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Neoliberalism refers to a political movement that espouses economic liberalism as a means of promoting economic development and securing political liberty. The movement is sometimes described as an effort to revert to the economic policies of the 18th and 19th centuries classical liberalism.^[1] Strictly in the context of English-language usage the term is an abbreviation of "neoclassical liberalism", since in other languages "liberalism", minus any modifier such as "social" (as in social liberalism), has more or less retained its classical meaning.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Policies Advanced by Neoliberalism 3 History 3.1 Before Neoliberalism 3.1.1 An Economic Golden Age 3.1.2 The System Collapses 3.2 Early Developments 3.2.1 The Chicago School 3.2.2 Early Implementation of Neoliberal Policies by Policy-Makers 3.2.2.1 Pinochet's Chile 3.2.2.2 Thatcher's Britain 3.2.2.3 Reagan's America 3.2.2.4 Other English-Speaking Countries 3.3 Global Spread 4 Assessments of the Reach and Effects of Neoliberalism 4.1 Neoliberalism's Reach 5 Criticisms of Neoliberalism 5.1 The State-centric Approach to Neoliberalism 6 Response to Criticisms 7 Comparison to Other Ideologies 8 See also 9 References 10 External links 10.1 Online Lectures

Neoliberalism refers to a historically-specific reemergence of economic liberalism's influence among economic scholars and policy-makers during the 1970s and through at least the late-1990s, and possibly into the present (its continuity is a matter of dispute).

In many respects, the term is used to denote a group of neoclassical-influenced economic theories, right-wing libertarian political philosophies, and political rhetoric that portrayed government control over the economy as inefficient, corrupt or otherwise undesirable. Neoliberalism is not a unified economic theory or political philosophy — it is a label denoting an apparent shift in social-scientific and political sentiments that manifested themselves in theories and political platforms supporting a reform of largely centralized postwar economic institutions in favor of decentralized ones. Few supporters of neoliberal policies use the word itself.

Neoliberal arguments gained a great deal of clout after the Stagflation Crisis of the 1970s, the Developing World Debt Crisis of the 1980s (which primarily affected Latin America but was felt elsewhere^[2]), and the Soviet Collapse of the early-1990s.

Broadly speaking, neoliberalism seeks to transfer control of the economy from the public to private sector^[3]. The definitive statement of the concrete policies advocated by neoliberalism is often taken to be John Williamson's^[4] "Washington Consensus" , a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained consensus approval among the Washington-based international economic organizations (like the IMF and World Bank). Williamson's list included^[5]:

• Fiscal rectitude, meaning that governments would cut expenditures and/or raise taxes to maintain a budget surplus
• Competitive exchange rates, whereby governments would accept market-determined exchange rates, as opposed to implemented government-fixed exchange rates, as had prevailed under the Bretton Woods System
• Free trade, which means the removal of trade barriers, like tariffs, subsidies, and regulatory trade barriers
• Privatisation, which means the transfer of previously-public-owned enterprises, goods, and services to the private sector.
• Undistorted market prices, meaning that governments would refrain from policies that would alter market prices.
• Limited intervention, with the exception of intervention designed to promote exports, some kinds of education or infrastructural development.^[6]

Other studies also cite the following policy changes associated with neoliberalism^[7]:

• Reduced capital controls, which involve removing governments laws that hinder or control the cross-border flow of finance
• Deregulation, the abolition or reduction of government-imposed restrictions on the conduct of business' decision-making
• Union busting policies, as unions are generally taken to be impediments to economic development by adherents of this worldview
• Export-led development, as opposed to a development strategy that emphasizes the protection of domestic industry

Arguments that stress the economic benefits of unfettered markets first began to appear with Adam Smith's (1776) Wealth of Nations and David Hume's writings on commerce. These writings were directed against the Mercantilist ideas that had been dominant during the previous centuries, and served to guide the policies of governments throughout much of the 19th century. Nevertheless, statist ideas slowly began to regain a following amongst the intellectuals that had rejected them during the early Enlightenment. While state interventionism increased towards the end of the 19th century, the Progressive Era saw an accelerated movement to re-institutionalize government controls over the economy.

With an intellectual and political foundation in place, the onset of the Great Depression and the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union led to increased support for government economic control as a means of securing rapid industrialization.^[8] By the end of World War II, many countries decided to expand their governments dramatically.[1]

Across much of the world, the economics of John Maynard Keynes, which sought to formulate the means by which governments could stabilize and fine-tune free markets, became a highly-influential ideology. Within the developing world, several developments – among them decolonization, a desire for national independence and the destruction of the pre-war global economy^[9], and the view that countries could not effectively industrialize under free market systems (e.g., the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis) – encouraged economic policies that were influenced by communist, socialist and import substitution precepts.

The period of government interventionism in the 1950s and 1960s was characterized by exceptional economic prosperity, as economic growth was generally high, inflation was contained^[10], and economic distribution was comparatively equalized^[11]. This era is known as les Trente Glorieuses ("The Glorious Thirty [years]") or "Golden Age", a reference to many countries having experienced particularly high levels of prosperity between (roughly) WWII and 1973.

By the late-1960s, however, the statist systems that had been instituted during the 1930s showed strains. Some of these strains can be located in the international financial system.^[12][13], and culminated in the dissolution of the Bretton Woods system, which some argue had set the stage for the Stagflation crisis that would, to some extent, discredit Keynesianism in the English-speaking world. In addition, some argue that the postwar economic system was premised on a society that excluded women and minorities from economic opportunities, and the political and economic integration given to these groups strained the postwar system.^[14]

The policies that would be enacted by those like Pinochet, Thatcher and Reagan would in part rest on the intellectual victories of Chicago School theorists under the leadership of Milton Friedman.

Within the context of these economic crises, political movements championing the deinstitutionalization of state economic controls gained traction. Three examples include the Chilean regime of Augusto Pinochet, the British government of Margaret Thatcher and the US administration of Ronald Reagan.

An often-cited early implementation of neoliberal policies followed in the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état. Pinochet's coup took place in the context of economic crisis under the government of Socialist Salvador Allende, and proposals for free market reforms are often argued to have been championed by the so-called Chicago Boys, members of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile who had strong ties to Chicago School economists^[15]. Supporters of neoliberalism often cite the so-called Chilean miracle as an example of the positive economic benefits of free market policies.^{[citation needed]}. Detractors of Pinochet's regime have argued that the human costs in the form of torture and disappearances were instrumental in the implementation of neoliberal policies^[16].

Margaret Thatcher was Britain's Conservative Prime Minister between 1979 and 1990. Thatcher was elected to the Prime Minister's office while the British economy stagnated. She, along with fellow Conservative Keith Joseph, sought to resolve these problems through the dismantling of Britain's elaborate government economic controls, taking a tough stance against Britain's then-striking unions (during the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978-1979), and by the prioritization of inflation control (even at the expense of unemployment and growth).

The Administration of Ronald Reagan governed from 1981 to 1989, and made a range of decisions that served to liberalize the American economy. In 1981, he fired over 11,345 striking air traffic control workers and banned them from future civil service, resulting in the de-certification of the Air Traffic Controllers union later that year. These firings heralded a period of long decline for American unions, which served as a strong political counterweight to business and other interests that traditionally support liberalization. He is also credited with policies that cut taxes for the wealthy (which was claimed to help the economy via trickle-down effects). He is also often credited with having deregulated much of the American economy, though the 'deregulation' movement preceded his Administration, and continued after it.

These policies are often described as Reaganomics, and are often associated with supply-side economics (the notion that policies should appeal to producers, rather than consumers, in order to cultivate economic prosperity).

The Reagan administration presided over the greatest rise in economic inequality in twentieth century American history^[17] and oversaw an enormous increase in US Debt, but his supporters credit him with overseeing a recovery from the Stagflation crisis of the 1970s and America's victory in the Cold War.

The neoliberal policies saw an early adoption in the English-speaking world. In Canada, these policies are often associated with Mulroney government. In New Zealand, these policy changes are often attributed to Roger Douglas, and called Rogernomics.

Chronic economic crisis throughout the 1980s, and the collapse of the Communist bloc at the end of the 1980s, helped foster political opposition to state interventionism, and in favor of free market reform policies.

Neoliberal movements ultimately changed the world's economies in many ways, but some analysts argue that the extent to which the world has liberalized may often be overstated. Some of the past thirty years' changes are clear and unambiguous, like^[18]:

• Growth in international trade and cross-border capital flows
• Elimination of trade barriers
• Cutbacks in defense spending, although it is unclear whether these reductions are associated with neoliberalism or the peace dividend that was supposed to accrue at the end of the Cold War
• Cutbacks in public sector employment
• The privatization of previously public-owned enterprises

Other changes are not so apparent, and are debated in the literature^[19]:

• Reduction in the size of governments. Governments do not appear to have shrunk wholesale. With the exception of exceptionally high-spending government, the distribution of government expenditures (as a percentage of GDP) appears to have stayed the same since 1980. Most of the cuts to government spending appear to have been a temporary phenomenon that took place during the 1990s
• Social welfare spending. Governments have generally spent more on health, education, social security, welfare and housing

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.(December 2007) Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.

"The standard neoliberal policy package includes cutting back on taxes and government social spending; eliminating tariffs and other barriers to free trade; reducing regulations of labor markets, financial markets, and the environment; and focusing macroeconomic policies on controlling inflation rather than stimulating the growth of jobs," reports economist Robert Pollin (2003).^[20] Arising out of a rejection of the class compromises embedded in previous liberal political-economic policies, including Keynesian and Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs), neoliberal theory, institutions, policies, and practices are not regarded as politically neutral by their opponents.

Economists remind us that free markets are theoretically efficient, not fair,^[21] and this distinction is a foundation of the critique of neoliberalism. Opponents critique neoliberalism's effects on wages, working class institutions, inequality, social mobility, working class well-being, health, the environment, and democracy. Notable opponents to neoliberalism in theory or practice include economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Robert Pollin,^[22] linguist Noam Chomsky,^[23] geographer David Harvey,^[24] the anti-globalization movement in general, including groups such as ATTAC. The economists and policy analysts at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) offer socialist policy alternatives to neoliberal policies. In addition, a significant opposition to neoliberalism has grown in Latin America, a region that has been a target of neoliberal policies. Prominent Latin American opponents include the Zapatista Army of National Liberation rebellion, and the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.

The word neo-liberalism is rarely used or heard of in the United States but has spent many years abusing southern American countries. Neo-liberalism can be described as many things, and over the years, has influenced many countries in both good and bad ways. Paul Treanor, a German author who studied Political Science at the Universiteit van Amserdam, has invested a lot of his time on his ideas and theories of Neoliberalism. Treanor discusses his views on neoliberalism, liberalism, market liberalism and globalization and says, “Since the 1990's activists use the word 'neoliberalism' for global market-liberalism ('capitalism') and for free-trade policies. In this sense, it is widely used in South America.”^[25] Throughout most countries in the world, neo-liberalism and globalization are considered to be tangible to one another. A lot of people often confuse the two and are so thought to be interchangeable with one another. “Free markets and global free trade are not new, and this use of the word ignores developments in the advanced economies…Neoliberalism is not just economics: it is a social and moral philosophy, in some aspects qualitatively different from liberalism.”^[26]

Treanor defends that the ideas brought about from neo-liberalism (and neo-liberalism itself) are more of a philosophy and should not be perceived as just an “economic structure”. He believes that neo-liberalism is more like a philosophy than a structure because the manner and viewpoints of society and the people allow for this to be true. For example, a neo-liberalist would perceive the world in a “term of market metaphors” and when a society refers to countries as companies, that civilization would then be deemed neo-liberal instead of a liberal culture. “However, when this is a view of nation states, it is as much a form of neo-nationalism as neo-liberalism. It also looks back to the pre-liberal economic theory- mercantilism-which saw the countries of Europe as competing units. The mercantilists treated those kingdoms as large-scale versions of a private household, rather than as firms. Nevertheless, their view of world trade as a competition between nation-sized units would be acceptable to modern neo-liberals.”^[27]

Two additional sources, Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo García, who collaborate in Treanor’s work, elaborate on the theory of neo-liberalism. Martinez and Garcia find that neo-liberalism is a collection of economic policies that has spread its ideals from country to country over the last 25 years. Neo-liberalism is not found in the United States but it is easy to see how badly its affects are on other countries. It is clear to see that neo-liberalism treats its poorest citizens badly allowing for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. “"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Right-wing.”^[28] Even though it is seen as a threat to most countries, neo-liberalism has had the support of large organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which were encouraged to join the rise of neo-liberalism in order to revitalize economic liberalism. This act of revitalization is what makes neo-liberalism new.

As previously stated, neo-liberalism is widely found and used in many countries throughout South America. One main country that has been affected by neo-liberalism over the past 25 years is Cuba. On August 6th, 1997, an International Meeting of Workers and Unions against Neo-liberalism and Globalization was held in Havana, Cuba. Over a thousand people from all different countries across the world attended the meeting to help stop neo-liberalism and its affects in Cuba. The objective of the conference, described by the secretary for International Relations of the Central Organization of Cuban Trade Unions Lionel Gonzalez, was to find a way to help fight against the destruction caused by both neo-liberalism and globalization. Neo-liberalism, along with companies such as IMF, has made conditions for workers throughout the world unbearable and has created a sense of new struggle for all affected citizens. General Secretary Pedro Ross informed the members of the conference, “The international workers' movement is in a condition to pass to the offensive and take up its responsibility to defend the rights of the working class, the poorest, and the most marginalized by neo-liberalism.”^[29] The meeting called for an 8 page document in regards to how to fix the situation in Cuba and the last days of the conference were dedicated to discussing the proposed actions that were to take place. Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said that Cuba survives because it embodies something that for its enemies is too intricate to acknowledge. He continued to enrich the spirits of the members of the conference by saying, “We are waging a battle on behalf of all the people of the world…Please have no doubts that this small country will be capable of continued resistance.”^[30] And Cuba did exactly that: it survived the battle of neo-liberalism.

Through reviews such as “Cuba in the Age of Neo-liberalism,” by Raul Fernandez of books such as Antonio Carmona Baez’s “State Resistance to Globalization in Cuba” we can see how Cuba has become a much stronger economy and society because of its survival. Fernandez explains the ways in which the leaders of Cuba were successful in refusing to agree to the coercion of neo-liberal globalization and how they were able to preserve the economic independence and self-determination of Cuba. His review discusses the progression of the Cuban economy in the years that came after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc and the disappearance of Cuba’s dependence on the economies of Eastern Europe. Through his book, Baez “emphasizes the home-grown character of the movement, and contrasts it with the experience of Eastern Europe where countries embraced the socialism imposed by the invading armed forces of the Soviet Union.”^[31] Before Fidel Castro took power over Cuba, living in a world subjugated by neo-liberal extremism envisaged the predictable termination of Castro and his government through the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, the impression that Cuba left on the world after surviving such extreme circumstances, including the United State’s economic blockade of Cuba, was both “surprising and remarkable.” The policies that the Cuban government put into place throughout the 1990’s are the reason why Cuba survived the neo-liberal ambush that it had been facing for so many years.

Over the years, neoliberalism has done more harm than good in Venezuela. When neoliberalism dominated the economy, the political world was based on democracy and laissez-faire. In late 1997, Chavez, Saez, and two other candidates ran for the presidency position. They had to begin their campaign with almost zero financial support from their political parties because Venezuela’s political parties were bankrupt. The political parties were in financial distress because the oil-derived revenue was not spent on the needs of the country but the on members of the party to perform favors. This is one of many examples of the economic instability of Venezuela during the use of neoliberalism. Chavez won the support of the common people of Venezuela and instilled fear in neoliberal idealistic countries such the United States by declaring, “I consider myself a humanist, and a humanist has to be anti-neoliberal.” Everyone knew that this meant that Chavez would begin to reform the imbalance of private property and the world would eventually see an end to the polarization of the rich and the poor in Venezuela.

Chavez started this movement by creating an assembly in which members of civil society, members of neighborhoods and professional associations, would organize to draft a new constitution.^[32] On December 10, 2001, Chavez continued to make strides when he declared the enactment of the new land law in Santa Ines. The new land law allowed Chavez to pass laws by declaration. The people of Venezuela saw this act as a resumption of the 200-year-old “war against the latifundia.” This act allowed Chavez to immediately address the disproportionate landownership that has caused the class polarization over the past years. Before Chavez was elected as president in 1998, 75 percent of the fertile agricultural land was owned by 5 percent of the country’s population of 25 million. By the end of 2004, after the new land law had been in the working for only 3 years, at least 2 million hectares had been redistributed to 100,000 families.

Naturally, Chavez was accused of taking away people’s private property unlawfully, but the government made it very clear that if people are able to legally state their claim to their land, then their property will not be taken away. In many cases, state owned land has been confiscated because families have been inheriting the land rather than legally acquiring it. In these such cases the government has extended these illegally acquired land to large numbers of poor people who have never owned productive land. This process involves handing over a land title to a peasant cooperative with the intention to work the land. This means that the government owned land cannot be sold but declared a cooperative’s property. Along with redistributing land, the government is also trying to provide training and equipment.

The right wing oppositionists, the big capitalists, are afraid that this new land reform will attack their big economic structures, which is the basis of their domination and rule over the country. Their first reaction was to organize a national right-wing strike on the day the new land law was officially declared, and in November 2002 Betancourt was able to deal a big blow to the land law through the Supreme Court, which was narrowly controlled by right wing supporters at this time. The Supreme Court made a ruling that declared two of the articles in the land law were unconstitutional. Luckily, Venezuela’s Parliament, the National Assembly, corrected the unjust Supreme Court ruling in 2005 by reintroducing the two articles that had been omitted. In addition to these acts that defied the new governmental movements, the latifundistas, members of the oppositionists, increased their violent attacks on campesino leaders and other cooperative members of the government. Since the new land law was officially introduced, 145 campesino leaders have been murder victims, and not one person who is guilty of committing these gruesome crimes has been sent to jail. ^[33]

The right-wing oppositionists are not the only people who favor neoliberalism and are willing to fight to the bitter end to save this economic system. The United States is a part of the small percentage of people who benefit from this system. Venezuela is one of the largest crude oil suppliers to the U.S. and once Chevez’s new movements posed a threat to U.S. domination over Venezuela’s resources, the White House was in a state of alarm.^[34] Between May 3 and May 16, 2001, the Spanish Armed Forces conducted a military exercise called, “Operation Balboa,” which was designed to attack the “actions against the interests of the legally constituted government and against properties of the U.S.” This action to try to recover the petroleum capital and maintain military control of the area foreshadows the coup attempt on April 11, 2002. Chavez was overthrown by a military coup on this day, but this overthrow was short lived. The coup collapsed after only two days and Chavez returned to power.

After an official investigation of this short overthrow of the Venezuelan government, evidence was found that revealed the U.S. involvement. It was discovered that two high-ranking U.S. officers had joined the Venezuelan military commanders at Fort Tiuna, which was where the coup forcibly took Hugo Chavez after he was captured. George W. Bush also gave the world a clue that added to the suspicion that the U.S. participated in the coup of April 11. Bush made a statement that warned Chavez to learn from the apparent unrest in his country. In other words, the U.S. would make it their business to protect free trade, which may cause further unrest in Venezuela if Chavez didn’t make his own effort to protect neoliberalism. ^[35]

Today Venezuela and other parts of Latin America believe that they need to achieve a degree of the consolidation that Cuba practices. Cuba has effectively consolidated themselves to the point that the U.S., the world’s top empire, does not invade their country, and now Venezuela is trying to come up with a similar system that will dissuade world powers like the U.S. from interfering with their preferred system of economics and politics. ^[36]

Critics of neoliberalism view neoliberalism as both an economic and political project aimed at reconfiguring class relations in societies. Not only have many core countries' labor aristocracy families been forced to have more than one income-earner, but workers have been so heavily disciplined by capital and the capitalist state that, as Alan Greenspan said, they are "traumatized". ^[37] Daniel Brook's "The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America" (2007) describes the anti-democratic political effect of decreased middle class welfare.^[38] The massive U.S. military-industrial complex adds an extra layer of repression to working class "traumatization," according to David Harvey (2005), making resistance seem unfeasible to most workers. A "traumatized" working class allows the capitalist class absolute reign, which Harvey claims – citing the economic crises of 1873 and the 1920s – to be disastrous for economies around the globe, states, and working class people; though, he points out, on average capitalists were not negatively impacted by these crises.^[39]

Critics of neoliberalism sometimes refer to it as the "American Model", which they find promotes low wages and high inequality.^[40] According to the economists Howell and Diallo (2007), neoliberal policies have contributed to a U.S. economy in which 30% of workers earn "low wages" (less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time workers), and 35% of the labor force is "underemployed"; only 40% of the working age population in the U.S. is considered adequately employed. The Center for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker (2006) has shown that the driving force behind rising inequality in the United States has been a series of deliberate, neoliberal policy choices including anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism, and profiteering in the health industry.^[41] However, countries have applied neoliberal policies at varying levels of intensity; for example, the OECD has calculated that only 6% of Swedish workers are beset with low wages.^[42] John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006) of the CEPR have analyzed the effects of intensive Anglo-American neoliberal policies in comparison to continental European neoliberalism, concluding "The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of income inequality, high relative and absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration. At the same time, the available evidence provides little support for the view that U.S.-style labor-market flexibility dramatically improves labor-market outcomes. Despite popular prejudices to the contrary, the U.S. economy consistently affords a lower level of economic mobility" than all the continental European countries for which data is available.^[43]

Critics of neoliberalism examine the political foundations of the neoliberal project as well as its economic foundations. One of the most famous moments in neoliberal political history occurred when then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan's advisors had him deregulate the thrift industry. This was promoted with the claim that a gigantic bonanza of growth and investment was sure to follow. Reagan signed the deregulation bill in 1982, saying, "All in all, I think we've hit the jackpot." Columnist Joe Conason has argued that "The best reckoning of the costs of his benign intentions is a trillion dollars." ^[44] While Reagan and the United Kingdom's Margaret Thatcher laid the groundwork for what Alan Greenspan called working class "traumatization", through eliminating collective assets by sales to the private sector, enacting policies to diminish labor unions, and promoting militarization, other politicians have steadily continued the neoliberal tradition.

According to Pollin (2003), neoliberalism under the U.S. Bill Clinton administration – steered by Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin – was the temporary and unstable policy inducement of economic growth via government-supported financial and housing market speculation, with low unemployment, but also with low inflation. This unusual coincidence was made possible by the disorganization and dispossession of the American working class.^[45] Berkeley sociologist Angela Davis has argued and Princeton sociologist Bruce Western has shown that the astonishingly high rate of incarceration in the U.S. (1 out of every 37 American adults is in the prison system), heavily promoted by the Clinton administration, is the neoliberal U.S. policy tool for keeping unemployment statistics low, and stimulating economic growth through maintaining a contemporary slave population within the U.S. and promoting prison construction and militarized policing.^[46]

Harvey (2005) sums up neoliberalism as a global capitalist class power restoration project. Neoliberalism, he explains, is a theory of political-economic practices that dedicates the state to championing private property rights, free markets, and free trade, while deregulating business and privatizing collective assets. Ideologically, neoliberals promote entrepreneurialism as the normative source of human happiness. Harvey also considers neoliberalization a form of capitalist "creative destruction", a Schumpeterian concept.^[47] This indicates that while neoliberalism is a critical concept with a critique of capitalist class relations, it is not strictly a Marxist concept; the Marxist term for neoliberalism is "primitive accumulation."

Harvey (2000) observes that neoliberalism has become hegemonic world-wide, sometimes by coercion. Opponents of neoliberalism argue that neoliberalism is the implementation of global capitalism through government/military interventionism to protect the interests of multinational corporations. Even neoliberal proponent Thomas Friedman has argued approvingly, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist."^[48] In its commitment to belligerent capitalism, neoliberalism is linked to neoconservatism. In fact other critics argue that not only is neoliberalism's critique of socialism wrong but that it cannot deliver the liberty that is supposed to be one of its strong points.^[49].

The state-centric approach to neoliberalism concurs with the critical approach that neoliberal ideas are really just laissez-faire liberal prescriptions that overthrew Keynesianism. State-centric theorists hold that neoliberalism is "the attempt to reduce the role of the state in the market through tax cuts, decreases in social spending, deregulation, and privatization."^[50] However, the state-centric approach argues that state actors were the political entrepreneurs who formulated neoliberalism – rather than, as critics of neoliberalism would claim, capitalist political organizations, and economists and economic departments, think tanks, and politicians all supported by class-conscious capitalists. State-centric theorists argue that neoliberalism spread because it fit the voters' preferences best; they disagree in this with the critical approach, which maintains that neoliberal framing and policies were propagated by well-heeled, highly organized political machines that insisted to the public, "There is no alternative". State-centric sociologist Monica Prasad (2006) further argues that neoliberalism became dominant where the tax structure was most progressive, where industrial policy was adversarial to business, and where the welfare state was most targeted to the poor. This was the case in the U.S. and U.K. However, in France and Germany, taxation structures were regressive, industrial policy favored business, and the welfare state benefited the middle class; consequently neoliberalism was not favored by either business or the middle classes in these two countries.

Proponents of neoliberalism criticize the protectionist policies that were supported by advocates of mixed economies for the difficulties that these workers are enduring, as they theorize that artificially higher wages attract workers that would otherwise have been employed in other, more competitive sectors of the economy, unless Active Labor Market Policies ALMPs were in place to intervene.^{[citation needed]}

Proponents of neoliberalism argue that the greatest cause of wealth disparity and class immobility is a powerful centralized State that concentrates wealth to those closest to the inner circles of political power:

Washington is all about the money, [Robert B. Reich] writes. In 2005, the Census Bureau listed seven suburban counties around the capital as among the 20 richest in the country. And it’s not just Republicans cashing in on their service. “Upon leaving office,” he notes, “more than half of the senior officials in the Clinton administration became corporate lobbyists.” ^[51]

They also point out that large corporations and individuals well-entrenched in the business world have an advantage over small startup businesses and individuals with less capital and business experience in navigating a highly regulated economy that requires high legal/accounting compliance costs to operate in.

Neoliberalism and social liberalism are both forms of liberalism but with different purposes. Social liberalism is defined with individual and social liberty while neoliberalism is primarily based on economic liberty. There is also a difference between neoliberalism and paleoliberalism. The term paleoliberalism has been used to define those in the US Democratic Party who are strongly against free trade.

Many neoliberals have been defined as neoconservatives and vice versa. The main difference between the two groups has mainly to do with defence and foreign policy. Neoconservatives favor huge defence budgets and foreign interventions. Neoliberals are opposed to this since it leads to large deficits and debt.

The term libertarian has also been used to define neoliberals, but there are key differences between the two groups. Libertarians believe in reducing government to its constitutionally-defined roles (defense, courts, protection of property, enforcement of contracts, and individual rights). Neoliberals believe in more government since government plays some role in areas such as healthcare and education. There is also a difference on social issues. Libertarians are generally very liberal on social issues since they all support individual liberties. Neoliberalism is more neutral on issues of social liberalism. In contrast to Libertarians some Neoliberals are socially conservative.

• Capitalism
• Economic liberalism
• Free market
• Globalization
• Liberalisation
• Liberism
• Libertarianism
• Market fundamentalism
• Neoconservatism
• Neosocialism
• Ordoliberalism
• Privatization

• Bowles, Samuel, David M. Gordon, and Thomas E. Weisskopf. 1989. "Business Ascendancy and economic Impasse: A Structural Retrospective on Conservative Economics, 1979-87." Journal of Economic Perspectives 3(1):107-134.

• What is Neoliberalism? by Dag Einar Thorsen and Amund Lie of the University of Oslo
• Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition by Paul Treanor
• A Skeptic's Guide to the Cross-national Evidence by D Rodrik, F Rodriguez. NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2000.
• The Last Development Crusade
• ATTAC
• "Monetarism" at The New School's Economics Department's History of Economic Thought website.
• Adam Curtis' The Trap (television documentary series) (2007) provides a critical anti-managerial view on the genesis, rise, and impact of neoliberalism. It uses a history of ideas approach to the subject.
• 'Rescuing the Middle Ground: Neoliberalism and Associational Socialism', debate between neoliberal and socialist
• IDENTITIES: How Governed, Who Pays?

• The Neoliberal City, David Harvey at the University Channel