This page lists terms and definitions that result from the Program of the Oppressed (our program of movies, videos, essays, and other media). Sometimes, these terms are not easy to define with a search engine query, and now that most search engines use AI, the accuracy of any terms is even less reliable than before. We will use academic, peer-reviewed when appropriate, but we will also use the wisdom of community and elders outside of the academy, and we will always cite our sources.
According to Stewart Hall, et al. (2015), “[T]he system of neoliberalism, or global free-market capitalism…has come to dominate the world in the three decades since 1980 (p. 9)[.] They add, “For three decades, the neoliberal system has been generating vast profits for multi-nationals, investment institutions and venture capitalists, and huge accumulations of wealth for the new global super-rich, while grossly increasing the gap between rich and poor and deepening inequalities of income, health and life chances within and between countries, on a scale not seen since before the second world war” (pp. 9-10). They continue, “Neoliberalism has sought a favourable climate towards business across the globe. It demands low tax regimes, limited state interference, and unimpeded access to markets and vital resources. It calls for internal security, the capacity to contain external enemies, and strong rulers in control of their populations, with whom bargains can be struck and influence exercised. It engenders hostility to more democratic and alternative experiments. These principles have guided the strategies and underpinned the network of alliances, blocs and bases that the West – led by the US – has constructed. The Middle East clearly demonstrates that maintaining generally favourable conditions of operation – securing spheres of influence (the US/Israel alliance), dealing with military challenges (Iran, Pakistan), repressing political instability (the Horn of Africa) and defeating threats (the Taliban, al-Quaida, Afghanistan) – figures as much as do specific resource ‘grabs’, such as for oil (Iraq, the Gulf States)” (p. 11). “Neoliberalism’s project, then, is a reassertion of capital’s historic imperative to profit – through financialisation, globalisation and yet further commodification” (p. 16). “What has come together in the current neoliberal conjuncture includes class and other social interests, new institutional arrangements, the exercise of excessive influence by private corporations over democratic processes, political developments such as the recruitment of New Labour to the neoliberal consensus, the effects of legitimising ideologies and a quasi-religious belief in the ‘hidden hand’, and the self-propelling virtues of ‘the market’” (pp. 16-17).
Source: These excerpts are from “Framing Statement: After Neoliberalism: Analyzing the Present” in After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto, 2015.
