As we prepare this book for publication the UK, and much of Europe, is riven by the spectre of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. Donald Trump's impending presidency may have wider implications for the conduct of neoliberal governance. However, these two expressions of popular discontent are unlikely to change substantially neoliberalism's unequal relations of power and resources, which are detailed below. In some respects they may even intensify them. Eminent economists such as Stiglitz and Krugman have produced devastating diagnoses of the economic flaws of neoliberal capitalism which led to the 2008 financial crash.

Yet these critiques, as well as more recent depictions of wider, catastrophic social consequences, like Alain Touraine's After the Crisis (2014), have barely influenced political and business leaders. These are apparently accepting of continuing financial and economic instability, uncertainty and repressive austerity. Waves of protest and a rising tide of social movement disillusion with global capitalism continue, captured in a litany of outrage in George Monbiot's 2016 denunciation of the UK's version of the neoliberal regime (How Did We Get into This Mess?). Monbiot rightly blames the political and economic stasis and manifold social distress on the regime's unshaken commitment to the ideas and policies of ‘neoliberalism’. Moreover, as he shrewdly observes, this is an ideology which is all the more effective by being largely unnamed in public discourse, yet all-pervasive in society.

Amongst academics, campaigners and radical, fringe journalism there is no shortage of critiques and calls for resistance. Our own account of neoliberalism, given in the Introduction, summarises some of these critical aspects. However, the main thrust of this book is to provide potential alternatives, both as synoptic, coherent perspectives and also as specific policy recommendations and suggestions. These would both break with neoliberalism and provide reference points for politicians and activists to promote a more equal, more secure and genuinely freer society. Such developments would depend on collective efforts far beyond what is possible in a single volume such as this. However, we hope this collection will assist the wider movement for change to pursue, adapt and advance these or related ideas.

The Introduction to this book emphasised that the adoption of a few disparate policy alternatives will not shift the dominant neoliberal paradigm. Nor can displacement be achieved by a Damascene conversion of a handful of senior politicians and policy makers. Nor, we must concede, solely by illuminating ideas and prescriptions from academics and commentators. Historically, shifts of the sociopolitical consensus ‘at the top’ have involved the intermeshing of all of these actors with the aims and beliefs of broader social movements. Social movement can be defined as groups of people pursuing a shared cause or grievance requiring some social change and/or material or other gain. Activists may be closely or loosely organised – typically these days via the Web.

The rise of classical liberalism in the 19th century was propelled by the ideas and manifestos of campaigns by movements such as Chartism, Free Trade and anti-slavery. More recently, principles of the Keynesian‒social democratic paradigm, which defined the policies and institutions making up the welfare state, were seeded, debated and promoted through the labour movement. Even the political acceptability of some of today's progressive causes, such as environmental responsibility, women's rights and anti-discriminatory practice can be tracked back to the so-called ‘new social movements’ stemming from the cultural ferment of the 1960s.

So what, if anything can the social movements of the early 21st century contribute towards alternative politics and economics to replace neoliberalism? To answer this question we briefly survey the tenor and aims of the most potent or influential, contemporary social movements. This account, in turn, presupposes a short history of their development. After these assessments we evaluate the transformative potential of relevant social movements with particular reference to their interactions with the political sphere. Some social movements have, for decades, been combining a critique of neoliberalism's globalisation dimension, with concrete proposals and attempts to develop alternatives. After 2008, and with the partial collapse of the globalisation hubris, some of these ideas and the activists promoting them have been devolving towards national issues and problems.

Distinctiveness and origins

The Occupy and Indignados activities of 2011 in the Western world were not simply expressions of protest. They also rechannelled ideas and practices from earlier anti and ‘alter’ globalisation campaigns back to formerly affluent metropolitan economies.

Building on the Introduction's historical and critical review of neoliberalism and of existing proposals to change it, Part One specifies alternative, more radical perspectives to this still dominant, if elusive ideology. Following our proposal in the Preface, of a spectrum of ‘regime’ and ‘system’ changes, contributors’ political and policy perspectives in this part of the book assume democratic and non-violent, rather than ‘revolutionary’ change – some modest but strategic, others with broader, societal scope.

Jeremy Gilbert contextualises his recommendations for a renewal of socialist challenges to neoliberalism by distinguishing between critiques and counternarratives as moralistic, pathologising (‘neoliberalism makes you ill’), eco-Marxist and Marxist, and his preferred approach of radical democracy. Gilbert describes ‘moralistic’ approaches as limited to moral stances and exhortations to act differently and ‘better’, rather than providing specific strategies and programmes of change. Thus the moralism of the left can be as conservative as that of the right and is unlikely to appeal to those voters preoccupied with material hardship. Though impressed by the evidence that neoliberalism can damage people – make them ill – physically and psychologically, Gilbert argues that these perspectives lack a crucial identification of power and material interests in the present system. In an analysis that complements that of Benton in Chapter Three, he finds a lack of convincing solutions in the otherwise devastating demonstrations by Marxists, and particularly eco-Marxists, of the enormous material damage neoliberalism causes. Again Gilbert offers a radical democratic path allied to a modernisation ethos. This would utilise the radical potential inherent in media technologies and new organisational techniques: sophisticated tools to bring the individuals isolated by corporate neoliberalism into ‘potent collectives’. The organisational forms to promote these changes would be self-governing alternatives to the corporate model, developed through democratic decision making, rather than top-down, state imposition.

Anna Coote's recommendations cover three overlapping areas: social justice; environmental sustainability and a more equal distribution of power. A key unifying theme is that the distribution and control of resources should be directed towards the needs and potential of all members of society and not, as is currently the case, disproportionately to the few. Accordingly people should ‘be able to influence and control decisions that affect their everyday lives’.

This chapter argues that the power of the market and private interest should be better balanced by the democratic institutions representing the public good. Currently, in Britain the balance of power has shifted towards the former. However, as Eric Olin Wright (2010, p 6) proposes:

Yet writing in 2009 Gregor McLennan (2009, p 145) regrets that ‘[r]adical politics today has no viable institutional programme’. His observation remains apposite in 2016 and here I apply it to democratic institutional reform. In his 2015 campaign for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Tom Watson argued the case for ‘the empowering state’. I advocate ‘institutional democracy’ as a complement, but also as an antidote to state power: to avoid repeating the failings of previous state-centred politics. Equally, as well as in the formally political, institutional democracy is needed in other areas of institutional power/authority, including the economic and cultural.

The chapter makes two arguments. Firstly, it offers a brief narrative account from the late 18th century of a grudgingly conceded and currently troubled British democracy: illustrating that despite its formidable achievements, the post-war Labour Party largely failed to build on earlier aspirations to autonomy and democracy of social movements. During the inter-war and immediate post-war years socialist as well as communist parties adopted a centralist approach to reform; partly because of the perceived need to prioritise urgent issues of poverty and inequality over challenging problems of democratic planning and organisation. In contrast to political parties, recent social movements have generally maintained greater continuity with grassroots democratic traditions. However, the further development of democracy in a complex modern society may require the support of a political party, or parties.

My second and related argument is precisely that social democratic and socialist parties must commit to an enlarged democratic vision both to revitalise their popular base and to enhance their prospects of delivering greater equality. Since the debacle of progressive parties at the 2015 election, there are signs that grassroots democratic sentiment has strengthened, impacting particularly on the Labour Party.

In Part One our contributors have set out some broad themes that would break with neoliberal discourse and provide broad perspectives for movements and policies for change. To recap, these were: a platform of democratisation by O’Donnell; new or updated modes of collectivism by Gilbert; integration of lifeworld relations and environmental priorities by Coote and Benton; articulated, according to Coote in a new social settlement. Some of these perspectives were related to current fluctuations in structures of power and social context in the Part Two chapters by Farnsworth and Irving, and the Jones and O’Donnell chapter on the European Union. Thompson showed that there are some, though limited, shifts in the economic policy making within which progressive reforms may have to work. Both Jones and Johal, Moran and Williams identified specific changes that could make businesses and local economic institutions more accountable to civil society and local government criteria for socioeconomic amelioration. This final part of the book links the Part One perspectives to the Part Two institutional analyses by examining a number of fields of favourable political action.

Crouch begins these analyses by setting out the case for a revitalised form of social democracy in which the needs and interests of women are the ‘motors’ of change in a way that is analogous to that of trade unions and labour organisations in classical social democracy. Citing lifeworld aspects, such as the work‒life balance and the gendered division of domestic labour, Crouch argues that a revamped and revitalised social democratic state could be the best mechanism for improving these popular concerns. The trends and projections which Crouch identifies, complement and ‘materialise’ the principles of ‘natural’ wellbeing for which Coote and Benton argued in Part One. Jones and Mike O’Donnell pursue this focus on social justice and change agents by identifying the analogous concerns in the evolution of social movements. They argue that, as well as often making explicit criticisms of neoliberalism, many of these campaigners and their organisations could play similar roles to those previously taken by labour movement organisations as advocates and facilitators of classical social democracy ‒ a role for which their emphasis on more direct democracy in socioeconomic governance would render them especially relevant.

The kinds of reforms and transformative changes proposed in Part One would be checked, constrained or shaped by the economic and governmental institutions which currently support the neoliberal regime. The contributions in Part Two of the book assess the current state of some key institutions of this kind: international bodies currently working with neoliberal paradigms to maintain or repress further the role of public expenditure and welfare: para-governmental bodies, such as the central bank, and the business corporations and sectors in which neoliberal market principles have been translated and transmogrified. Some of these institutions are already shifting away from strict neoliberal principles, albeit reluctantly and marginally. Others are attempting to defend the neoliberal regime against economic and sociopolitical pressures for change.

In their chapter Kevin Farnsworth and Zoë Irving place the UK in comparative context. They examine the workings of the austerity frameworks with which neoliberal states and intergovernmental agencies, such as the IMF, have sought to maintain neoliberal economics by undermining the remaining elements of social democratic welfare regimes. Their analysis reveals considerable variation among these welfare states and also division and ambivalence among the governance bodies overseeing austerity. By identifying countries like Iceland, which have successfully resisted and even partially reversed austerity programmes, Farnsworth and Irving suggest that austerity may not be a further entrenchment of neoliberalism but the cusp of a possible shift away from its key principles.

Jones and O’Donnell in Chapter Six, changes the international focus to examine the ways in which the European Union has moved away from the social democratic paradigm of a Social Europe to a more aggressively neoliberal stance which has recently, and famously, clashed with national movements campaigning for abandonment of neoliberal austerity. They argue that the core of the EU has adopted a variant of neoliberalism – ‘ordoliberalism’. However, multiple and intersecting crises are still challenging this model. Opposition from what Polanyi described as the anti-market arc of the ‘double-movement’, are still challenging neoliberalism from both left and right in nearly all EU member countries. This chapter examines how the EU faces potential disruption or even disintegration from nationalistic movements, such as the UK's ‘Brexit’ challenge, and the political implications for the UK of the referendum result.

Introduction

The EU referendum result favouring British exit from the European Union threw up manifold and far-reaching economic and political consequences. The immediate aftermath of the poll does not allow accurate diagnoses of a still unfolding political phenomenon. However, we can examine already apparent aspects of the changing UK‒EU relationship for their relevance to the analysis of the neoliberal regime and plausible alternatives to it. The discussion below focuses on three specific questions: (1) What role has the EU so far played in supporting or moderating neoliberalism in the UK? (2) In post-referendum politics which of the politico-ideological movements ignited by the campaigns is likely to be most influential and will lead to the consolidation of either a new, possibly nationalistic populism or a more cosmopolitan and democratic movement? (3) How will these tendencies affect the neoliberal paradigm? They could maintain sufficient support for open markets and big business dominance or favour torsions of, or even transformations of, this paradigm and its institutions. Separation from the core of the EU's economy could push the UK towards an even more open economy and imbrocation in globalised economic relationships. Conversely a nationalistic, sovereignty ethos, or a democratic, cosmopolitan worldview could entail checks and reversals of market corporatism.

The chapter processes these questions in three stages. First we describe the changing character of the EU in relation to neoliberal governance and globalisation processes, as well as the crises in its economy and governance – of which the UK ‘Brexit’ phenomenon is one symptom. It pays particular attention to the extent to which EU leaders tried, for a while, to provide some social protection from market forces and also to the need for some democratisation of its core institutions. Then we analyse what the referendum campaigns might tell us about support for these contrasting principles. These issues are not merely of historic interest for the UK. As long as it maintains some economic relationship, the EU's institutions and political character will impact the survival, or otherwise of neoliberalism in this country. The third section tries to identify future scenarios for UK‒EU relationships. For example, a UK completely detached from the EU and therefore less able to connect to social movements for democratic equality in the Union. Another scenario considered is one in which the UK is semi-detached from Europe, but with little influence at the ‘top table’.

The neoliberal paradigm extends far more widely and deeply than sets of party or government policies. As George Monbiot has written, it is the mainly anonymous character of neoliberalism which enables it to be simultaneously all-pervasive, yet unnoticed as an ideology (Monbiot, 2016). Our assumption is that policy makers, political actors and activists will not develop genuine alternatives until the phenomenon, its impacts and implications are fully identified, ‘named and shamed’. For elements of neoliberal ideology now dominate in the media, business and social institutions, as well as the political and policy-making sphere.

Trapped in this barely acknowledged paradigm, centre-left politicians and policy makers usually talk as though progress can be achieved by minor modifications; such as public‒private partnerships, or ‘better regulation’. So we begin by exploring why and how, particularly in the UK, neoliberalism became an all-encompassing and politically dominant ideology and discourse, with multiple, adverse, social and economic impacts. We go on to explain some authoritarian and even incipiently totalitarian tendencies in neoliberalism which undermine democratic governance and the integrity of civil society. What could reverse these trends and their pernicious consequences?

To this end we assess, in the final sections of this Introduction, some of the principal existing alternatives: socialist and social democratic paradigms which combine social justice with feminist aims and related ‘lifeworld’ values of egalitarian, community relationships (Habermas, 1981), as well as ideas from social‒Green movements. Chapters by Benton, Coote, Crouch, and Jones and O’Donnell (Chapters Three, Two, Ten and Twelve, and Conclusion) provide more detail on the significance and relevance of some of these perspectives. While Jeremy Gilbert, in Chapter One, provides a wider description and analysis of the different anti-neoliberal arguments and discourses. Comprehensive blueprints for alternatives to the broader capitalist system are not our concern here. Instead our focus is on the current, neoliberal regime of that system, in both its British and global forms. Further, in our judgement, the several varieties of capitalism – some uncompromisingly market-based, others more social democratic ‒ show that significant regime change is possible. While the proposals offered here could eventually contribute to system change, the pressing need is for more realisable alternatives to both neoliberalism and right-wing, nationalistic populism.

Introduction

Despite 40 years of neoliberal application, the UK economy is failing to meet basic human needs in economic security, health, shelter and sustenance for many citizens. The UK economy has massive inequalities in wealth and income, public and private debt, and international trade is based on unaccountable, and undertaxed corporations, many benefiting from exploited labour. As a society, it is riddled with multiple social problems in family and personal relationships and caring responsibilities ‒ problems compounded by a dysfunctional political system and more incrementally, but toxically, by a deteriorating natural environment. A departure from the EU may intensify global competition, deregulation and corporate powers, reduce social safeguards and cosmeticise neoliberal policies behind a mask of xenophobic patriotism. Like the Brexit project, the impending Trump presidency in the USA offers a right wing, nationalist variation on neoliberal economics but, in terms of overall governance, it seems like ‘business as usual’. The tax-cutting, corporate friendly and public-service slashing policies promised will only intensify the neoliberal hegemony - despite multi-billionaire Trump's populist protestations to the contrary. Monbiot rightly says that history shows that ‘it's not enough to oppose a broken system’, and that a ‘coherent alternative’, ‘a conscious attempt to design a new system, has to be proposed’. However, the thrust of the alternatives discussed here goes beyond simply another ‘economic … programme’ (Monbiot, 2016).The scale and depth of neoliberalism requires a social and political, as well as an economic project to challenge and supersede it.

Neoliberalism has dangerously unbalanced the relationships between state, market and civil society, which we describe as a trilateral interdependence. State functions have been marketised and subverted, with economic relationships – based on commodity exchange and maximisation of financial returns – expanded throughout the economy, the public realm and civil society. As Crouch explains, in Chapter Ten, the result is restricted or atrophied democratic and public sector institutions which fail to curb neoliberalism and only accentuate the social stresses inherent in capitalist societies.

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to explain the rise, character and trajectory of radicalism in the United States during ‘the long nineteen sixties’ and to comment on its significance to some of today's related issues. For comparative purposes, I will also refer to nineteen sixties radicalism in Britain. My already smouldering interest in American radicalism was ignited in 1968 when as a student I attended the ‘alternative’ democratic convention in Chicago, if ‘attended’ is the right word to describe the heavily policed gatherings of assorted radicals in the parks and streets outside the official Convention Hall. Since then I have made three research visits to the United States when I interviewed several activists and accessed a wide literature. More recently I interviewed ten British men and women (five of each) who were at a minimum sympathetic to the radical mood of the period (for a fuller description of my research base see O'Donnell 2008; and 2010 forthcoming). If 1968 was the height of sixties radicalism, its decline was also becoming apparent and I will treat 1968 as an approximate turning point.

Nineteen sixties radicalism in the United States was extremely diverse and was expressed in intermingling political and cultural ‘streams’. Accordingly, I will use the capitalised term ‘Movement’ to refer to the phenomenon as a whole. In so far as it is appropriate to separate the two streams, I use the term ‘New Left’ to refer to the various political groups of the Movement and the term ‘counterculture’ to refer to those who aspired to a radical and in some cases adopted an ‘alternative’ lifestyle.

Introduction

This book began by contrasting polarised interpretations of the longer term impact of sixties radicalism. One cluster sees cultural, social and political rebellion as ephemeral, politically inconsequential or absorbed into the mainstream. Others see legacies and practices from sixties radicalism as established and still influential in contemporary radical protest. This divergence is illustrated by the views of two Americans: Noam Chomsky (2009) and Gerard DeGroot (2008). On the BBC world news programme Hardtalk (November 3 2009) Chomsky consistently attributed what he sees as an increase in freedom of expression in American public life to the long-term impact of the radical actions of the nineteen sixties and particularly emphasised the role of young people. He cited the protests against the Iraq War as subject to less harassment than the anti-Vietnam War protests. A life-long ‘sceptic’ of the corrupting effects of power, Chomsky upholds protest as a continuous part of democratic life – a view once expressed even more forcefully by Thomas Jefferson in the phrase ‘God forbid that we should ever be twenty years without … a rebellion’ (quoted in Rosen 1969, 2). But is it possible to maintain such a perception of protest as process, a necessary and continuous part of a free society in an age when the great meta-narratives of the left are said by some to be ‘exhausted’ (Bell, 1988; Lyotard, 1984)?

Despite some intemperate commentary the substance of Gerard DeGroot's recent critique of the radical sixties nevertheless typifies the negative pole of assessment.