Margaret Thatcher’s mantra ‘there is no alternative’ was not a statement of historical fact but a strategic objective. She shared with Hayek, Pinochet, Mises, Trump, Bolsonaro, and Macron a commitment to utilizing ideology, constitutional economics, labour discipline, and culture wars, as well as police and military force, to prevent popular resistance from organizing. Whatever their doctrinal differences, they all see the state’s tight control of democracy as the most effective means of defeating egalitarian alternatives.
Neoliberalism persists today thanks to its ability to defeat opponents while deepening social and cultural regression.
Author
Pierre Dardot
Pierre Dardot is a philosopher and noted scholar of Hegel and Marx. Dardot is the coauthor of The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society (with Christian Laval), which the Los Angeles Review of Books called “erudite and provocative.” His previous books include Sauver Marx? Empire, multitude, travail immatériel (with Christian Laval and El Mouhoub Mouhoud) and Marx, prénom: Karl (with Christian Laval).
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Christian Laval
Christian Laval is professor of sociology at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. Along with Pierre Dardot, Laval cowrote The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, which the Los Angeles Review of Books called “erudite and provocative.” His other books include L’Ambition sociologique, Jeremy Bentham: Le pouvoir des fictions, and L’école n’est pas une entreprise: Le néo-libéralisme à l’assaut de l’enseignement public.
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