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print versionExcerpt from Chapter 1 of The Kilburn Manifesto
With the banking crisis and the credit crunch of 2007-8, and their economic repercussions around the globe, the system of neoliberalism, or global free-market capitalism, that has come to dominate the world
in the three decades since 1980, has imploded. As the scale of toxic debt became evident, credit and inter-bank lending dried up, spending slowed, output declined and unemployment rose. The system’s vastly inflated financial sectors, which speculate in assets largely unrelated to the real economy of goods and services, precipitated an economic crisis whose catastrophic consequences are still unfolding.
We believe that mainstream political debate simply does not recognise the depth of this crisis, nor the consequent need for radical rethinking. The economic model that has underpinned the social and political settlement of the last three decades is unravelling, but the broader political and social consensus apparently remains in place. We therefore offer this analysis as a contribution to the debate, in the hope that it will help people on the left think more about how we can shift the parameters of the debate, from one concerning small palliative and restorative measures, to one which opens the way for moving towards a new political era and new understandings of what constitutes the good society.1
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DOWLOAD FULL TEXT BELOW:
- After neoliberalism: analysing the present
- by Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey, Michael Rustin
in Soundings, Issue 53 Spring 2013
