Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism

by George Monbiot, Peter Hutchison Narrated by George Monbiot

Overview

#1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ¿ A “fantastic” (Mark Ruffalo), fiercely argued takedown of neoliberalism that not only defines this slippery concept but connects it to the climate crisis, poverty, and fascism-and shows us how to fight back.

“Incisive, illuminating, eye-opening-an unsparing anatomy of the great ideological beast stalking our times, often whispered about and yet never so clearly in view.”-David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth

Neoliberalism is the dominant ideology of our time. It shapes us in countless ways, yet most of us struggle to articulate what it is. Worse, we have been persuaded to accept this extreme creed as a kind of natural law. In Invisible Doctrine, journalist George Monbiot and filmmaker Peter Hutchison shatter this myth. They show how a fringe philosophy in the 1930s-championing competition as the defining feature of humankind-was systematically hijacked by a group of wealthy elites, determined to guard their fortunes and power. Think tanks, corporations, the media, university departments and politicians were all deployed to promote the idea that people are consumers, rather than citizens.

One of the most pernicious effects has been to make our various crises-from climate disasters to economic crashes, from the degradation of public services to rampant child poverty-seem unrelated. In fact, they have all been exacerbated by the “invisible doctrine,” which subordinates democracy to the power of money. Monbiot and Hutchison connect the dots-and trace a direct line from neoliberalism to fascism, which preys on people's hopelessness and desperation.

Speaking out against the fairy tale of capitalism and populist conspiracy theories, Monbiot and Hutchison lay the groundwork for a new politics, one based on truly participatory democracy and “private sufficiency, public luxury”: an inspiring vision that could help bring the neoliberal era to an end.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Embraced by Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Labour, neoliberalism is simultaneously all-encompassing and seldom, if ever, explicitly named. Guardian columnist George Monbiot and filmmaker Peter Hutchison have set out to lift the veil on this ‘invisible doctrine.’ The result is a passionate, informed polemic that is short but packed with detail and incisive analysis.”—The Guardian

“Incisive, illuminating, eye-opening—an unsparing anatomy of the great ideological beast stalking our times, often whispered about and yet never so clearly in view.”—David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth

“If you want to know how neoliberals spread the dangerous lie that their ideas were new, liberal, and commonsensical, Invisible Doctrine is everything you need. Monbiot and Hutchison have written the definitive short history of the neoliberal confidence trick.”—Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece and author of Adults in the Room

“A powerful, punchy exposé of the invisible powers that block the road to human and planetary well-being—a must-read for everyone who seeks a better alternative to the crises that threaten to overwhelm us.”—Kate Pickett, co-author of The Spirit Level

“Read it, get angry, demand better!”—Gaia Vince, author of Nomad Century

“An urgent unmasking of some of the most powerful and insidious yet overlooked ideas of our era. Invisible Doctrine is a fantastic start for anyone who wants to know why politics as we understand it does not work for our communities or our planet—and what kind of politics just might.”—Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, author of Elite Capture

“A vigorous analysis . . . a damning, persuasive critique of neoliberalism.”—Kirkus Reviews

“This is the right moment for this gem of a book. A few years ago, most people couldn’t have quite heard the argument; a few years from now, on this overheating planet, it will be too late for it to matter. But we can still act—as long as we do it together.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“Explosive and beautifully told . . . These truths can set us free from the lie that this is the only way the world can be.”—Danny Dorling, author of Inequality and the 1%

Kirkus Reviews

2024-03-29
An investigation of the perils of neoliberalism.

British journalist and environmental activist Monbiot and filmmaker Hutchison mount a damning, persuasive critique of neoliberalism, an ideology that exalts capitalism and greed. A term coined in 1938 based on the writings of economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, and enthusiastically popularized by Milton Friedman, neoliberalism, the authors assert, has caused or contributed to economic inequality; “diseases of despair” such as suicides and overdoses; the erosion of the tax base, resulting in a lack of public funding for health, education, and infrastructure; and the advent of demagogues, such as Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Jair Bolsonaro. These “deeply flawed human beings with oversized egos and pathological insecurities” have been enabled by neoliberal ideologues who promote the mantra that competition, deregulation, and privatization will lead to wealth that will enrich everyone. However, the authors warn, freedom from regulation benefits only the very wealthy, leading to the exploitation and endangerment of workers, environmental damage, and the kinds of “exotic financial instruments” that caused the financial crisis of 2008. “As a general rule,” write the authors, “privatization is legalized theft from the public realm.” Instead of taking responsibility for the endemic problems they cause, neoliberals blame ordinary people for crises. They promote the idea that personal changes can be solutions, urging citizens to recycle while their enterprises loot natural resources. Neoliberalism has coopted both political parties, established influential think tanks, and found supporters in the press. The authors’ argument against neoliberalism includes proposals for change: Campaign finance reform may draw new political actors; local efforts can serve as models for “participatory, deliberative democracy.” “Once roughly 25 percent of the population is committed to change,” they contend, the rest of society will quickly join them.

A vigorous analysis of a pernicious ideology.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159302472
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/04/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	695,057

Read an Excerpt

1.

The Anonymous Ideology

Imagine that the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of Communism. That’s more or less where we find ourselves today. The dominant ideology of our times—which affects nearly every aspect of our lives—for most of us has no name. If you mention it, people are likely either to tune out or to respond with a bewildered shrug: “What do you mean? What’s that?” Even those who have heard the word struggle to define it.

Its anonymity is both a symptom and a cause of its power. It has caused or contributed to most of the crises that now confront us: rising inequality; rampant child poverty; epidemic diseases of despair; off-shoring and the erosion of the tax base; the slow degradation of healthcare, education, and other public services; the crumbling of infrastructure; democratic backsliding; the 2008 financial crash; the rise of modern-day demagogues, such as Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Jair Bolsonaro; our ecological crises and environmental disasters.

We respond to these predicaments as if they occur in isolation. Crisis after crisis unfolds, yet we fail to understand their common roots. We fail to recognize that all these disasters either arise from or are exacerbated by the same coherent ideology—an ideology that has, or at least had, a name.

Neoliberalism. Do you know what it is?

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we no longer even recognize it as an ideology. We see it as a kind of “natural law,” like Darwinian selection, thermodynamics, or even gravity—an immutable fact, a nonnegotiable reality. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

But neoliberalism is neither inevitable nor immutable. On the contrary, it was conceived and fostered as a deliberate means of changing the nature of power.


2.

The “Free” Market


What is neoliberalism? It’s an ideology whose central belief is that competition is the defining feature of humankind. It tells us we are greedy and selfish, but that greed and selfishness light the path to social improvement, generating the wealth that will eventually enrich us all.

It casts us as consumers rather than citizens. It seeks to persuade us that our well-being is best realized not through political choice, but through economic choice—specifically, buying and selling. It promises us that by buying and selling we can discover a natural, meritocratic hierarchy of winners and losers.

“The market,” it contends, will—if left to its own devices—determine who deserves to succeed and who does not. The talented and hardworking will prevail, whereas the feckless, weak, and incompetent will fail. The wealth the winners generate will trickle down to enrich the rest.

Neoliberals argue that an active state seeking to change social outcomes through public spending and social programs rewards failure, fuels dependency, and subsidizes the losers. It creates an unenterprising society, run by bureaucrats, who stifle innovation and discourage risk-taking, to the impoverishment of us all. Any attempt to interfere with the market’s allocation of rewards—to redistribute wealth and improve the condition of the poor through political action—impedes the emergence of the natural order, in which enterprise and creativity are rightly rewarded. At the same time, neoliberals contend that government intervention and bureaucratic control will inevitably lead to tyranny, as the state gains ever more power to decide how we should live.

The role of governments, neoliberals claim, should be to eliminate the obstacles that prevent the discovery of the natural hierarchy. They must cut taxes, shed regulation, privatize public services, curtail protest, diminish the power of trade unions, and eradicate collective bargaining. They must shrink the state and blunt political action. In doing so, they will liberate the market, freeing entrepreneurs to generate the wealth that will enhance the lives of all. Once the market has been released from political restraints, its benefits will be distributed to everyone by means of what the philosopher Adam Smith called the “invisible hand.” The rich, he claimed:

. . . are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.

It is fair to say that it hasn’t quite worked out like this. Over the past forty years, during which neoliberalism has prevailed both ideologically and politically, wealth—far from trickling down—has increasingly become concentrated in the hands of those who already possessed it.2 As the rich have grown richer, the poor have grown poorer, and extreme poverty and destitution now blight even the richest nations. And while the state might have deregulated finance and other commercial sectors, leaving their bosses free to behave as they wish, it has reasserted control over other citizens—intruding ever further into our lives as it stifles protest and restricts the scope of democracy.

Even on its own terms, as this book will show, neoliberalism has failed—and failed spectacularly. It has also inflicted devastating harm on both human society and the living planet, harm from which we’re at risk of never recovering. In terms of the spread and reproduction of its worldview, however, it has been astonishingly successful.

Over the years, we have internalized and reproduced neoliberalism’s creeds. The rich have allowed themselves to believe they’ve secured their wealth through their own enterprise and virtue—conveniently overlooking their advantages of birth, education, inheritance, race, and class. The poor likewise have internalized this doctrine and begun to blame themselves for their situation. They become defined, from within as well as without, as losers.

So never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job, it’s because you’re unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of rent: if your credit card is maxed out, it’s because you’re incompetent and irresponsible. Never mind that your school has lost its playing field or you are living in a food desert: if your kid is fat, it’s because you’re a bad parent.

The blame for systemic failure is individuated. We absorb this philosophy until we become our own persecutors. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that we’ve seen a rising epidemic3 of self-harm and other forms of distress, of loneliness, alienation, and mental illness.

We are all neoliberals now.

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