The signs were already there: the 2008 global financial crisis had unmasked the avarice of Wall Street. But instead of protecting people from the coming shocks, the U.S. government bailed out the banks that had caused the crisis. In many European countries, the social safety net was chipped away to pay for the crimes of the financial elite. For many, Donald Trump’s election seemed to be an anomaly rather than the logical conclusion of events set in motion since then. But the seed of Trumpism, says Naomi Klein in No is Not Enough , goes way before 2008 — Trump is “the cliched outcome” of the ubiquitous war on the public sphere that has been waged by Milton Friedman’s disciples over the decades.
But before the political project for a better world can be imagined, we need to identify what exactly we are challenging. Neoliberalism is so pervasive that we “seldom even recognise it as an ideology”, thereby giving it its biggest source of power, writes George Monbiot in How Did We Get Into This Mess ? In this anthology of his journalistic writing, Monbiot examines the crisis of income inequality, the hunger for growth and profit, the devastation of the natural world, the attempts by corporations to supplant sovereign governments, and a calamitous decline in political debate over what should be done. The source of all problems, according to him, lies in the very idea of freedom peddled by free market seers and the state apparatuses under their control. Their freedom means “freedom from the demands of social justice, environmental constraints... from taxation that funds public services... in sum, freedom from democracy”.
The “working-class revenge” against this anti-democratic trend, writes Franco Berardi in Futurability , has marked a “breakpoint in the history of neoliberal globalism”. This, according to the Italian theorist, will result in a long-lasting trauma, the end of which cannot yet be estimated. Though in the end he cynically declares that “the suicidal tendencies of the modern world seem unstoppable”, Berardi also posits the theory of futurability — that a better future lies amidst the chaos of the present, but has not become apparent since the established power structures work to keep it invisible.
Klein provides a manifesto for change. She declares: “The spell of neoliberalism has been broken, crushed under the weight of lived experience and a mountain of evidence”. The hope is that her call for direct action will be answered, and lead us to the better world we all deserve.
