Abstract
When we first conceptualized this special issue in spring 2016, there were reasons to hope that neoliberalism might be nearing an endpoint. Neoliberalism, as a particular and extreme form of capitalism, faced two intertwined crises, one economic and the other environmental. Almost 10 years after the economic crash of 2007, the United States was still recovering from an economic meltdown caused in part by an under-regulated fraudulent mortgage lending system and the wealthiest 1% gaining an increasingly larger percentage of all the wealth, while median income has remained stagnant for the last half century (Saez & Zucman, 2019). Simultaneously, the environmental crisis worsened as climate change and global warming results in more frequent and stronger storms; drier conditions leading to more brush and forest fires in California, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere; longer and deeper droughts; increased desertification; sea-level rise and flooding (Mirowski, 2013). Consequently, there are more refugees and more conflicts between those who have and those who don’t. In addition, humans are dispersing more and more dangerous toxins across the globe. Most recently, scientists are discovering that humans and all living things are being contaminated by micro-plastics that they are ingesting and storing (Cox et al., 2019).
Consequently, it was becoming increasingly apparent that neoliberal policies, which aim to replace governmental and collective oversight of the economy, the environment, and education with individual decisions within markets, are a significant cause of these crises. Therefore, it seemed that people were increasingly realizing that neoliberalism—as a way of making individual and societal decisions—was on the verge of being replaced. Indeed, initiatives such as nations promising to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions they produced suggested that alternatives to neoliberalism were becoming increasingly possible.
However, over the last five years, neoliberalism has not only remained dominant economically, but has also remained the dominant social imaginary (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). It has done so, in part, because, in the United States, England, Australia, and elsewhere, when progressives gained power, they promoted more progressive cultural policies while retaining neoliberals’ economic policies. Consequently, Nancy Fraser (2017) describes them as “progressive neoliberals.” Here, I want to suggest that neoliberalism has taken different forms, from the classical neoliberalism of Hayek (1944) and Friedman (1962), to the recent progressive neoliberalism of the Democratic party, to the authoritarian neoliberalism of the Trump administration. However, Streeck (2014a, 2014b, 2016), Klein (2017), and others contend that if we can only avoid in the long run we have no choice but to replace neoliberalism with a social democratic liberalism that promotes the common good.
Progressive neoliberals
Even though Obama, and before him Bill Clinton, both were Democrats, Nancy Fraser (2017) described them as “progressive neoliberals”: Progressive neoliberalism is an alliance of mainstream current of new social movements (feminism, anti-racism, multiculturalism, and LGTBQ rights), on the one side, and high-end “symbolic” and service-based business sector (Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood), on the other. In this alliance, progressive forces are effectively joined with the forces of cognitive capitalism, especially financialization. (1)
While NCLB required third- through eighth-grade students to be evaluated by standardized tests in literacy and math, RTTT required that every teacher be evaluated by a standardized test, which made for some odd arrangements because standardized tests are not used in every grade or subject. For example, in some schools, kindergarten through second-grade teachers were evaluated based on students’ scores on their third-grade standardized language arts tests (Leonardatos and Zahedi, 2014). Moreover, RTTT requires states to link their tests to an approved set of standards, which most frequently were the Common Core standards. Lastly, Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, zealously promoted privatization in general, and charter schools in particular. By 2013, his eight key Department of Education appointees were or had been at the Gates Foundation or other organizations promoting privatizing public education. One appointee came directly from the Gates Foundation, and several came from the Gates-funded New Schools Venture Fund, including the Under Secretary of Education, Ted Mitchell (Schneider, 2014).
In my book, The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Agenda to Privatize Education (Hursh, 2015), I describe the last 10 to 15 years of evolving education policy in New York, and almost all of my focus is on Democrats: Obama, Arne Duncan, New York’s Governor Cuomo, and because the Democrats, as the majority party in the legislature, appoint the members of the board of regents, more Democrats are involved in creating and implementing education policy
Therefore, given that it was increasingly apparent that neoliberalism, whether progressive or conservative, was failing to respond to our economic, environmental, and education problems (Klein, 2014, 2017), some of us hoped that a real alternative to neoliberalism would emerge during the Obama administration that combined progressive identity politics promoting diversity and equality against the wealthy and the powerful, against measuring everything based on what it contributes to economic growth (Brown, 2019: 25; Sachs, 2017).
Unfortunately, our hopes for replacing neoliberalism with a reinvigorated version of social democracy were first weakened by the nomination for president of Hillary Clinton, who was likely to endorse policies similar to those of Bill Clinton. In contrast, Bernie Sanders talked about the need develop a country and world that balances environmental sustainability, economic growth, and economic fairness (Sanders, 2017).
Hopes for progressive cultural and economic policies were then completely dashed with the election of Donald Trump, whose mantra is economic growth above all else, with the hope that he will get both a larger slice of the economic pie as he institutes tax and other policies that take from the poor and give to the rich, and that by removing environmental, safety, and health regulations the economy will grow. He dismisses any efforts to develop policies that will reduce the speed of climate change and, instead, favors economic growth over a stabilized climate. He has severely damaged the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate emissions and toxins that harm the environment and people reflecting his desire, like all neoliberals, to reduce the size of government and to submit policy-making to the market.
While neoliberals have argued for reducing the size of government, or the state, through privatization, Trump’s goals significantly exceed what has occurred to date. Stephen Bannon, his former chief strategist and former head of the white nationalist media outlet Breitbart, declared early in Trump’s administration that they sought the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” which is all governmentally administered programs other than the military (Rucker and Costa, 2017).
Authoritarian neoliberalism
Trump will ultimately fail because he has no intent of responding in a constructive way to our current crises but only in creating more crises as a way to distract us from his unwillingness and inability to respond in a reasoned way. Trump embraces regressive conservatism as he attacks and denigrates women. He embraces authoritarian neoliberalism (Bruff, 2014) in his disdain for promoting and engaging in discussions where multiple viewpoints are heard. Instead, be asserts that there is only one interest and one truth: his. Moreover, rather than supporting mutual interests and the common good through a shared civic discourse, Trump aims to promote, as Giroux (2017: 2) states, the social good through “a culture of greed and selfishness,” along with “a retreat from civic literacy, civic courage, and social responsibility.” Civil discourse is under threat as the science on climate change and whatever else Trump disagrees with is derided as “a hoax.”
Trump’s policies are an extension of previous neoliberal policies taken to an extreme. In addition, while neoliberals have argued for reducing the size of government, or the state, through privatization, two months into his administration, Trump’s goals significantly exceed what has occurred to date. Stephen Bannon, Obama’s chief strategist and former head of the white nationalist media outlet Breitbart, declared that the aim of the Trump administration is the “deconstruction of the administrative state” (Rucker & Costa, 2017), which includes all governmentally administered programs other than the military. These goals are reflected in Trump’s initial budget proposal. Regarding Trump’s “budget blueprint,” Paul Krugman (2017) remarks that Trump “himself gives every indication of having no idea what the federal government does; his vaguely budget-like document isn’t much more than a roughly scribbled list of numbers, with no clear picture of what those numbers would mean.” Trump hopes to eliminate or substantially reduce funding for anything other than the military budget, which would get a $54bn increase.
Fascist neoliberalism and the promotion of oligarchies
To gain dominance, Trump, like other fascists, aims to control what is thought and said by discrediting and silencing media that does not promote his ideology. He attacks the media—except for those who agree with him—as “an enemy of the people.” Below, I describe some of the economic problems that neoliberal governance faces. Trump, like other oligarchs, shifts responsibility for the current crises we face away from those who have the wealth and power that created the current situation, and blames those who are largely defenceless: immigrants, women, children, people of color, children, and the middle and working classes. He also aims to throw into doubt any research or expertise that he disagrees with, and has led an attack on higher education. Trump’s Secretary of Education is redirecting funding from public schools and directing it into the private K-12 system (Whitaker et al., 2017).
After neoliberalism, after capitalism
Wolfgang Streeck, in Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (Streeck, 2014a) and “How will capitalism end?” (Streeck, 2014b; see also Streeck, 2016), has written extensively on the end of capitalism, explaining how it is self-destructive and cannot survive. In an article in the New Left Review (Streeck, 2014b), he writes that the economic crisis of 2008 is not yet over; indeed, it is still not over now in 2019. Streeck (2014b) shows that several worrying long-term economic trends persist in the increasingly deindustrialized capitalist countries, including the “persistent rate of decline in the rate of economic growth,” the persistent rise in overall indebtedness of leading capitalist states, where governments, private households and non-financial, as well as financial firms have continued to pile up financial obligations” (35). Economic inequalities of both income and wealth have been on the ascent for several decades (Saez and Zucman, 2019). Saez and Zucman (2019) show how the rich pay a lower effective tax rate than the average household. In fact, Saez and Zucman show how “the 400 highest-income households pay a lower overall tax rate, taking into account all forms of federal, state and local taxation, than do those households in the bottom zero to 10 percent” (Leonhardt, 2019). Further, as I have already described, Klein demonstrates that neoliberalism is incapable of responding to environmental crises (Klein, 2017).
The way forward
Here, I want to make two points. First, requesting that alternatives to neoliberalism be spelled out in detail —what should be done and how—is an impossible task. Those defending the status quo have often attempted to silence critics by demanding a blueprint for what would replace capitalism. However, as Streeck (2014b) points out, “I suggest that we learn to think about capitalism coming to an end without assuming responsibility for answering the question of what one proposes to put in its place” (46). Likewise, we need to see the “end of capitalism as a process rather than an event” (48).
Second, what once seemed impossible may become unexpectedly possible. After all, in the United States more youth have a favorable view of socialism than of capitalism (Saad, 2019). Currently, in New York state, where I thought achieving a 10 percent opt rate was not achievable, 20 percent of the parents are opting their children out of the standardized tests (Hursh et al., forthcoming).
In this issue, the authors both critique the various forms of neoliberalism and suggest some ways forward. This is especially important at a time when many nations are implementing authoritarian neoliberal policies, in which three of the most egregious are China’s President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s President Jair Bosanaros, and the Philippines’ President Rodrigo Duterte. Their policies are exacerbating inequality, leading to attacks on critics of neoliberalism.
However, as authoritarian neoliberalism becomes more extreme, the need to resist, revolt, and roll back neoliberalism becomes more apparent. Capitalism is being called into question in countries such as Hong Kong, Chile, and France, with demonstrations occurring at many universities.
The contributions to this issue
The first article in the issue is by Steven Klees, who has written extensively on the rise and failures of neoliberalism. He critiques the discourses and practices of neoliberalism that focus on privatization, human capital theory, and the operation of global institutions such as the World Bank. Lastly, he turns to describing critical pedagogies and alternatives to capitalism. He argues that we are facing an existential crisis and have no choice but to work to replace capitalism with local democratic alternatives.
Gregory Bourassa’s “Postschool imaginaries: Educational life after neoliberalism” pushes us to create “a robust radical imagination that stretches the collective limits of our current imaginary” (3). He relies on Foucault’s concept of biopower and Kathi Weeks’ concept of postwork imaginaries to develop an alternative conception of society: one in which “biopower, a power that attempts to manage and seize all aspects of life, shaping and controlling all aspects of subjectivity objectivity,” is resisted (7). Further, building on Weeks’ concept of postwork imaginaries, he argues for breaking the “life-school-work nexus,” so that our subjectivities go beyond school and work.
Bastidas Redin focuses on the opposition to neoliberalism in the global south after the elections of Evo Morale in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. She describes how they both attempted to develop a “bottom up” grassroots demand for “redistribution, recognition of ethnic differences, and broader participation in the policy making process,” which was crucial to their efforts to replace neoliberalism with democratic social justice. However, supporters of neoliberalism have resisted the rolling back of neoliberalism and most recently managed to replace Morale and Correa with conservatives backed by the United States and international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund that has required the implementation of austerity policies. Bastidas Redin argues that much can be learned from the resistance to and replacement of neoliberalism in these two countries.
Graham Slater, in “Assembling the opposition: Organizing struggles against neoliberalism and educational insecurity,” takes up some of the themes expressed by Bourassa, arguing that neoliberalism forces most everyone, but especially vulnerable groups, to acquiesce to market-driven reforms. Slater also urges us to move beyond Nancy Fraser’s “choice” between redistribution (class) and recognition (identity) to use “the power of assembly” (Butler, 2015) to “resist the assault on the conditions of livability” (6).
Activism is also central to Rose Coles’ description of “Higher education after neoliberalism: Student activism as a guiding light,” in which students engage in a “holistic understanding of systemic, structural racial violence” (6). Students, she argues, are interested in replacing individualism and consumerism with collectivism. She highlights three discourses that are central to this movement: critique (alienation), resistance (revolution), and creation (remaking and rebuilding).
Catherine Teasley, in “Cornerstone of the commons: Building equity through new public spaces for the education and care of the very young,” describes how those who care about creating a post neoliberal society might start. It is in early childhood education where a commons can be constructed in contrast to the nuclear family. The nuclear family, she writes, “functions as a machine of gender normativity, and as the sole paradigm for relationships of intimacy and solidarity, as sources of narcissism, individualism, and egotism.” She adopts Peter Moss’s (2014) notion of an “educative commune” that emphasizes responsibility for the other, the planet, and future generations. It is this lack of a commons that may explain an all too frequent response to climate change of “it will never affect me in my lifetime,” ignoring younger generations than ourselves, those that live elsewhere, those who lack the means of avoiding the consequences of climate change (and, of course, that the statement is not remotely true as climate change affects everything around us).
In the United States, most states require students to take standardized tests as part of assessing students, teachers, and schools. In some states, such as New York, the students may opt out of the tests. In New York, 50% of the students living in either Nassau or Suffolk County east of New York City, and 20% statewide choose to opt out of the exams (Hursh et al., forthcoming). The opt-out movement is often criticized as being led by White middle-class mothers. However, write Schoeder et al. in “We’re kind of at a pivotal point: Opt-out’s vision of an ethic of care in a post-neoliberal era,” the opt-out movement shows how the movement’s emphasis on the ideal moral and caring relationship between the school and the child offers a description of what a post-neoliberal education might look like.
In Canada and the United States, beginning in the 1960s, educators, parents, and students called for schools that “would be more humane, more responsive, more challenging, and more compelling for everyone involved” (see also Hursh, 2008). Nichols and Rhiannon explore how public alternative schools in two cities and countries aimed to develop alternatives to the traditional, dehumanizing public schools. While the public alternative schools did not transform the world, they offer some insights into what might be possible.
Lastly, we end where we could have begun, with an article on Dewey and Arendt: Newness and Human Disclosure in Dewey and Arendt: Challenging Neoliberal Education Agenda. Dewey and Arendt call for education that is not preconceived and does not conceptualize people as human capital educated to be workers. Both challenge essentialized conceptions of humans and, instead, argue for “unpredictability” in the classroom where teachers and students “intentionally produce new interactions in the ongoing conversations despite not knowing what may become of such interactions.”
In this special issue, we invite you to enter the conversation with the aim of rolling back neoliberalism and creating new ways of being, new institutions, and new relations.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
