In thinking about how we've arrived at this moment of reaction across Europe and the US, I can't help but return to the longer cycles of history and the way in which rather than solve world historical problems, we have often simply recreated them in alternate forms.
1/
When anti-colonial liberation movements made colonialism no longer tenable, the response was not to fundamentally alter the relations between the colonial powers and the newly independent states, but to recreate them via neo-colonialism.
2/
When neo-colonial extractivism à l'outrance became unsustainable, the response was not to fundamentally alter developmental models, but to cloak them in neoliberal globalization.
3/
Many of the regimes who cemented/ushered in neoliberal bureaucratic models were left wing: Clinton/Gore with Reinventing Govt…and Pierre Rosanvallon helping to theorise New Public Management. These were unwittingly neoliberal projects.
