalism to designate Mises’s attempt to refurbish a fading liberal order through a new ideology of market fetishism. This was followed by a sharp criticism of Mises’s neoliberal ideology in 1923 by the gifted Austro-Marxist Helene Bauer. In 1924, the German Marxist Alfred Meusel wrote a lengthy critique of Mises, entitled “Neoliberalism” (“Der Neu-Liberalismus”) for the leading German socialist theoretical journal Die Gesellschaft, edited by Rudolf Hilferding.48

Building on a wealth of Marxian analysis, Adler, Bauer, and Meusel attacked Mises’s claim that an unregulated capitalism was the only rational economic system and that socialism was equivalent to destructionism. They strongly challenged his ahistorical depiction of a harmonious capitalism that promoted free exchange and free trade through the market mechanism. A serious logical flaw in Mises’s analysis, they contended, was the systematic bifurcation built into his neoliberal ideology, whereby trade unions were considered constraints on trade while employers’ associations and monopolistic corporations were justified as consistent with free competition. Likewise, it was noted that Mises advocated a strong state to repress working-class struggles in the name of a self-regulating market system, even when state action on behalf of workers was condemned as anti-free market and a form of class terror. For Meusel, Mises was “a faithful servant of the mobile capitalist” or international finance capital. Later, in 1926, the protofascist economist Othmar Spann criticized the atavistic attempt to revert to a more extreme version of classical liberalism, referring to this in his Types of Economic Theory as “The Neo-Liberal Trend.”49 In 1927, in his work Liberalism, Mises himself distinguished between “the older liberalism and…neoliberalism” on the basis of the commitment of the former to equality, in contrast to the rejection of equality (other than so-called equality of opportunity) by the latter.50

Neoliberalism, as it first emerged from Mises’s pen, was thus viewed by Marxian critics in the 1920s (and even by some figures on the right) as an attempt to rationalize a monopoly or finance capital far removed from the precepts of classical liberalism. It was designed to provide the intellectual basis for capitalist class warfare against not only socialism, but all attempts at social regulation and social democracy: a no-quarter-given attack on the working class.

Mises’s assault on socialism, together with that of his protégé Friedrich Hayek, was motivated in part by a profound disenchantment with Red Vienna under the sway of Austro-Marxism, which was inspired by figures like Adler, Otto Bauer, and Karl Renner.51 Conversely, it was this same political environment of Red Vienna, which dominated Austrian politics from 1919–32, that inspired Karl Polanyi, who was strongly influenced by Adler and Otto Bauer, to develop a crushing critique of the neoliberal belief in the self-regulating market—later to form the basis of The Great Transformation (1946).52

In the 1930s to 1960s, following the Great Depression and the Second World War, neoliberal ideology waned in the context of the deepening crisis of capitalism. In the early 1930s, as the storm clouds gathered over Europe, Mises served as an economic advisor to Austrofascist Chancellor-dictator Engelbert Dollfuss prior to the Nazi takeover of Austria.53 He later emigrated to Switzerland and then to the United States, enjoying the support of the Rockefeller Foundation and teaching at New York University. Meanwhile, Hayek was recruited by the London School of Economics at the instigation of the early neoliberal British economist Lionel Robbins.

The post-Second World War years in the West were known as the age of Keynes. Spurred on by increased state spending (particularly on the military in the context of the Cold War), the rebuilding of the war-torn European and Japanese economies, the expansion of the sales effort, waves of automobilization in both the United States and Europe, and two major regional wars in Asia—capitalist economies grew rapidly for a quarter-century.54 Meanwhile, faced with the threat of the alternative model represented by the Soviet Union, and the advent of strong unions as a result of the developments of the 1930s and ’40s, the West moved in the direction of Keynesianism, social democracy, and the welfare state.

Nevertheless, the tendency toward economic stagnation already exhibited in the 1930s remained as a structural flaw of the system, temporarily masked by the so-called Golden Age of rapid growth and increasing income for workers that immediately followed the Second World War. The giant corporations of monopoly capitalism succeeded in appropriating ever-greater surplus in both absolute and relative terms, which was concentrated in the hands of ever-fewer wealth holders, leading to a tendency toward overaccumulation of capital and manufacturing overcapacity, countered in part by a massive expansion of the sales effort, militarism, and imperialism, but with ever-lessening effect in stimulating the economy.

U.S. imperialism and the proliferation of dollars abroad led to a breakdown in the Bretton Woods system that had stabilized world trade in the early post-Second World War period, causing Richard Nixon to end the dollar-gold standard in 1971. This was associated with a slowdown in the U.S. economy from the late 1960s on, as the Vietnam War was winding down, resulting in a structural crisis of the capitalist system in the mid–1970s, which was to mark the beginning of decades of economic stagnation and a long decline in the trend rate of growth in the advanced capitalist economies. The major stimuli that sparked the post-Second World War boom had all waned, leaving the advanced capitalist economies in the doldrums.55

The first response to the structural crisis of the capitalist system that emerged in the 1970s was to utilize Keynesian demand-promotion to expand state spending. U.S. civilian-government spending on goods and services as a percentage of gross domestic product thus reached a peak during the Nixon administration.56 This, plus the struggles of unions to maintain their real wages in the crisis, while monopolistic corporations aggressively raised prices to increase their profit margins, led to a period of stagflation (economic stagnation plus inflation).

Inflation, which depreciates accumulated wealth held in the form of monetary assets, is a much greater immediate threat to the position of the capitalist class than is economic stagnation, while for the working class the situation is reversed. The result was the emergence of an anti-Keynesian movement within the capitalist class, which designated anything to the left of hardcore neoliberalism as socialist or totalitarian in the manner of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, and sought to reverse decades of modest working-class gains.57There was a sharp turn toward austerity and economic restructuring, initially under the guise of monetarism and supply-side economics, and later taking a more amorphous free-market character. A concerted effort to destroy unions by combined political, economic, and juridical means was carried out, eliminating what John Kenneth Galbraith in his American Capitalismhad once called the “countervailing power” of labor.58

Key to the reemergence of neoliberalism in the post-Second World period was the Mont Pèlerin Society, named after the Swiss spa where Mises, Hayek, Robbins, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Raymond Aron, and others met in 1947, to promote neoliberal economic and political ideas. The members of the Mont Pèlerin Society generally referred to themselves as classical liberals in the European sense. No doubt remembering the devastating Marxist critiques of neoliberal ideology in the 1920s, they eschewed the label neoliberal, which Mises himself had adopted in 1927, and which had been put forward in the 1938 Walter Lippmann Colloquium in Paris that Mises and Hayek attended.59 Instead, neoliberalism was presented by its chief adherents in the Mont Pèlerin Society not as a separate political ideology from, but as an extension of, classical liberalism and attributable to inherent features of human nature. In this way, as Michel Foucault argued, it was converted into a kind of biopolitics.60

Nevertheless, while abandoning the neoliberal label, the Mont Pèlerin Society, together with the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago, was to be a bastion of neoliberal ideology—in precisely the sense that it had first emerged between the world wars. In the Keynesian era of the 1950s and ’60s, figures like Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and James Buchanan remained on the margins, though heavily bankrolled by private foundations.61 But with the return of economic stagnation in the 1970s, neoliberal intellectuals were actively recruited at the apex of monopoly capital in order to provide the ideological basis for an ongoing corporate campaign to restructure the capitalist economy, deliberately targeting labor, the state, and the underdeveloped economies of the global South.

Central to neoliberal philosophy from the beginning was the defense of concentrated corporate capital and class dynasties, which were portrayed as representing free-market competition and entrepreneurship.62 The very virulence of neoliberal anti-socialism meant that it represented the drive to a complete market-privatization of social life. In Margaret Thatcher’s London and Ronald Reagan’s Washington, figures like Hayek and Friedman became the symbols of the neoliberal era, sometimes called the age of Hayek. The new so-called Nobel Prize in Economics, or the Sveriges Riksbank (Bank of Sweden) Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established by the Bank of Sweden in 1969, was controlled from its inception by ultraconservative neoliberal economists. Seven members of the Mont Pèlerin Society, including Hayek, Friedman, Stigler, and Buchanan received the prize between 1974 and 1992, while even mildly social-democratic economists were all but excluded.63

Neoliberalism as an economic ideology was largely ineffectual in normal economic-policy terms, judged by its lack of success in promoting growth, since, like neoclassical economics itself, it sought to deny (or rationalize) the reality of an economy dominated by big business and concentrated power.64 Nevertheless, it served as an effective political-economic strategy for big business and the emerging billionaire class in an age where monopoly-finance capital sought to seize control of all monetary flows in society.65 Although capitalist economies continued to stagnate with growth rates diminishing decade by decade, the surplus capital in the hands of the corporate rich not only increased, but by virtue of financialization, globalization, and the revolution in digital technology, new forms of amassing wealth were created.66 Financialization—the relative shift of the economy from production to finance—opened up vast new avenues to speculation and wealth formation, relatively removed from capital investment in new productive capacity (that is, real capital accumulation).

Globalization meant not only new markets, but, more importantly—through the global labor arbitrage—the appropriation of huge economic surpluses from the overexploitation of low-wage labor in the periphery that ended up in the financial coffers of multinational corporations and wealthy individuals in the rich countries.67 The benefits of imperialism to workers in the center of the capitalist economy no longer included incremental gains in employment and income associated with the global dominance of production, but, at best, could be said to contribute to cheaper prices from the outsourcing of production by multinational corporations, symbolized by the growth of Walmart. Meanwhile, digital technology created the basis of a new globalized surveillance capitalism, buying and selling information on the population, primarily motivated by the sales effort, leading to the creation of enormous information-technology monopolies.68

​

Vast increases in inequality and wealth were justified as returns for innovation, always attributed to a very few rather than as the collective product of society. In the new era of expropriation, all was up for grabs: education, health systems, transportation, housing, land, cities, prisons, insurance, pensions, food, entertainment. All exchanges in society were to be fully commodified, corporatized, and financialized, with the funds flowing into financial centers and feeding speculation on capital gains, leveraged by debt. Human communication was itself to be turned into a commodity. All in the name of a free-market society.

For the powers that be, this strategy was enormously successful. Capitalism, despite Adam Smith, had never been about the wealth of nations so much as the wealth of the capitalist class. The financialization process managed to counter economic-stagnation tendencies to some extent, but at the cost of periodic financial crises layered over the normal business cycle. Nevertheless, the amassing of wealth at the top continued to accelerate, with financial crises themselves leading to even greater financial concentration and centralization. In this situation, neoliberalism increasingly took on the logic of financialized expropriation and accumulation.

The state too became subject to the financialization policy, shifting its overall role to protecting the value of money.69 In the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09, the big banks and corporations were almost all bailed out; the population was not. Rather than representing a severe crisis for neoliberalism itself, the Great Financial Crisis only gave it further impetus, reflecting the fact that neoliberal politics had become the ideological expression of an all-encompassing system of financial expropriation.70

A characteristic of this new era of financialized accumulation is that it is progressively removed from the realities of production and use value, heightening the conflict between exchange value (the value form) and use value (the natural form) within the overall production and accumulation process.71 The result is “a social and ecological planetary emergency.”72 This is most evident in the rapid destruction of the natural environment. Fossil fuels are entered as financial assets on the books of corporations, even when they exist only in the form of reserves buried in the ground. In this way, they are integral to the entire financialized accumulation process of monopoly capitalism. Trillions of dollars of Wall Street assets are thus tied up in fossil capital.73 This has made it doubly difficult to shift away from the extraction and use of fossil fuels to more sustainable alternatives, such as solar and wind power. No one owns the sun’s rays or the wind. Hence, there is less of a vested interest in these forms of energy. In today’s capitalism, more than ever before, current and potential future profits dictate all, at the expense of people and the planet. The human population stands by, seemingly helpless, watching the destruction of the climate and the loss of innumerable species, all imposed by the ostensibly overwhelming force of market society.

Neoliberalism has always been directly opposed to strict laissez faire since it has invariably emphasized a strong, interventionist, and constructionist relation to the state, in the direct service of private capital and market authoritarianism, or what James K. Galbraith has critically referred to as the predator state.74 In the neoliberal view, capitalist absolutism is not a spontaneous product—it must be created. The role of the state is not simply to protect property, as maintained by Smith, but, as Foucault brilliantly explained in his Birth of Biopolitics, extends to the active construction of the domination of the market over all aspects of life.75 This means refashioning the state and society on the model of the corporation or the market.

As Foucault put it, “the problem of neo-liberalism is…how the overall exercise of political power can be modeled on the principles of a market economy.” The state must not “correct the destructive effects of the market,” where these fall “on society” outside the market, but rather take advantage of these destructive effects to impose further measures that extend the reach and penetration of the market.76 The goal is not to transcend the state altogether, but to shackle it to the monopolistic-competitive ends of capital, a view forcefully propagated by Buchanan.77 The shackles imposed on the neoliberal state dominated by monopoly-finance capital are specially designed to limit any changes that would negatively affect the value of money. Hence, both fiscal and monetary policy are increasingly put out of reach of the government itself—in those cases where changes going against the vested interests are contemplated. Central banks have been transformed into largely autonomous branches of the state, in fact controlled by the banks. Treasury departments are shackled by debt ceilings. Regulatory agencies are captured by monopoly-finance capital and act, for the most part, in the direct interest of corporations outside governmental control.78

The result of such an attempt to construct a so-called self-regulating market society—in fact requiring constant state interventions on behalf of capital and the creation of a predator state—is, as Polanyi powerfully demonstrated, to undermine the very foundations of society and life itself.79 But, in terms of capitalism today, there is no going back. Stagnation, financialization, privatization, globalization, the marketization of the state, and the reduction of people to “human capital” and nature to “natural capital,” have made neoliberal politics an irrevocable characteristic of monopoly-finance capital, which only an anti-capitalist politics can supplant.

Neoliberalism has thus become integrated into the system in the context of the structural crisis of capitalism in its globalized monopoly-finance phase. It extends this structural crisis to all of society and makes it universal and insurmountable within the system. The answer to every failing of capitalism is thus to turn the screw further, which accounts for much of the allure of the market principle, since it is perpetually seen as the solution to the problems it causes—with each failure opening up new areas of profitability for a few. The result of this irrational logic is not merely economic and ecological disaster, but the gradual demise of the liberal-democratic state itself. Neoliberalism thus points inevitably to market authoritarianism and even neofascism. In this respect, Donald Trump is no mere aberration.80

As Mises openly declared in 1927 in Liberalism: “It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements [on the right] aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions, and that their intervention, has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.”81 Hayek, along with other neoliberals such as Friedman and Buchanan, actively supported General Augusto Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, overthrowing the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende and imposing an economic shock doctrine on the population. In this context, Hayek, in a trip he took to Chile in 1978, personally warned Pinochet against a resurrection of “unlimited democracy.” During a second visit in 1981, he stated that “a dictatorship…may be more liberal in its policies than a democratic assembly.”82As he wrote in 1949 in Individualism and Economic Order, “we must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.”83

Neoliberalism, in short, is not a mere paradigm that can be dispensed with, but represents the absolutist tendencies of the system in the age of monopoly finance. As Foucault pointed out, the “survival of capitalism” could only be ensured for a time by the singular application of its economic logic to all of sociological existence.84 Reduced, however, to a pure Midas principle, capitalism could only end up by destroying everything in existence with which it came into contact. But if capitalism has now failed, the question becomes: What next?

(To be continued)