Neoliberalism is not value-free As we have seen in the foregoing chapters, neoliberalism exhibits a number of striking shortcomings that are a direct result of the vision of humanity and society which underlies it. Because it downplays any attempt to influence the shape and direction of society, in favour of the free play of social forces, and because by accepting the economic laws of capitalism it limits the margins within which politics may operate, it becomes ever more entangled in its own impotence. By entirely subordinating politics to a free market economy, neoliberalism is powerless to deal with long-term concerns, with the interconnectedness of things, or with the overall picture. A currency speculator does not bother about the consequences of his or her activities for, let's say, the quality of the water supply, or long-term unemployment. These structural shortcomings in neoliberal theory and practice are at the root of many of the things I have described in this book. The atomisation and hardening of society, the erosion of democracy, the growth and sharpening of social divisions, the dismantling of collective provision, the neglect of public ethics and the commercialisation of society. All of these developments are systematically played down, and insofar as they are recognised at all, blamed on globalisation and the need for European integration. For those who wield economic and political power there is no alternative to 'more market and less government'. This is hardly surprising. neoliberalism, far from being value-free, has an unmistakably class character: those privileged by the existing system favour it. The assertion that there is no alternative is no more than a deceit to head off any attempt to force the powerful to share their power, influence and wealth. The transition from feudalism to capitalism replaced the old feudal rulers with a new power, but it did nothing to solve the age-old question of the legitimisation of power. Whilst capitalism was once a step forward in history, making mass production possible and thereby opening the way to mass consumption, more widespread wellbeing, and the replacement of anachronistic ideas of noble power by democratic ideologies. on the threshold of the twenty-first century however, its structural shortcomings are coming ever more to light. There is nobody, even amongst its supporters, who can explain how neoliberalism's ideas and practices can lead us to a better society, or how they can answer the big questions which the world is currently asking itself. A return to the social relations of the nineteenth century, such as is now being pursued, can have nothing but catastrophic consequences. There are people who have invested all their hopes in the blessings that are to come with the Age of Aquarius and others who expect the imminent return of Christ. I prefer a somewhat more worldly solution: the inevitability of an alternative. Humanity as the measure of all things The Dutch Liberal leader Frits Bolkestein once wrote: "the human intellect is too limited for the making of blueprints for our society." We can thus only proceed "step by step" via "a spontaneous process of trial and error." Because we can never have sufficient information or intelligence to allow us to create the perfect society, all we can do is bring about as much freedom as possible, and within this space allow spontaneous cycles of risings and fallings to eliminate imbalances.
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