The defining characteristic of the neoliberal crusade around the world,
I would argue, is the rise of precariousness. The exclusion of large sectors of people
from the official economy, just shocked out of the roles.
What I do in this alternative history of neoliberalism, is look at the key junctures
where countries were prescribed what's called economic shock therapy,
where the whole set of these policies were imposed all at once.
Like Russia in the mid-'90s, is the classic example.
Or Poland in 1989.
What we know about these key junctures
is that society has been much, much more unequal.
This rapid fire selling off of the state creates an oligarchic class.
It also just throws millions of people out, not just out of work.
But out of the organized economy.
And precariousness is the signature experience of the neoliberal project.
Displacement, from mega dams, from export processing zones, the rise of casual labor
as opposed to steady protected work, protected by trade unions.
And that's why, mobility, and when you add climate change
and mass displacement because of climate. A collision between weak public infrastructure
which is also a legacy of the neoliberal project,
which sees investing in the public sphere, in that kind of public infrastructure
as antithetical to the goals, you have this collision between
weak infrastructure and heavy weather, like we saw in New Orleans.
So you have, millions of people
displaced by extreme weather.
The precariousness, the mobility,
these are the signature policies of neoliberalism.
Now, I've talked a little bit about how this ecomic project
is adaptable enough to be able to
be able to profit from cracking down on those mobile people, right.
That in a way, the market has very much been created by neoliberalism,
the mass displacement, the need to look for better work,
whether in cities, moving from countryside to cities,
or country to country, looking for more work.
Then, you come up against the privatized infrastructure,
like Bowing's 2.5 billion dollar virtual fence
that is being built on the border between the U.S. and Mexico,
the largest homeland security contract issued to any company.
Whether it works or not is beside the point.
It is an economy, and this is such a resilient model,
that it can both displace the people, can't find jobs for them
but it can profit from containing them.
And Halliburton, of course, one of their more recent contracts,
was a contract to build detention centers, in the case of, a vaguely worded
unexpected immigration influx.
Which I think is probably a reference to mass displacement because
of some sort of natural disaster, probably is what the reference is.
So precariousness is the signature affect of neoliberalism.
And what we're starting to see are more and more, very interesting
social movements that are organizing around the idea of precariousness.
And because the women's movement has such a long history of organizing in sectors
that were ignored by a predominantly male labor movement.
It makes sense, that what we're seeing
is that are women are at the forefront of these new organizing models.
Because the organizing of home workers, for instance,
the organizing of sex workers,
the drive to get housework counted, the work of Marilyn Waring, for instance.
All of this groundwork, that feminists
have been laying is suddenly I think being noticed, finally,
although, not enough, by some leftwing male economic thinkers
and writers, who are recognizing now, that this organizing of the precarious
is our future.