The element of ‘emergency’ is central to the prevailing narrative of the financial crisis and the allegedly ‘necessary measures’ required to tackle it. This is not accidental at all. Historically, the imposition of neoliberalism did not come due to any ideological superiority or even its practical effectiveness. On the contrary, it was premised on crushing blows to societies and their reflexes. A strong shock is the prerequisite for measures like those which are imposed on Greece: a supposedly unavoidable ‘emergency’ that breeds fear.
Initially, these shocking blows took a material form: they were the brutal dictatorships in South America --Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay. As the great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano put it in 1990, ‘people [had to be] in prison so that prices could be free’. The liberalisation of markets could not take place without the imprisonment, assassination and disappearance of individuals. How else could the enormous irrationality of neoliberalism be promoted and maintained if not through jolts of electric shock? In the second phase, it was Thatcher and Reagan’s savage attack on unionism (coal miners and air traffic controllers respectively) during the 80s.This prompted Milton Friedman, the theorist of the doctrine, to write in 1982: ‘Only a crisis –actual or perceived— produces real change’. Long before that, in 1975, he had prescribed: ‘If this shock approach were adopted, I believe that it should be announced publicly in great detail, to take effect at a very close date. The more fully the public is informed, the more will its reaction facilitate the adjustment’.
This formula surely rings a bell; and for a very simple reason: the crises gradually became an opportunity for further shocking blows. Therein lies the third phase of neoliberalism: The IMF and the World Bank imposing their well-known triplex doctrine: budget cuts-privatisation-deregulation. What is rarely mentioned, however, is that the further the deregulation principles spread, the further the economies entered disastrous crises. This should come as no surprise: new rounds of crises were taken as an excuse for further deregulation. The drama took the dimensions of tragedy following the collapse of Stalinism. In Poland, China and the Soviet Union colossal chunks of public property were summarily sold for a mess of potage. The Russian Yukos, for example, a state-owned oil company with annual revenues exceeding $3 billion, was sold for only $309.
More recent is the case of South Africa, a country considered as a role model of regime change. In the era of neoliberalism imposed after the transition, and compared to the state of affairs prevailing during Apartheid, the number of those living on less than $1 per day as well as the unemployment rate for blacks has doubled. Not only was there no redistribution of land, but almost a million individuals lost their holdings whilst the number of those living in shanty towns with no running water or electricity increased by 50%.
It is clear that neoliberalism is ineffective. We know it; and they know it too. This, however, is of little importance in the current conjuncture: the much-publicised quest for a ‘restoring economic health’ in Greece is but a pretext: what really matters is the protection of private, anti-social interests. This is indeed a venture of bare, undisguised violence, its success requiring massive doses of fear along with the breakdown of societal reflexes. The Greek government, the parasitic elites supporting it and their associated political personnel, however, plainly see that, in this case, the neoliberal plan is not faring as expected. They are worried as a result –and rightly so...