A brief history of neoliberalism

Harvey, a distinguished cultural anthropologist teaching at the CUNY Graduate Center, has written a critique of neoliberalism. Under various names--economism, marketization, economization--neoliberalism has become the politically dominant economic ideology and practice. Claiming that self-correcting markets ensure each person the full value of their contribution to the welfare of others, neoliberalism's market omnipotence subordinates government, democracy, equality, and social concerns to a radically individualized conceptualization of freedom, largely understood in economic terms. Market freedoms are often defended as prerequisites for democracy and political freedom, and sometimes held up to be the very embodiment of a free society. Harvey insists that neoliberalism is dedicated to restoration or establishment of power in the hands of elites, regardless of political, social, and economic costs to the majority. This book is a masterly and often devastating summation and criticism of neoliberalism, but it slights the deep historical origins of neoliberalism and its ideological justifications and assumptions, both of which help engineer acquiescence. How neoliberalism captured freedom and mistrust of government for its own ends deserves further elaboration. Given neoliberalism's contradictions, failures, and growing opposition, Harvey doubts that it can be sustained without force, and is modestly optimistic about alternatives. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers, upper-division undergraduates and above. C. P. Waligorski University of Arkansas

"David Harvey, author of The Condition of Postmodernity and The New Imperialism, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. While Thatcher and Reagan are often cited as primary authors of this neoliberal turn, Harvey shows how a complex of forces, from Chile to China and from New York City to Mexico City, have also played their part. In addition he explores the continuities and contrasts between neoliberalism of the Clinton sort and the recent turn towards neoconservative imperialism of George W. Bush. Finally, through critical engagement with this history, Harvey constructs a framework not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements."--BOOK JACKET.