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hen Angus Deaton arrived in the US four decades ago, he imagined he had something to say about economic inequality and how to tackle it that Americans might want to hear. Instead, the great economic minds of the time told him to shut up.

The Scottish-born winner of the 2015 Nobel prize for economics struggled at first to understand why there was so little interest in a subject most European economists regarded as a central concern of post-war policies to reduce poverty and build more equitable societies.

But, as Deaton describes in his unsparing new book, Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality, he soon realized he had run headlong into the libertarian monetarists of the Chicago School of Economics, and they were driving US policy.

"There is this very strong libertarian belief that inequality is not a proper area of study for economists," Deaton said. "Even if you were to worry about inequality, it would be best if you just kept quiet and lived with it."

Deaton persevered, building a reputation as a contrarian for scrutinising the prevailing orthodoxy that an unfettered free market would deliver greater economic equality and individual liberty, and that government intervention and regulation would undermine both.

The result, said Deaton, is a predatory brand of capitalism in the US that enriches corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working people, deepens inequality of wealth and opportunity, and - although many Americans will deny it - is fuelling the rise of a class system. As he picks the system apart, Deaton zeros in on the evident absurdities of claims about the purity of the market.

"If you need an ambulance, you are not in the best position to find the best service or to bargain over prices; instead, you are helpless and the perfect victim for a predator," he writes.

The results are clear. Real wages have stagnated since 1980 while productivity has more than doubled and the rich cream off the profits. The top 10% of US families now own 76% of wealth. The bottom 50% own just 1%.

The time has come, Deaton argues, for economists to get back to serving society.

"The discipline has become unmoored from its proper basis, which is the study of human welfare," he writes.

The deepest forms of inequality are these sort of personal inequalities where not everyone is given equal value as a human being

Angus Deaton

At Cambridge University in the 1960s, Deaton was steeped in the Keynesian economics of government intervention and a regulated market. In 1983 he took up a teaching post at Princeton University in New Jersey. Ronald Reagan was in the White House and the Chicago school held sway over policy in both the US and Margaret Thatcher's Britain.

But while the impact of Thatcherism came under intense scrutiny in the UK, Deaton was surprised to discover that American economists were largely uninterested in how their policies contributed to inequality and hardship.

Deaton ticks off the list of Nobel prizes for economics won by the Chicago school's highly regarded minds, including Milton Friedman and George Stigler. He does not doubt what he calls their intellectual contributions.

"Yet it is hard to imagine a body of work more antithetical to worrying about inequality," he writes.

"A friend of mine, a conservative economist and deeply religious man, is fond of saying that 'fair' is a four-letter word that should be expunged from economics."

Deaton is now a US citizen married to an equally renowned economist, Anne Case, who coined the term "deaths of despair" to describe the rising mortality rate among white, middle-aged Americans driven by drugs, alcohol and suicide, a unique phenomenon in wealthy countries. The pair's shocking findings drew the attention of then president Barack Obama and his successor, Donald Trump.

Deaton and Case then wrote a bestselling book, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, highlighting the part played in reducing life expectancy by the US economic system, not least its lamentable health industry in killing staggering numbers of patients while making Americans poorer.

For all of Deaton's attachment to his adopted country, his British roots and upbringing cut the lens through which he interprets the US.

Deaton said that at the heart of the difference between his two nations lay opposing views about the role of government. After growing up in a country where many people saw the state as "a friend in times of trouble", he was appalled to hear his American colleagues proclaim that "government is theft".

"The very strong view in Chicago was that government attempts to do anything to fix the economy would make it worse. They really believed that the government couldn't do anything at all, which is absurd," he said.

Deaton said the evidence of successful state intervention is all around even if governments sometimes get it wrong. He points to president Lyndon B Johnson's 1964 "war on poverty" legislation pulling families back from the breadline and improving lives with food stamps, housing assistance, and federal health care for the poor and elderly among other programmes.

The way poverty is measured means that the war on poverty can never be won by sending money to the poor

Angus Deaton

Deaton said rightwing politicians and economists fixed the numbers so they could claim, in the words of Ronald Reagan, that in the war on poverty, poverty won. Official income statistics left out welfare payments so those receiving them often appeared to still be living below the poverty line when, by other measures, government assistance demonstrably helped.

"No matter how successful antipoverty cash transfer policies are at reducing want, their effects do not show up in the official counts," Deaton writes.

"The way poverty is measured means that the war on poverty can never be won by sending money to the poor. This statistical stupidity, which the politics makes so hard to fix, is a constant source of mischief and misunderstanding."

Put another way, Deaton said, "the war on poverty has become a war on the poor".

The Trump administration went in the other direction. Deaton said it lowered the poverty line to the point where millions no longer fell below it, and then claimed that poverty was no longer an issue. But the move was made with the same intent of greatly reducing access to welfare payments and discrediting state intervention.

Still, in time Deaton came to understand why Americans might be suspicious of government given that in the US it often works "not to protect ordinary people but to help rich predators make ordinary people poorer". The political system, he said, is "more responsive to the needs of those who finance it than to its constituents".

Deaton argues that the system is also increasingly weighted by access to higher education, itself increasingly an industry that drives students deeply into debt.

"One of the things I've learned is that the deepest forms of inequality are these sort of personal inequalities where not everyone is given equal value as a human being. That is the inequality that is so worrisome in America today. To have high status, to have access to good jobs, to be recognised valuable member of society, you have to have a four year college degree," he said.

"If you don't, you don't get to be part of the ruling class. You don't get to participate in Congress. You don't have access to good jobs. You're excluded from the successful cities, and all sorts of bad stuff happens to you."

Deaton said that what's emerged from decades of a system weighted in favour of those with a university education is a form of class system, although Americans do not like to talk about it in those terms.

"That's the difference with Britain where they always knew they had a class system. But the US has moved to something much closer to the class system," he said.

Deaton describes his own hopes as an immigrant 40 years ago as tempered by the corruption of the American economy and its politics to an extent that threaten democracy. But he is not without hope.

"With the right policies, there is a chance that capitalist democracy can work better for everyone, not just the wealthy. We do not need to abolish capitalism or selectively nationalize the means of production. But we do need to put the power of competition back in the service of the middle and working classes. There are terrible risks ahead if we continue to run an economy that is organized to let a minority prey on the majority," he writes.

Deaton sees other reasons for hope too. He said the huge popularity of the French economist Thomas Piketty's book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, which argued that inequality is a feature not an accidental consequence of capitalism that can be offset only through government intervention, is evidence that even in the US the debate is shifting.

"I think Americans are learning that there's more than one way of thinking about the world," he said. "One of the things I've been arguing is that all of us, including me, were a little too ready to accept the arguments that markets can solve things. We should have known."

Deaton also spies change because of immigrants like him. He points to the Turkish-born American, Daron Acemoglu, as an economist whose thinking is changing the discipline.

"Seventy per cent of economics PhDs in the US are non-American. I compare it to the Jews who came to America between the wars who completely changed physics. Economics is being completely changed by this influx. I'm not the only immigrant who comes in to America and finds it a strange place," he said.

This article was amended on 7 October 2023. An earlier version misspelled the names of Thomas Piketty and Daron Acemoglu.
Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality is published 3 October by Princeton University Press

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Angus Deaton on inequality: 'The war on poverty has become a war on the poor'

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The Nobel prize winner and author of new book Economics in America argues economists must get back to serving society

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‘Just desperate’: Tory pledge to ‘kick woke out of science’ put under the microscope

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Mike Galsworthy called on Michelle Donelan to apologise for undermining the community she is charged with representing.

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Students’ New Surveillance State | University of Virginia School of Law

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Students’ New Surveillance State | University of Virginia School of Law

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For 24 hours a day, seven days a week, American public school students are being watched and tracked online, according to a new law review article by Danielle K. Citron, a University of Virginia School of Law professor who writes and teaches about privacy, free expression and civil rights.

Teachers, administrators and school resource offices have the tools to watch - in real time - students' searches, emails, chats, photos, calendar invites, geolocation and more, according to Citron's research. Private companies are facilitating this continuous and indiscriminate surveillance by scanning, tracking and analyzing the most intimate aspects of young people's lives - their online activities.

Her article, " Under Their Eye: The Surveilled Student," which is forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, provides an analysis of the costs and benefits of this surveillance, identifies the underlying legal issues and provides recommended solutions. Citron, a recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant," is the Jefferson Scholars Foundation Schenck Distinguished Professor in Law and the Caddell and Chapman Professor of Law at UVA. Among a bevy of other thought-leadership positions, Citron is the co-director of the Law School's LawTech Center (along with Professor Elizabeth A. Rowe) and the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to fighting for civil rights and liberties in the digital age.

How did the idea for this article come together?

For my first and second books, about cyberstalking and intimate privacy, I focused on the different ways cyber abuse impacts adults, although I did allude to children. I knew that I wanted to tackle the question about children's safety and privacy as a separate line of inquiry because the cost-benefit analysis and our understanding of their intimate privacy would be different. I wrote this piece as the first part of a larger book project that I'm co-authoring with Hany Farid, a computer scientist and distinguished policy wonk who's an expert on children's online safety and the father of PhotoDNA. Hany is why we have technical tools to prevent the reposting of child sexual exploitation material. We want to write a book together about children's internet safety and privacy, and I want to begin laying the legal foundation for our project.

This article will be part of a series of articles cultivating an understanding of student and youth intimate privacy as a subpart of intimate privacy. My most immediate follow-up to this article is a co-authored piece with Professor Ari Waldman concerning youth intimate privacy - how law tends to give parents control over their children's privacy and how some parents have interests that diverge from children's and undermine their children's well-being with access to their most intimate thoughts, searches and lives. This is especially true for children who are exploring their gender identity and sexual orientation. Scholars who write about gender and transgender identity say that when one's gender identity is revealed without their permission at an early age - when they're outed - it can shatter who they are at their core.

Why are students a distinct issue?

Young people need intimate privacy when they're in the process of forming their identity, which is their full-time job. Every day, young people are searching, chatting, texting, emailing, browsing, reading, and sharing on their laptops. They are using school-provided laptops to research a paper, search for information about reproductive health and research information about their sexual identity. Their thinking and innermost thoughts are expressed and recorded in their online activities. Digital technologies can be indispensable to students' self-development. Online tools can enable self-exploration, enhance the sense of human dignity, and facilitate close relationships. They can, yes, but those wonderful possibilities are not guaranteed. For students, all of those possibilities are in jeopardy.

Students are now under continuous surveillance by public schools and companies in ways that adults would reject. In 2013, U.S. adults made clear that they don't want even a small semblance of this, when they rejected the continuous and indiscriminate monitoring of telephone data that was then provided to government.

So why do now we have children's internet activity on school-provided laptops being scanned, analyzed, and reported to public schools and school resource officers?

Public school districts think federal law requires them to monitor their students, which is a misunderstanding of the federal Children's Internet Protection Act. CIPA was passed in 2000, when students had access to school computers only when they were physically at school, whether in computer labs or classrooms. The idea was that we didn't want students to be in the computer room looking at porn, so schools had to block porn to receive a federal discount for internet access. That's literally what Congress was thinking about. But schools are effectively saying, "Because we have to block porn, it requires us to see, block and, crucially, monitor everything students do with laptops," even though students use these laptops at home, on weekends, and during the summer and holidays. So, students are being monitored by schools every second of every day. This is happening even though CIPA has a clear disclaimer that continuous tracking of students online is not required.

Schools ignore that disclaimer in the name of protecting students from self-harm, bullying and threats. They are not just blocking pornography and other visual obscenity, as the law requires, but they are spending public funds on contracts with private companies that scan and analyze students' online activities. Those private companies rely on software to alert them about concerning material; their content moderators - who are not well-trained - have seconds to review the flagged material, which they then forward to school administrators and other officials. Those alerts usually are flagged after school hours and on weekends, so law enforcement officers are the ones who are contacted.

What has been Congress' reaction to this?

The Federal Communications Commission, which has enforcement power over these issues, has been silent on this activity, even though advocates have brought the issue to their attention. Given the FCC's inaction, schools continue to get federal discounts on internet access and to proceed with the over-surveillance of children. Senators Warren, Blumenthal and Markey spearheaded a congressional inquiry in 2021 into the private-public surveillance of students, and they made clear in their report that this is far beyond what federal law requires and they're worried, as I am, that the surveillance chills students' free expression and worse endangers students, especially nonwhite students who end up facing discipline for minor infractions. They were very clear that this pervasive student surveillance was bad for students, bad for their privacy, not great for safety and unclear as to efficacy.

Where is the misunderstanding?

The federal law at issue explicitly says "Nothing in this title [...] shall be construed to require the tracking of Internet use by any identifiable minor or adult user." It explicitly says so in the law! So, it is this odd misinterpretation, to read one part of the statute and ignore the other.

Why would schools have incentive to go further than just blocking pornography and other visual obscenity, as the law requires? Why are they using this law to monitor for safety threats?

School administrators say that the monitoring makes teachers feel safer and better informed to help prevent student self-harm, suicide and threats. I believe them. School administrators and teachers are genuinely concerned about the safety and well-being of their students. But I think schools have to look at the surveillance in a clear-eyed manner. They need to work on understanding the risks to privacy and whether these surveillance tools are effective at all, or instead if they are making students less safe. They need to consider how they can best balance addressing safety concerns while protecting privacy. This article is just a first step to say, "Hey, we don't even know if these tools work, because they don't let us inside the systems to do the efficacy analysis."

Why aren't we allowed inside their black box, to see what they're collecting, whether it's effective and what they plan to do with the data?

These are private companies being granted access to all student data and then shielded from liability because they're acting on behalf of government, which is frankly bonkers. Because they're private entities, they don't have to respond to records requests, as government agencies do.These companies are getting quite a bit of private funding because investors think they're going to make money when they get bought or go public. These companies may be bought by Google or Amazon or Microsoft. We should worry about that - the end goal of the dominant tech companies. My concern grows out conversations with chief privacy officers who have said in public that the goal is to own all personal data and provide all the services of our lives, including health care. I'm not saying anything that's confidential; these goals are part of the public record, so to speak.

So this is the trade-off for school safety?

This is big business, and the biggest losers are students. I'd love the promise of safety to be fulfilled. Less bullying, less sextortion and child pornography, all the ways we could protect children at school. Right now, privacy and safety are viewed as incompatible. But it's not a zero-sum game - we can protect students' intimate privacy and endeavor to protect their safety. But right now, we're not doing this meaningful calculus at all and right now, I think students are less safe. Children are more often being disciplined for minor infractions like cursing than for [true] threats. This is often left to the discretion of school resource officers, and we find that Black students are disciplined more often in these cases. Kristin Henning at Georgetown Law wrote a brilliant book about the policing of students by school resource officers and how it brings all the recurring pathologies of the criminal justice system into the schools.

What other literature and data did you rely on?

I'm building on the work of intrepid journalists, congressional findings by Senators Warren and Markey, and scholarly research - that work gives us some important insight to what is happening. Legal scholars have been looking at the implications for school surveillance on the Fourth Amendment as well.

I've worked with the Center for Democracy and Technology for years, and they have done amazing qualitative and quantitative research on the chilling effects and the pervasiveness of these surveilled laptops. Something like 89% of teachers reported that their students' laptops are being monitored by companies like Bark and Gaggle. (There are five or so dominant student surveillance companies). And then CDT did qualitative and quantitative studies about how the surveillance impacts kids, and they interviewed parents and students.

What were their findings?

They have six main findings and five recommendations for reform. They offer a ton of data and anecdotes about how this monitoring technology has serious and harmful impacts on K-12 students, including students no longer trusting their teachers to protect their interests.

What impact do you hope the article will have?

Through my work with the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, I'm in touch with lawmakers and their staff. Usually people contact us - Capitol Hill staffers, state lawmakers or advocacy groups that I've worked with. For example, I have a new piece coming out about how to fix Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act with six very concrete proposals that should be law. Rep. Jake Auchincloss read the paper and spent an hour on the phone with me and his staffer Joe Valente. After working closely together, we are working on a draft bill based on my proposal. Every time I write, I try to articulate the theory behind my concepts like intimate privacy and pair those concepts with concrete proposals rooted in reality.

A modest reform would be reworking CIPA's monitoring provision so schools understand they are not required to track students online to obtain federal funding. But they should go further and regulate monitoring so that schools can qualify for the discount only if their surveillance technologies are independently shown to be effective and to minimize harm to privacy, expression and equality. And the details of the contracting process and the terms of contracts should be out in the open.

If these are public school districts, what about changing policy at the local level?

I'm not giving up on city and state lawmakers. In fact, most of my success in the work that we've done at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative has been with state lawmakers. When we proposed criminalizing the nonconsensual distribution of intimate images, we worked with members of Congress who introduced a bill that has been reintroduced four times; it is now called the SHIELD Act. Thanks to the intrepid work of CCRI's president, Dr. Mary Anne Franks, we're still supporting efforts to get that federal bill passed into law. By contrast, in the decade that we've been working on these issues, we now have 48 states, D.C. and Guam that have criminalized the practice. When we started, it was three. As Professor Richard Schragger has illuminated in his scholarship, localities are important laboratories of democracy. I am game to work with local school boards and local government on these issues.

What are parents' attitudes toward this?

Some are not fully informed of what's going on and how it's not actually making students safer. And then there are parents who do not like this at all. But schools are the deciders and they want students to use school-provided laptops to do their work, while protecting their in-school networks from viruses and other malware. The question is whether those laptops should be equipped with monitoring software in the way that such monitoring is currently conceived. That is what I am interrogating.

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Professor and privacy expert Danielle K. Citron of the University of Virginia School of Law calls for reforming the "permanent surveillance state" imposed on American public school students.

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‘I want it to hit people in the gut’: Chris Ofili on his epic, three-wall Grenfell fresco | Chris Ofili | The Guardian

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‘I want it to hit people in the gut’: Chris Ofili on his epic, three-wall Grenfell fresco | Chris Ofili | The Guardian

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n May 2017 Chris Ofili was at a gathering on the Lido in Venice, following the opening of an exhibition, when he was told a young artist wanted to meet him. Ofili, 54, cuts a lean, muscular figure, but with more salt than pepper in his hair, he is feeling his years professionally. "When you get to this age you're a little bit disconnected from the younger group," he says. "And I thought, 'That's really nice. Somebody would actually formally like to meet me.'"

In the near distance, he saw 24-year-old Khadija Saye, whose work was being exhibited at the Biennale with other emerging artists as part of the Diaspora Pavilion. "She had this really radiant presence," recalls Ofili. "There was an undeniably genuine, honest presence about her. And I said yeah, of course I want to meet her. We did a brief selfie and maybe exchanged a few words. But it was enough to realise, 'That's a good person there and I hope she makes really good art, because that combination can be quite special.'"

On the brink of a breakthrough ... Andichurai, from the series In This Space We Breathe by Khadija Saye. Photograph: © 2017 Estate of Khadija Saye, All Rights Reserved. Image courtesy of the Estate of Khadija Saye

Saye was, in fact, on the brink of a breakthrough with a haunting photographic series called Dwelling: In This Space We Breathe. "It turns out she made quite extraordinary, mystical, alchemic self-portraits and works fusing her history and the history of photography," says Ofili. "This work that reached into the past but also went into the future."

Just over a month later Saye was dead. She lived with her mother, Mary Mendy, on the 20th floor of the inflammable tomb and now charred monument to corporate disgrace, otherwise known as Grenfell Tower, where 72 people died in a fire. Saye had no phone to call for help - the police had taken it during a wrongful arrest - so she took to Facebook to ask for prayers and advice as she struggled to escape through the thick smoke.

A couple of days later, Ofili was back in his studio in Trinidad when he heard Saye had passed away. "At that point the fire was still burning," he says. "I remember thinking, 'What?' I didn't really understand what you're supposed to do with the loss of somebody that young who had such huge potential."

Today, in a piece by Ofili called Requiem, an image of Saye hovers high on the middle wall of Tate Britain's northern staircase. Emerging from a cluster of yellow and orange, encircled by the souls of the perished, she holds to her ear an andichurai, a Gambian incense pot and treasured possession of her mother. It is a depiction based on one of Saye's own photographs, currently exhibited at Tate Modern, also to be shown alongside Requiem.

'Beyond words' ... Chris Ofili's Requiem, installed on the walls of Tate Britain's north staircase. Photograph: Thierry Bal/© Chris Ofili. Courtesy the artist

Entering the staircase from the top, passing through opaque doors, one's immediate impression is of riotous reverence. Just beneath the apex, Saye appears as though from a stained glass window in a passageway dominated by arresting purples and blues. To the left, a prophet or witness bows, his dark robes aglow in the light of the flaming building he is presenting. Tears fall from his face into an ocean of despair from which souls are trying to escape.

I was conscious that whenever I passed Grenfell, I looked away. But this luxury has expired

To the right, a flute-playing, satyr-like figure rests beneath the lilac shade of a Ceanothus Concha (the same tree that sits in a garden dedicated to Saye in east London where she once worked). It lures the souls towards it with its melody as blossoms float across the canvas. The effect reminded me of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where a stained glass window bearing the image of a black Christ - funded and created as a gift from the people of Wales after Klansmen bombed the church and killed four little girls after Sunday school in 1963 - is visible from the pulpit. If approaching the work from the bottom of the staircase, you ascend, as though underwater, through the calmer blues of the tear-soaked stream in which the souls swim, to become enveloped in more vivid colour and clearer narrative.

Ocean of despair ... a detail of Requiem. Photograph: Thierry Bal/© Chris Ofili. Courtesy the artist

Requiem stands on its own, but is nonetheless pulled together by threads from Ofili's significant body of work. There's the witness, who also features prominently in Poolside Magic; his tears, echoing No Woman No Cry; the satyr, a constant feature of The Seven Deadly Sins. When the Tate originally offered Ofili the space for a new commission, which will stand for at least 10 years, he was sceptical. "The space felt awkward," he says. "It felt dated. It felt like the last kind of place I would want to make a piece of art: a thoroughfare. It didn't feel like it had any central focus."

Thinking back to similar opportunities he's had, particularly at Tate, he reflected on No Woman No Cry, a tribute to the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, whose image appears in each tear; and more recently Blue Devils, which addressed stop and search. "I thought OK, stay in that vein. Try and think of something that would address the public and the hundreds of thousands of people coming through here."

Focus ... Saye appears as if from a stained glass window Photograph: Thierry Bal/© Chris Ofili. Courtesy the artist.

Quite what that thing would be eluded him for some time. It wasn't until he was in a car heading into central London from Heathrow, following another Venice trip, that it dawned on him that every time he passed Grenfell he looked away. "This time I was really conscious that I was looking away. So I looked at it again and started having these horrible thoughts about Khadija being in that building. And that's when I thought, 'Right, I really have to try and address Grenfell because this luxury of looking away, and packing away those thoughts, has expired. But I knew it was a very vulnerable and tender subject, where you could do more damage than good. And I felt that if I was going to address it, I was going to have to understand it."

He delved into the literature and testimony that emerged from the tragedy, but ultimately came back to that evening in Venice. "I thought my entry could be through the one person that I think I knew in the building who lost a life. And if I went in that way, I could keep it personal and not be too broad."

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He then set about his artistic research, visiting churches and chapels in Padua, studying the work of 13th-century painter and architect Giotto di Bondone. Focusing on frescoes, he felt a particular responsibility because the work would be up on a wall for at least a decade. "It's important at times to use skill and platform to say something that's beyond words, really. I think this is beyond words. You can't talk for 10 years. But somebody can look at something and have their own personal responses in 10 years' time."

The space was altered in a range of ways to accommodate his vision, which in turn used the space quite differently to the painting by David Tremlett that preceded it.

'We have to ask ourselves how this was allowed to happen' ... Ofili. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

Raised in Manchester to Nigerian parents, Ofili has lived primarily in Trinidad since 2005, but zigzagged across "the black Atlantic", spending much of his time in London and New York. Referring to the diasporic connections made through colonialism and slavery, he says: "No matter what their plan was when they went over to conquer, there's another potential of how we can stay connected and use and exchange ideas. I'm determined to keep that callaloo mixture authentically mine. Not a generalised version. This is actually my dish. This is the way I make it. We work with what we've got."

When I interviewed him 13 years ago at his studio in the hills overlooking Port of Spain, he explained why he avoided polemic in his art. "A lot of black art that came before was set up to critique the system. I thought that was boring. Basically, you would have to be right all the time. And I was not interested in being right all the time. I wanted to be sincere and outrageous and friendly and rude and experimental and conventional. I just wanted to try to be who I am."

This informed his approach to Requiem. "I could get so much wrong if I was relying only on facts. But if I could stay in an emotional place, then there's no right and wrong, it's just connection to self, and I knew I was equipped in my emotional response. Because that's a lot to work with. I want this to hit people in the gut. The only way to do that is to say, 'Wake up, wake up!'" He clicks his fingers as though to stir someone from their slumber.

This preventable fire signalled the dominance in British life, and death, of the four horsemen of late-stage capitalism: inequality, austerity, deregulation and privatisation. Six years later, with the official inquiry still in progress and nobody yet held accountable, a body of artistic work is building in response. In the last five months alone there have been Steve McQueen's film and Gillian Slovo's play at the National Theatre, both titled Grenfell. What was it about tragedy, I ask Ofili, that has made it such a touchstone? "It was the direct by-product of a system," he says. "And we have to ask ourselves 'What set things up to allow these things to happen? Because human beings did this: there was no AI involved."

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'I want it to hit people in the gut': Chris Ofili on his epic, three-wall Grenfell fresco

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The artist has finally chosen to address the tragedy - with Requiem, a vast work depicting a flaming building, fleeing souls and an ocean of tears. He explains why he placed an artist who died at its centre

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Evidence on pornography's influence on harmful sexual behaviour among children | Children's Commissioner for England

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Evidence on pornography's influence on harmful sexual behaviour among children | Children's Commissioner for England

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This paper is the second in a series of reports exploring the impact of pornography on children. As Children's Commissioner, it is my duty to protect children from harm in both the physical and online worlds. As the Online Safety Bill moves through Parliament, I want to use this opportunity to turn the tide on pornography's harms to children. I am clear that children should not be able to access pornography, and my office's work in this space continues to demonstrate the harm it can cause to children and young people.

My first report, published in January 2023, " A lot of it is actually just abuse", set out findings from a survey of over a thousand 16-21-year-olds and focus groups with teenagers. It established that the average age at which children first view pornography is now 13 years old. Substantial proportions of young people surveyed who had seen pornography viewed it at a much younger age than 13 - 27% by age 11 and 10% by the age of 9. Young people spoke about the unbearable pressure to view hardcore pornography even if they do not want to, much of which depicts degrading acts and violence against women. Our survey analysis also demonstrated a significant link between an early age of first exposure to pornography and frequency of exposure in later years. The age of first exposure and frequency of exposure were shown to be closely linked to the likelihood of a young person viewing violent content online. Frequent users of pornography were also more likely to have real-life experience of an aggressive or degrading sex act.

For too long we have brushed the issue of pornography under the carpet as awkward, uncomfortable, or too difficult to solve. It is crucial that we don't shy away from discussing the nature, scale and impacts of online pornography. No child should be able to stumble across pornography online; in a world where pornography is a click away for any child, I am clear that this must change and until then we must grapple with the implications. Sadly, we are hearing from more young people that they are watching pornography and thinking that it is reflective of real life or healthy relationships, which is not the case. This is reflected from what I heard recently from a young person:

"Porn is often the starting point for young people when it comes to sex, how to have sex, and what to expect." - Young woman, 20, first saw pornography aged 10.

From this work it is evident that some children and young people are being negatively impacted by pornography. I have been so concerned by the growing research that shows pornography may influence harmful behaviour. I knew this was an area I needed to explore further. That is why I have used my statutory powers to request data, and for the first time collected case files on child-on child sexual abuse from one police force and from one Sexual Abuse Referral Centre (SARC), where children had been referred because they had been sexually abused by another child. My office has carried out innovative analysis of the text these documents to understand more about the role that pornography might play at this sharpest end of child abuse cases.

It is incredibly concerning that I found references to specific acts of sexual violence commonly seen in pornography in half of the interviews carried out following these cases of sexual abuse. Additional review of some of these cases found children suggesting direct links between pornography exposure and the harmful sexual behaviour exhibited.

This new analysis, together with other evidence in this report, presents a compelling case. This report contributes to the literature on pornography's role in shaping and fuelling violence against women and girls.[i] The risk factors behind harmful sexual behaviour and children abusing other children are complex, with pornography being one possible factor among others. Much of the abuse is taking forms which are depicted in pornography.

This report, once again, makes for difficult reading. It includes accounts of sexual violence and descriptions of aggressive sexual acts found in pornography. It is perhaps the work that I have found hardest to publish since becoming Children's Commissioner. Each of the 502 case files analysed for this report represents terrible trauma wrought on a child, by another child.

This report is focused on the harms that children face from accessing violent pornography, and how that might influence their own harmful sexual behaviour. That is why regulation online is so critical to protect children and young people. I am categorically clear: no child should be able to access or watch pornography. Protecting children from seeing inappropriate material is critical, but it is just one part of the essential and urgent work of protecting children from sexual abuse. It cannot work in isolation and must be combined with broader preventative measures. It must also go hand in hand with making sure that any child who is a victim of this most terrible crime is given the support they need to recover, and access to swift and effective justice. That is why I have committed to further work directly with child victims to understand their experiences, so I can make wider recommendations about what needs to change.

This report is dedicated to the children who have suffered from the effects of online pornography exposure. It is my duty to stand up and protect you, and I hope this report is a step towards doing so.

**

This report is not intended to be read by children, but by researchers and policy makers interested in making children safer. It makes frequent reference to sexual harassment and sexual violence. This includes descriptions of pornographic content, language and discussion of sexual abuse. This content may be difficult to read. However, we think it is important to understand how pornography impacts children, in order that we may better protect all children from harm.

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Evidence on pornography's influence on harmful sexual behaviour among children | Children's Commissioner for England

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This paper is the second in a series of reports exploring the impact of pornography on children. As Children's Commissioner, it is my duty to protect

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Deepening poverty in Scotland – no one left behind? | JRF

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Deepening poverty in Scotland – no one left behind? | JRF

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Deepening poverty in Scotland – no one left behind?

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This briefing studies the shocking increase in very deep poverty in Scotland. The Scottish and UK Government need to reconsider their priorities if they are to argue that no one is left behind. It is possible, and the case for changing course is clear.

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BBC News - Cut parents' benefits over school truancy, suggests Michael Gove
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-64803947

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Struggling to pay at the supermarket till, I felt that childhood shame flooding back | Kerry Hudson | The Guardian

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Struggling to pay at the supermarket till, I felt that childhood shame flooding back | Kerry Hudson | The Guardian

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O ur bank card has been declined at the supermarket. It’s no big deal – a glitch. But I’m experiencing flight-or-fight responses: heat rising up my neck, my heart thundering. I can’t meet the cashier’s eye.

The rational part of my brain understands that this is idiotic. I recognise that knowing we definitely have money in the account is an entitlement in itself. But the irrational part is shuttled back to the many, many times in my childhood and teens when there was never enough cash. Back to carefully counted stacks of two- and five-pence pieces, often hunted out of the back of the sofa or rattled from mostly empty piggy banks.

My middle-class husband smiles, shrugs, apologises to the people waiting behind us and taps the card again. Perhaps “middle-class” and “comfortable” are often used interchangeably because, among other things, they mean you will never feel the extreme discomfort of reliving the echoes of poverty well into your 40s. When we leave, I am almost in tears. “What must they think of us? And we were buying baby food!” My husband is kind, but bewildered. As well he might be.

Often, this scarcity mindset will knock me right back to my time in the 80s living on council estates, where the corner shops had metal grilles in front of the booze, fags and cash, and a sign saying “Do not ask for credit”. I grew up knowing that, although everyone where we lived was poor, admitting it was worse than enduring it. And I still feel this way.

There were times in my 30s when I was an award-winning author writing about poverty, yet almost homeless, down to my last tenner, and not a soul, not even my closest friends, knew. Instead, I did whatever work I could find – memorably, coercing pensioners to answer fitness surveys in a call centre in West Ruislip that always smelled of Chicken Cottage boxes – and skipped meals until my paycheck came in.

If you grow up poor, it takes a long time to shake off the shame, the secrecy of it – if indeed you ever do. Even when you are not poor, there are mental gymnastics involved in freeing yourself from the scarcity mindset. I am not extravagant. I feel guilty enough about having the luck to live a better life without wearing a Gucci hair shirt, too. I still buy almost everything secondhand. But I have stopped getting the absolute cheapest, and Terry Pratchett was dead on with the boots theory and I wish I had spent more than £25 on my ill-fitting wedding dress that I had to tape to my boobs. But old habits die hard. If I buy so much as a new saucepan – something I want, but don’t need – I will revisit my elaborate budget and redo every sum to account for the £15.

There are positives, too. I am grateful for everything I have and rarely envy anyone else’s lot. I know if I ever find myself on that poverty cliff edge again – and that could be any time for most of us these days – I will manage. I remind myself I spent a decade trying to ensure my kid wouldn’t grow up as I did – and he won’t. He will never be aware of every penny, every privation, from the time he is old enough to add and subtract. I still buy him mostly secondhand stuff, but I take joy in getting him what he needs and, just sometimes, what I want to give him, for no other reason than that he, like all children, deserves some good things.

Some cuts I won’t make. I have travelled, because my peripatetic childhood taught me that there was always a new start to be had. If I can, I will always have extra food. The heating goes on in October. These things matter to me. They make me feel safe. A warm house and full fridge are what I want my kid to have, so that when he is grown and his bank card is refused, he won’t be hurtled back 30 years, but will smile, shrug and apologise.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

… we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s fearless journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million supporters, from 180 countries, now power us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent.

Unlike many others, the Guardian has no shareholders and no billionaire owner. Just the determination and passion to deliver high-impact global reporting, always free from commercial or political influence. Reporting like this is vital for democracy, for fairness and to demand better from the powerful.

And we provide all this for free, for everyone to read. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of the global events shaping our world, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. Millions can benefit from open access to quality, truthful news, regardless of their ability to pay for it.

If there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. ​​Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you.

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Struggling to pay at the supermarket till, I felt that childhood shame flooding back | Kerry Hudson

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When you have grown up counting the pennies, you never forget it. A problem with my card almost had me in tears, writes Kerry Hudson

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More Information about Norway

With its 5,147,792 people, Norway is the 120th largest country in the world by population. It is the 68th largest country in the world by area with 323,802 square kilometers.

Two centuries of Viking raids into Europe tapered off following the adoption of Christianity by King Olav TRYGGVASON in 994. Conversion of the Norwegian kingdom occurred over the next several decades. In 1397, Norway was absorbed into a union with Denmark that lasted more than four centuries. In 1814, Norwegians resisted the cession of their country to Sweden and adopted a new constitution. Sweden then invaded Norway but agreed to let Norway keep its constitution in return for accepting the union under a Swedish king. Rising nationalism throughout the 19th century led to a 1905 referendum granting Norway independence. Although Norway remained neutral in World War I, it suffered heavy losses to its shipping. Norway proclaimed its neutrality at the outset of World War II, but was nonetheless occupied for five years by Nazi Germany (1940-45). In 1949, neutrality was abandoned and Norway became a member of NATO. Discovery of oil and gas in adjacent waters in the late 1960s boosted Norway's economic fortunes. In referenda held in 1972 and 1994, Norway rejected joining the EU. Key domestic issues include immigration and integration of ethnic minorities, maintaining the country's extensive social safety net with an aging population, and preserving economic competitiveness.

Languages spoken: Bokmal Norwegian (official), Nynorsk Norwegian (official), small Sami- and Finnish-speaking minorities

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With its 5,147,792 people, Norway is the 120th largest country in the world by population. It is the 68th largest country in the world by area with 323,802 square kilometers. Two centuries of Viking raids into Europe tapered off following the adoption of Christianity by King Olav TRYGGVASON in 994.

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BBC News - 'Parents cry because they can't provide food'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-59158118

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Teachers ordered to promote ‘social justice’ | Scotland | The Times

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Teachers ordered to promote ‘social justice’ | Scotland | The Times

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All teachers in Scotland must commit to promoting "social justice, diversity and sustainability", according to new guidance that has sparked claims of left-wing bias.

The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) has revised and updated its professional standards document, which outlines what is expected from educational staff, for the first time since 2013.

It now states: "Engaged, reflective, empowered and skilled teachers and learners acknowledge Scotland's place in the world, our history, our differences and diversity, our unique natural environment, and our culture based on social justice.

"Scotland's teachers help to embed sustainable and socially just practices in order to flourish as a nation. A commitment to the professional values of social justice, trust, respect and integrity are at the heart of the professional standards

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Teachers ordered to promote 'social justice'

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All teachers in Scotland must commit to promoting "social justice, diversity and sustainability", according to new guidance that has sparked claims of left-wing bias. The General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) has revised and updated its professional standards document, which outlines what is expected from educational staff, for the first time since 2013.

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Pimlico academy parents told: future disobedience will be punished | Schools | The Guardian

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Pimlico academy parents told: future disobedience will be punished | Schools | The Guardian

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The chair of the trust which runs Pimlico academy, the London secondary school at the centre of pupil protests over allegations of race discrimination, has written a letter to parents warning that any future disobedience by pupils will result in disciplinary action.

Hundreds of students took part in a demonstration outside the school last month that attracted huge media interest, in protest over changes to the curriculum, uniform policy and the siting of a union flag outside the academy building.

In a letter before pupils' return to school on Monday after the Easter holidays, Lord Nash, who chairs the Future Academies trust and is a former schools minister, urged parents to talk to their children and warn them of the consequences of any further protests.

"Any repeat of the actions on the final day of term would jeopardise students' education," he says. "We all need to work together to ensure that this does not happen again and learn the lessons from it.

"We must particularly ensure that our students, your children, understand the consequences of any future disobedience, which will undoubtedly result in disciplinary action.

"Whilst I appreciate some feelings may still be running high and these conversations may not be easy, I hope I can depend on you to discuss this with your children before the beginning of the next term."

The letter described the last day of term when the mass protest took place as "disappointing" and the media coverage that followed as "disheartening", but made no mention of any of the issues pupils and parents have raised and which prompted the action.

One parent with a child sitting GCSEs at the academy, described the letter as "utterly outrageous" and said it had sparked anger among parents. "None of the issues raised have been addressed. Parents are absolutely aghast.

"They're putting the onus on parents to get their child to behave or else get out. I can't tell you how angry and livid parents are. It shows the disconnect and total lack of understanding the trust has."

The letter, dated 13 April, was strikingly different in tone from one sent by the academy principal, Daniel Smith, immediately after the protest, in which he expressed regret, but also admiration for his students who were "passionate about the things that matter to them".

He said the flag would not be flown above the academy for the time being, pending a review involving all stakeholders, and offered reassurances about the uniform policy and curriculum concerns.

In September 2020, students took down and burned a union flag that had been erected outside their school. Four weeks earlier, pupils started a petition in response to the academy's strict new uniform policy, which stated that hairstyles that "block the views of others" would not be permitted and hijabs should not be "too colourful". The pupils accused the school's management of racism, saying that the new policy would penalise Muslims and those with afro hairstyles.

Future Academies did not respond to requests for comment.

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Pimlico academy parents told: future disobedience will be punished

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The chair of the trust which runs Pimlico academy, the London secondary school at the centre of pupil protests over allegations of race discrimination, has written a letter to parents warning that any future disobedience by pupils will result in disciplinary action.

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Schools in England told not to use material from anti-capitalist groups | Education | The Guardian

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Schools in England told not to use material from anti-capitalist groups | Education | The Guardian

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The government has ordered schools in England not to use resources from organisations which have expressed a desire to end capitalism.

Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an "extreme political stance" and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity.

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said the measures effectively outlawed reference in schools to key events in British history, and that it symbolised growing "authoritarianism" within the governing Conservative party.

The guidance, part of lengthy guidelines for implementing the statutory curriculum, said: "Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters. This is the case even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation."

It listed examples of what were described as "extreme political stances", such as "a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections"; opposition to freedom of speech; the use of racist, including antisemitic, language; the endorsement of illegal activity; and a failure to condemn illegal activities done in support of their cause.

McDonnell said: "On this basis it will be illegal to refer to large tracts of British history and politics including the history of British socialism, the Labour Party and trade unionism, all of which have at different times advocated the abolition of capitalism.

"This is another step in the culture war and this drift towards extreme Conservative authoritarianism is gaining pace and should worry anyone who believes that democracy requires freedom of speech and an educated populace."

John McDonnell said the measures effectively outlawed reference in schools to key events in British history and symbolised growing 'authoritarianism' within the Conservative party. Photograph: Vickie Flores/EPA

Economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said the guidance showed "how easy it is to lose a country, to slip surreptitiously into totalitarianism".

He added: "Imagine an educational system that banned schools from enlisting into their curricula teaching resources dedicated to the writings of British writers like William Morris, Iris Murdoch, Thomas Paine even. Well, you don't have to. Boris Johnson's government has just instructed schools to do exactly that."

Barrister Jessica Simor QC suggested that the government has on occasion not complied with the guidance itself, after it admitted the new Brexit bill would break international law ("endorsement of illegal activity") and continued selling arms to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen following a court ruling that it was unlawful.

Tariq Ali, the writer and activist, said although the new guidance was a sign of "moral and political bankruptcy", the advent of the internet meant such measures were futile.

"Leaving aside the stupidity, these things don't work," he said. "People will read what they want to read. Trying to enhance a version of the Prevent strategy, which is already in place, is quite scandalous and shocking.

"If you put things on a banned list, lots of young people can access them via the internet and read them. Banning them from schools will not work at all, aside from the fact it's a sign of moral and political bankruptcy."

He added: "How could both young and old people not read anti-capitalist analysis after 2008, or now with the virus going on and recessions looming all over the western world."

It is understood that the DfE is clear that schools should not work with agencies that take extreme positions, including promoting non-democratic political systems, and that teachers should be politically impartial.

Minister for school standards Nick Gibb said: "Our new relationships, sex and health education (RHSE) guidance and training resources equip all schools to provide comprehensive teaching in these areas in an age-appropriate way.

"These materials should give schools the confidence to construct a curriculum that reflects diversity of views and backgrounds, whilst fostering all pupils' respect for others, understanding of healthy relationships, and ability to look after their own wellbeing."

It comes after counter-terrorism police earlier this year placed the non-violent group Extinction Rebellion on a list of extremist ideologies that should be reported to the authorities running the Prevent programme. However, the south-east division of Counter Terrorism Policing later recalled the document.

The headline of this article was corrected on 27 September 2020 because the DfE guidance applies only to schools in England, not those across the UK as an earlier version said. It was further amended on 28 September 2020 to clarify that schools were told not to use material from anti-capitalist groups; as opposed to being told not to use anti-capitalist material as stated in an earlier version.

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Schools in England told not to use material from anti-capitalist groups

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The government has ordered schools in England not to use resources from organisations which have expressed a desire to end capitalism. Department for Education (DfE) guidance issued on Thursday for school leaders and teachers involved in setting the relationship, sex and health curriculum categorised anti-capitalism as an "extreme political stance" and equated it with opposition to freedom of speech, antisemitism and endorsement of illegal activity.

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'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia' - BBC Ideas

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'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia' - BBC Ideas

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'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia' - BBC Ideas

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Watch the "'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia'" video at BBC Ideas. Explore other related content via our curated "Futurefest: Occupy the future" playlist.

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Tesco Monitors Employees With Motorola Armbands - Bloomberg

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Tesco Monitors Employees With Motorola Armbands - Bloomberg

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Opinion | We Have Ruined Childhood - The New York Times

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Opinion | We Have Ruined Childhood - The New York Times

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For youngsters these days, an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert. Of course they're miserable.

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Credit Credit João Fazenda

According to the psychologist Peter Gray, children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression and more anxious than they were at the height of the Cold War. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found that between 2009 and 2017, rates of depression rose by more than 60 percent among those ages 14 to 17, and 47 percent among those ages 12 to 13. This isn't just a matter of increased diagnoses. The number of children and teenagers who were seen in emergency rooms with suicidal thoughts or having attempted suicide doubled between 2007 and 2015.

To put it simply, our kids are not O.K.

For a long time, as a mother and as a writer, I searched for a single culprit. Was it the screens? The food? The lack of fresh air and free time, the rise of the overscheduled, overprotected child, the overarching culture of anxiety and fear?

Those things might all contribute. But I've come to believe that the problems with children's mental and emotional health are caused not by any single change in kids' environment but by a fundamental shift in the way we view children and child-rearing, and the way this shift has transformed our schools, our neighborhoods and our relationships to one another and our communities.

The work of raising children, once seen as socially necessary labor benefiting the common good, is an isolated endeavor for all but the most well-off parents. Parents are entirely on their own when it comes to their offspring's well-being. Many have had to prioritize physical safety and adult supervision over healthy emotional and social development.

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No longer able to rely on communal structures for child care or allow children time alone, parents who need to work are forced to warehouse their youngsters for long stretches of time. School days are longer and more regimented. Kindergarten, which used to be focused on play, is now an academic training ground for the first grade. Young children are assigned homework even though numerous studies have found it harmful. STEM, standardized testing and active-shooter drills have largely replaced recess, leisurely lunches, art and music.

The role of school stress in mental distress is backed up by data on the timing of child suicide. "The suicide rate for children is twice what it is for children during months when school is in session than when it's not in session," according to Dr. Gray. "That's true for suicide completion, suicide attempts and suicidal ideation, whereas for adults, it's higher in the summer." But the problems with kids' mental and emotional health are not only caused by what goes on in the classroom. They also reflect what's happening in our communities. The scarcity of resources of every kind, including but not limited to access to mental health services, health care, affordable housing and higher education, means that many parents are working longer and harder than ever. At the same time that more is demanded of parents, childhood free time and self-directed activities have become taboo.

And so for many children, when the school day is over, it hardly matters; the hours outside school are more like school than ever. Children spend afternoons, weekends and summers in aftercare and camps while their parents work. The areas where children once congregated for unstructured, unsupervised play are now often off limits. And so those who can afford it drive their children from one structured activity to another. Those who can't keep them inside. Free play and childhood independence have become relics, insurance risks, at times criminal offenses.

Tali Raviv, the associate director of the Center for Childhood Resilience, says many children today are suffering a social-skills deficit. She told me kids today "have fewer opportunities to practice social-emotional skills, whether it's because they live in a violent community where they can't go outside, or whether it's because there's overprotection of kids and they don't get the independence to walk down to the corner store." They don't learn "how to start a friendship, how to start a relationship, what to do when someone's bothering you, how to solve a problem."

Many parents and pediatricians speculate about the role that screen time and social media might play in this social deficit. But it's important to acknowledge that simply taking away or limiting screens is not enough. Children turn to screens because opportunities for real-life human interaction have vanished; the public places and spaces where kids used to learn to be people have been decimated or deemed too dangerous for those under 18.

And so for many Americans, the nuclear family has become a lonely institution - and childhood, one long unpaid internship meant to secure a spot in a dwindling middle class.

Something has to change, says Denise Pope, a co-founder of Challenge Success, an organization based in Palo Alto, Calif., that helps schools make research-backed changes to improve children's mental health. Kids need recess. They need longer lunches. They need free play, family time, meal time. They need less homework, fewer tests, a greater emphasis on social-emotional learning.

Challenge Success also works with parents, encouraging them to get together with their neighbors and organize things like extracurricular-free days when kids can simply play, and teaching them how not to intervene in normal peer conflict so that children can build problem-solving skills themselves. A similar organization, Let Grow, helps schools set up unstructured free play before and after the school day.

Dr. Gray told me it's no surprise that the program, which he consults for, has been well received. "Children are willing to get up an hour early to have free play, one hour a week," he said. "It's like a drop of water if you've been in the desert."

These groups are doing important work, but if that kind of desperation is any indication, we shouldn't be surprised that so many kids are so unhappy. Investing in a segment of the population means finding a way to make them both safe and free. When it comes to kids, we too often fall short. It's no wonder so many are succumbing to despair. In many ways, America has given up on childhood, and on children.

Kim Brooks is the author of "Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear."
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For youngsters these days, an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert. Of course they're miserable. According to the psychologist Peter Gray, children today are more depressed than they were during the Great Depression and more anxious than they were at the height of the Cold War.

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Tom Bennett reviews ‘Creative Schools: the grassroots revolution that's changing education’ by Ken Robinson | Tes

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Tom Bennett reviews ‘Creative Schools: the grassroots revolution that's changing education’ by Ken Robinson | Tes

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Man who doesn't teach kids or run schools tells us how to teach kids and run schools
If you only read one book by Ken Robinson this year, don't read this one. In fact, put the other ones down too. There, I just saved you an afternoon of being patronised.

Ken Robinson has made a career of being portrayed as a guru of a topic he has little experience of: what happens in classrooms. It isn't the first time someone who doesn't actually teach children has told us what we're all doing wrong when we teach children, but it's rare for that person to be received with open arms by the very class he excoriates. He's the butcher given a ticker tape parade by the National Union of Pigs. Too strong? I'll scale down the carpet bombs when his impact lessens on our lessons. His ideas have started to catch the ear of policy Caesars everywhere, hungry to outdo each other in modernity, innovation and revolution. His advocates portray him as a revolutionary. But he's no John the Baptist. He's just Herod's favourite educationalist.

There's little new material in his latest missive; at least in terms of new arguments, there's slim pickings. Sir Ken has many advocates who applaud his diagnosis of education's ills, but he's been criticised for being vague as to the remedy. What this book attempts to do is to provide a road map of what schools should actually do. Unfortunately, because his diagnosis is so faulty, his prescription is equally wrong. He's the doctor that amputates your hand because you cut your finger, replacing it with a kipper sellotaped to an iPad. So what are his arguments in this book and why do they appeal?

He starts by criticising contemporary educational systems. Fair enough, there's a lot of hay to make there. Contemporary schooling isn't working. He demonstrates this by pointing out things like literacy levels and similar. But what this argument boils down to is, "the system isn't perfect, and has frailties that need addressing". Sure, we can all probably agree that. But it reminds me of the old wonky syllogism from Yes Minister: "Something needs to be done; this is something; therefore this needs to be done." 'This' can mean a lot of things.

And the rest of the book is an attempt to show 'this.' He spends several chapters looking at schools, many of which have done extraordinary things in extraordinarily hard circumstances. And then he does what every politician does: he cherry picks, looking at schools that purposefully have overtly committed to the kind of schooling he believes work. It's certainly inspiring to look at these schools, especially where children of little opportunity have suddenly found themselves in receipt of re-invigorated education. But you can find a million stories like this, involving schools with very different styles of pedagogy, from Common Core to group hugs to rote and chant.

Cherry picking like this to advance a cause is the worst kind of fundamentalism. You can lasso any data set carefully enough and torture it to say what you want. Pulling out every school in alignment with your own tastes and claiming it represents the truth of education is wilful ignorance. Perhaps he doesn't know what goes on in schools other than the ones he gets invited to?
What's wrong with education?
Plenty, in the Gospel According to Ken. Schools kill creativity because they're based on a Victorian factory model. They test children too much. They treat children as units in a spreadsheet rather than individuals. They don't cater for people's individual talents. They offer a one-size-fits-all model. Globally, education has become an exercise in cramming, passing tests and treating academia as the universal goal of human life, at the expense of individual creativity. There are elements of truth in many of these. But the truth is mixed with theatre and fiction.

Do schools kill creativity, as he suggests? No. Half an hour in a school in the UK will give this the lie. The curriculum is stuffed with subjects, the entire nature of which could be said to be creative: art; design and technology; drama; music. Then there are the subjects that contain enormous creative components as part of their curriculum: English literature (which is in part the study of art in practice); PE (which in many areas contains dance as a compulsory pursuit). And, finally, there are subjects where invention, criticism and synthesis are a regular, dominant feature of study: history, RE, geography, maths.

Add to that the reality of every school club, every drama production, every orchestra and lunch band, every Glee club, every single extra-curricular activity that schools do which don't fit into the simplistic factory model of education, and it becomes apparent that to claim schools don't provide huge opportunities for creativity, is to wilfully ignore what actually occurs. And to insult the millions of adults dedicated to it.

You see, schools are very different to this vision. I work in schools where children are routinely asked to come up with their own ideas; to express opinions; to challenge each other - even me - if they disagree with points made in lessons. Where their essays are marked for the quality of expression and originality; where their art is praised, critiqued and hung on the wall. Where knowledge is taught as a means to increasing their ability to create with greater complexity and nuance. Frankly I'm somewhat weary of being told what schools are like by someone who doesn't actually work in one. But it certainly explains a lot of the misconceptions.
Are schools based on a factory model?
No, and it's ridiculous to suggest they are, designed to process children into the needs of a working economy. The implication is obviously that children are mere units in this metaphor, carved and sculpted into the shapes that the machine economy needs. Ken proves this point by revealing the shocking truth that schools frequently have bells... JUST LIKE FACTORIES. How has this evil been allowed? How could we be blind to the horrors of children sitting at desks, in rows and columns JUST LIKE A PRISON OR SOMETHING.

Schools are also very unlike Victorian factories. For example, not many Victorian factories have chess clubs, Red Nose Day and assemblies about Movember. Not many factories have parents' evenings and gold stars and reintegration meetings and catch-up tutorials for children going through bereavement. In fact, the list of dissimilarities between Victorian factories and contemporary classrooms seems rather long. But why let reality intervene in the disservice of a catchy metaphor?

As I'm fond of pointing out, education is frequently harrowed by people who style themselves as Moses, liberators of oppressed children. But as Crispin Weston points out (link below), they're no such thing; they're Pharaoh; the slavers, not the slaves. Because while the groovier end of the education spectrum may lend value to a small subset of very able, mature and supported children, for the most part they do not. If you set a child with low literacy an independent study program to boost their grammar skills, some will flourish, like Tarzan (who is regrettably fictional. But he did teach himself to read from a picture book in Burroughs's original text). But most will give up when it gets hard, or a bee flies in the room. If you only ask children to study those things that they are interested in, would anyone be surprised if they only study things that appeal to them and forego anything difficult or remote? Apparently, Sir Ken would be surprised. It's not a stretch to believe that children are naturally curious, they kind of are - what they aren't is naturally self-disciplined. Curiosity isn't a good in itself; it is only a good when directed in a structured way that eschews novelty and distraction.

What is his prescription? Sadly, no new therapies, medicines or regimes are revealed. It's the usual blend of personalised learning, project work, thematic curriculums, knowledge-light/skill-heavy lessons that we've come to love from the 21st-century education movement (which incidentally, is the real Germ). No mouldy, skeletal cliché is too obvious that it isn't disinterred, stuck on a stick and paraded through Main Street: we're training children for jobs that haven't been invented yet; why do we focus on knowledge when they have Google? and so on. I suspect even a fan might feel slightly short-changed by this book. You could have visited a Montessori school a hundred years ago and felt perfectly at home with the homilies preached therein, and here.
Not just pointless, but harmful
Poor children simply don't have time for this kind of pious, optimistic grooviness. They just don't. Sir Ken makes a living mocking the 'lie' that if you get a degree you'll get a good job, but that's a straw man. No one seriously claims a degree guarantees that. What people actually claim is that possession of an academic education is valuable in itself in order to be an informed member of the human race; plus it offers some advantage over those who don't. Is there anything more sad than the sight of someone denying children the right to an academic curriculum and the fruits thereof, than from someone who is the very pinnacle of such an education? Yes, Sir Richard Branson and Lord Sugar made skyscrapers out of their lives without a degree. Yes, Sir John Major rose to the heights of prime minister without one. But what about all the millions more who suffered because they didn't? You might as well point to Princess Diana or Paris Hilton and say, "Look at how successful they were."

The kind of schools Sir Ken is talking about have just as many counter examples of failure as success. In the 70s a new type of school was attempted - ironically, also called free schools. From the BBC website

"There would be no timetable, no compulsory lessons, no uniform, no hierarchy. Teachers would be called by their first names. The children would make up the rules and decide what they wanted to learn."

And the result? "Many quickly folded." If you've ever seen schools shut down, you'll know how that short phrase covers a mountain of misery, disruption and the closing of a thousand doors to children who deserved better than the twinkly futurism of well-meaning but clueless educators. Stealing an education from children is the worst kind of theft, and that's what Sit Ken's diagnosis often leads to. I'd phrase this less firmly if the philosophy weren't so damaging to so many children.

Other than all that, I liked the book.
If you want some further reading about where Robinson gets it wrong, here are a few more things to read, by people who are frequently more careful and precise than my bazooka approach: Kyle Liao has some good ideas here.
Scott Goodman provides a comprehensive and thorough exposure of some of the major fallacies of Robinson'sarguments here.
Crispin Weston undertakes a similarlycareful unfolding of the faulty reasoning and factual inaccuracy that constitutes a great deal of the World according to Ken. This is particularly good.

I've had a few goes myself over the years to point out that the Emperor is wearing clothes made of invisible paperclips and imagination.Here, here and here. Oh, and here. I really need to get out more.

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Tom Bennett reviews 'Creative Schools: the grassroots revolution that's changing education' by Ken Robinson

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Man who doesn't teach kids or run schools tells us how to teach kids and run schools If you only read one book by Ken Robinson this year, don't read this one. In fact, put the other ones down too. There, I just saved you an afternoon of being patronised.

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Poverty in the UK is 'systematic' and 'tragic', says UN special rapporteur - BBC News

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Poverty in the UK is 'systematic' and 'tragic', says UN special rapporteur - BBC News

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The UK's social safety net has been "deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos", a report commissioned by the UN has said.

Special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston said "ideological" cuts to public services since 2010 have led to "tragic consequences".

The report comes after Prof Alston visited UK towns and cities and made preliminary findings last November.

The government said his final report was "barely believable".

The £95bn spent on welfare and the maintenance of the state pension showed the government took tackling poverty "extremely seriously", a spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said.

Prof Alston is an independent expert in human rights law and was appointed to the unpaid role by the UN Human Rights Council in June 2014. He spent nearly two weeks travelling in Britain and Northern Ireland and received more than 300 written submissions for his report.

He concluded: "The bottom line is that much of the glue that has held British society together since the Second World War has been deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos."

The Australian professor, who is based at New York University, said government policies had led to the "systematic immiseration [economic impoverishment]" of a significant part of the UK population, meaning they had continually put people further into poverty.

Some observers might conclude that the DWP had been tasked with "designing a digital and sanitised version of the 19th Century workhouse, made infamous by Charles Dickens", he said.

The report cites independent experts saying that 14 million people in the UK - a fifth of the population - live in poverty, according to a new measure that takes into account costs such as housing and childcare.

In 2017, 1.5 million people experienced destitution, meaning they had less than £10 a day after housing costs, or they had to go without at least two essentials such as shelter, food, heat, light, clothing or toiletries during a one-month period.

Despite official denials, Prof Alston said he had heard accounts of people choosing between heating their homes or eating, children turning up to school with empty stomachs, increased homelessness and food bank use, and "story after story" of people who had considered or attempted suicide.

He said the cause was the government's "ideological" decision to dismantle the social safety net and focus on work as the solution to poverty.

"UK standards of well-being have descended precipitately in a remarkably short period of time, as a result of deliberate policy choices made when many other options were available," said Prof Alston.

Analysis: 'Life has become a lot harder'
By Michael Buchanan, BBC social affairs correspondent
To anyone familiar with the shifting landscape of Britain's poorest communities since 2010, there is nothing factually new in these findings.

By highlighting them in one short, 20-page report, however, Philip Alston raises a fundamental question - is the government, and the country, comfortable with the society that we've become?

He outlines the normalisation of food banks, rising levels of homelessness and child poverty, steep cuts to benefits and policing, and severe restrictions on legal aid.

In Professor Alston's view, these are the unequivocal consequences of deliberate, calculated political decisions.

Ministers have long argued they had no choice but to cut public spending. Whatever the motivation, life has become a lot harder in recent years for millions of people in the UK.

The DWP said that the UN's own data put the UK 15th on the list of the happiest places to live.

"This is a barely believable documentation of Britain, based on a tiny period of time spent here. It paints a completely inaccurate picture of our approach to tackling poverty," a spokesman said.

"All the evidence shows that full-time work is the best way to boost your income and quality of life," the spokesman added.

Prof Alston praised the "resilience, strength and generosity" of British people, as well as the compassion of local officials and volunteers.

And he said there had been some positive developments, with increases in the Universal Credit work allowances expected to lift 200,000 people out of poverty, and plans to introduce a consistent measure of poverty.

But he said the "massive disinvestment" in the social safety net continued, making the changes seem like "window dressing to minimise political fall-out".

Despite the government's focus on work and record levels of employment, about 60% of people in poverty are in families where someone works, Prof Alston said.

He said this, along with welfare cuts, created a "highly combustible situation that will have dire consequences" in an extended economic downturn.

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UN expert criticises 'tragic' UK poverty

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The UK's social safety net has been "deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos", a report commissioned by the UN has said. Special rapporteur on extreme poverty Philip Alston said "ideological" cuts to public services since 2010 have led to "tragic consequences".

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Inequality driving 'deaths of despair' - BBC News

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Inequality driving 'deaths of despair' - BBC News

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Inequalities in pay and opportunities in the UK are becoming so extreme they are threatening democracy, an Institute for Fiscal Studies study has said.

The think tank warns of runaway incomes for high earners but rises in "deaths of despair", such as from addiction and suicide, among the poorest.

It warns of risks to "centre-ground" politics from stagnating pay and divides in health and education.

The report says such widening gaps are "making a mockery of democracy".

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), one of the country's leading research institutes, is launching what it says is the UK's biggest analysis of inequality.

That will be chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Prof Sir Angus Deaton.

'Taking rather than making'

He said "people were troubled by inequality" more than at any time since the 1940s - and the impact was so serious that it suggested "democratic capitalism is broken".

He warned of the dangers of disillusionment if people did not feel fairly rewarded for their work - and that extreme wealth seemed to be gained by "taking rather than making".

Sir Angus said "people getting rich is a good thing" but not if it meant "enriching the few at the expense of the many".

At the outset of this review, the IFS has published indicators of inequality - such as the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company now earning 145 times the average salary, up from 47 times in 1998.

It suggests pay inequality in the UK is high by international standards - with the share of household income going to the richest 1% having tripled in the past three decades.

The middle classes are also under pressure, particularly younger generations, with stagnant pay and unaffordable house prices.

The long-term decline in trade union membership is identified as another factor in wages not increasing.

As well as inequality in income, the think tank highlights divergence in health.

It says there is almost a 10-year gap in male life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas - and the IFS warns of "deaths of despair", with a rise in early deaths from drug and alcohol abuse and suicide being linked to factors such as poverty, social isolation and mental health problems.

Patterns of relationship are also affected by inequality, the study suggests.

Over recent decades, wealthier people have become more likely to be living in a couple, either married or co-habiting, the IFS says.

But among the poor, declining numbers are living with a partner, a pattern attributed to increasing job insecurity, a lack of financial independence and more "chaotic lives".

The big picture, says the IFS, is the UK is becoming more like the US, with a concentration of wealth at the top and pressure on working families lower down the pay scale.

It says that in the US, increases in life expectancy have stalled and that for non-graduate male workers, pay has not risen in real terms for five decades.

"The risk is that the UK may follow a similar path," says the IFS study.

The IFS warns of the social tensions that will come with an economic landscape built on widening inequality.

As economic think tank the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reported recently, this is likely to put pressure on the middle classes as well as those on low incomes.

'Constant lack of security'

University science researcher James Hutchinson, in his 30s, feels he has kept his side of the bargain - gaining a degree from Cambridge - and now working as an academic as well as raising a family with his partner.

But he feels a sense of "powerlessness" about the cost of housing and that his work has no job security, with a series of short-term contracts.

"It's not a sob story," says Dr Hutchinson, "But if people feel they can't improve their lot, then they feel disconnected."

"We were sold the idea that academic success is the way to be better off," he says.

He lives in Bristol and struggled to get somewhere they could afford to live - currently the family all sleep in one room while they patch up their home.

He recognises that he's "more privileged than many" - earning the average for UK graduates of £35,000 per year - but he voices a frustration at a lack of progress and fears that things could get even worse for his children.

The "disconnect" comes, he says, from his generation becoming "increasingly aware of your own expendability" and a work culture haunted by a "constant lack of security".

Dr Hutchinson is sceptical that any of the political rhetoric will translate into real improvements.

"How do we build a functional society out of dysfunctional lives?" he asks.

The problems are even more intense for those further down the line.

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Inequalities in pay and opportunities in the UK are becoming so extreme they are threatening democracy, an Institute for Fiscal Studies study has said. The think tank warns of runaway incomes for high earners but rises in "deaths of despair", such as from addiction and suicide, among the poorest.

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'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia' - BBC Ideas

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'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia' - BBC Ideas

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'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia' - BBC Ideas

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Watch the "'Surveillance capitalism has led us into a dystopia'" video at BBC Ideas. Explore other related content via our curated "IMHO" playlist.

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This school scans classrooms every 30 seconds through facial recognition technology

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This school scans classrooms every 30 seconds through facial recognition technology

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A high school in China has made a facial recognition technology system that scans the student's behavior in the classroom.

The facial recognition technology introduced in the school is recording facial expressions of all students while they are in their classrooms. The system scans the classroom every 30 seconds and recognizes seven different expressions such as neutral, happy, sad, disappointed, scared, angry and surprised.

The system is called as "Intelligent Classroom Behavior Management System" and it is being used at Hangzhou No. 11High School. With scanning facial expressions the system has the ability to even analysis six types of behaviors by the students such as standing up, reading, writing, hand raising, listening to the teacher, and leaning on the desk.

The information regarding how the students are reacting and behaving in the class when a teacher teaches is later sent to teachers to more efficiently analyze the behavior of students. The system is also used to monitor attendance.
Also Read: These are the world's 10 most valuable tech companies
The system challenges the student's privacy, however, the school thinks otherwise. Zhang Guanchao, the school's Vice Principal said that the system only collects and analyzes the results of the facial recognition analysis and stores them in a local database rather than uploading it in a cloud. The system does not save the images in order to prevent unauthorized access to the data at all, the vice principal added. A student studying in Hangzhou school says,

What else can surveillance cameras do in classroom other than exam supervision? High school in #Hangzhou uses camera to identify students facial expression for class performance analysis and improvement pic.twitter.com/bXolAE7Ev8

- People's Daily,China (@PDChina) May 16, 2018

"Previously when I had classes that I didn't like very much, I would be lazy and maybe take naps on the desk or flick through other textbooks. But now I don't dare be distracted after the cameras were installed in the classrooms. It's like a pair of mystery eyes are constantly watching me."
Looking at cameras being installed in schools in China, it is wake up call for schools in Pakistan. Since a system like thishelps teachers rethink their teaching style using statistical data and mark class attendance in only a few seconds.
What do you think about this facial recognition technology, is it beneficial for students or teachers at all? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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This school scans classrooms every 30 seconds through facial recognition technology

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A high school in China has made a facial recognition technology system that scans the student's behavior in the classroom. The facial recognition technology introduced in the school is recording facial expressions of all students while they are in their classrooms.

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2012.07.04 Think piece - Diane Reay - Socially just education system.pub

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2012.07.04 Think piece - Diane Reay - Socially just education system.pub

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Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power by Byung-Chul Han – review

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/30/psychopolitics-neolberalism-new-technologies-byung-chul-han-review?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

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The Propaganda behind Personalised Learning - Long View on Education

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The Propaganda behind Personalised Learning - Long View on Education

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I have long thought of writing a book that would take off with Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent and focus on how different media outlets and educelebrities talk about education. Chomsky and Herman conduct a structural analysis that reveals how the media, government, and corporations end up constructing very narrow narratives that serve elite interests. Some issues are barely ever covered (the public support for single payer healthcare in the US), and when issues are covered, the range of acceptable opinions is artificially restricted and often skewed to the conservative right (US wars can be 'strategic blunders', but not immoral or illegal).

With the caution that it would take a book-length piece of writing and years of research to do this topic justice, I want to sketch what might be one anecdote in such a volume. Alongside the mainstream media that reports on education, a parallel media funded by venture philanthropists has emerged to push the agenda of 'personalised learning' (PL) as a solution to what's broken in the US and global education systems. While we would all like our learning to be personally tailored to us, PL signifies something quite narrow: the use of digital technologies and platforms to monitor and track student progress through prescribed curriculum content, and then the displaying student data on a dashboard for teachers, administrators, and parents.

Among the media funded by venture philanthropists, the74million.org and Edsurge stand out for their influence. This past week, the74 published an article by Beth Rabbitt that aims to cut through the the bullshit about PL by striking a middle ground between the skeptics who proceed with "great zeal", and the "true believers." Rabbitt claims there are "facts, often overlooked, that could form the basis for a more balanced and rigorous conversation."

I quickly dug into the74, the outlet that published the article, and found that it shares The Gates Foundation as funding source with The Learning Accelerator (TLA), the company of which Rabbitt is CEO. Additionally, the74 is funded by the Walton Family and Betsy DeVos, while TLA receives funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. According to one analysis, TLA " serves as a pass through, handing out smaller grants to organisations that support its mission via research and product development as well as to charter management organisations and alternative teacher training programs that have been set up to carry out this data-driven dashboard form of 'education.'"

Given these funding structures, what would we expect CEOs and media outlets to say about personalised learning? Chomsky and Herman describe how five filters - media ownership, revenue through advertising, reliance on official sources, flak, and anticommunist ideology - shape not only the opinions expressed in the media, but the selection of what is newsworthy in the first place. Here, I slightly modify their filters to examine how the venture philanthropy media frames personalised learning.

Filter 1 - Funding: Venture philanthropy funds news outlets, reform movements, and charter schools. At the same time, the venture philanthropists run the companies that sell technology and extract our data.

The74 and EdSurge both position themselves as honest and neutral brokers, "reporting stories without fear or favour about what is working well for students and families, and to expose and hold accountable the systems that are failing them." "We do not adjust editorial content according to the wishes - or the wallets - of sponsors, partners or investors. We don't shy from covering subjects that might be sensitive issues for these organisations."

Yet, Chomsky and Herman's point is that the media does not work like the violent totalitarianism in Orwell's 1984. Sources of revenue need not exert heavy-handed editorial control in the newsroom because they select the 'right thinking' people in the first place, whom venture philanthropists encourage to internalise the right ideals and messages.

Campbell Brown, the former CNN anchor who founded the74, calls Betsy DeVos "a friend", and says that "it's a pity that Betsy DeVos has been so misleadingly caricatured." Brown views DeVos as sitting above ideology and profit: "The suggestion that Betsy's work with children is ideologically or financially driven would be disputed, I'd guess, by just about everyone who has spent time alongside her during the past 30 years as she founded, helped run and advised education groups and initiatives that have helped improve education across the country - including thousands of teachers and poor families."

The venture philanthropists seek to profit from Personalised Learning in two ways. First, the move towards education reform based on PL opens more markets for software and solutions. Zuckerberg doesn't need the organisations he funds to sell his products, but to sell the ideas that make his business model seem inevitable.

Second, where markets already exists, PL ensures that massive amounts of student data are collected in the process of learning. In her criticism of the movement to turn Rhode Island into a PL lab, Renee Hobbs writes "...I don't believe that data-intensive learning management tools need to be a key ingredient of school technology programs. There are far better and cheaper ways to harness the power of digital media and technology to promote learning." Thus, the alternatives to PL, such as teaching students how to critically search for and use resources on the internet, are left out of the solutions that venture philanthropists market because critical media literacy would actually mount a challenge to their business practices.

Filter 2 - Expertise: "the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and 'experts' funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power."

In the debates about PL, who counts as a reliable source of information? Chomsky and Herman write about the "normative order of authorised knowers in the society." Bill Gates is ranked the most influential individual in education. Aside from the other tech giants like Mark Zuckerberg, Thomas Friedman holds outsized influence as an expert, largely because he interviews CEOs and transcribes what they tell him. In the media, newspeople then "recognise an official's claim to knowledge not merely as a claim, but as a credible, competent piece of knowledge. This amounts to a moral division of labor: officials have and give the facts; reporters merely get them."

The74's interview with Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE and CIO of Rhode Island, positions PL as "the Key to Narrowing a School's Equity Gap." The article barely mentions equity, except in relation to raising grades and helping students who are 'lagging behind' catch up. By positioning Culatta as an expert not only on PL, but also equity, the interview constructs a rather narrow definition of the equity issues the US education system faces: grades and lagging students.

Culatta tells us the "the key with personalized learning" lies in "monitoring progress in real time, or near-real time." Almost by definition, you need a digital platform for PL if the bar is real time monitoring, because "that gets really hard to do on paper." Thus, experts not only identify solutions, but also serve a critical role in formulating the problems that the system faces: real-time knowledge of what students are doing. At once those problems are set, the bounds of the discussion are artificially narrowed, so that PL seems to be the only and inevitable solution.

Filter 3 - Ideology: The Silicon Valley, neoliberal ideology acts "as a national religion and control mechanism."

More than anyone, Audrey Watters has carried the mantle of Noam Chomsky's work on interrogating the relationship between media, capital, and messaging in the field of education. The dominant ideology in education that seemingly challenges the neoconservative standardised testing and 'no excuses' movement argues for:

A highly individualistic conception of success in school and life

A vision of the world as meritocratic, where creators with the right character (grit, and not privilege) rise to the top

Becoming a user of platforms

A valuation of education in terms of economic productivity (both on the national and individual level)

Every teacher faces "great pressure to demonstrate their ... credentials" by praising the aims of personalised learning: creativity and empowerment, closing 'achievement gaps', and preparation for employment. The PL movement hitches onto the ideals of inclusiveness and allowing students to move at their own pace, while caricaturing education as stuck in some factory model past. Only a traditional, conservative educator stuck in the past could oppose the aims of PL to set students free.

This ideology "helps mobilize the populace against an enemy [factory model, standardised testing], and because the [factory model] concept is fuzzy it can be used against anybody." Moreover, the ideology "helps fragment the left and labor movements": while the neoconservative 'no excuses' movement functions as the overarching enemy, the left becomes split between PL as a Silicon Valley solution that serves capital, and all of the other opposition movements from critical pedagogy to unschooling. And since those movements lack corporate backers and well-funded news outlets, PL emerges as the dominant challenger to the back-to-basics movement.
Filter 4 - Flak: "'a means of disciplining the media"
What happens to people who challenge the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, and in particular the PL ideology? Consider the harassment that Audrey Watters experienced when she simply wanted people to not annotate her site.

In an article published by NPR about Rocketship Education's PL practices, Anya Kamenetz exposed our worst fears, and then some: "hours of enforced silence," "having students retake standardised tests to increase scores," and "inadequate supervision, bathroom accidents and even infectionsdue to denial of restroom visits."

I don't know what direct flak Kamenetz received, but EdSurge responded with an article that tries to normalise NPR's "harsh picture" of Rocketship by both appealing to common wisdom -"every educator knows" - and common problems: "these issues are not unique to Rocketship. They are questions that many schools across the country, both public and charter, struggle with." In several instances, EdSurge asks for outright sympathy with Rocketship and paints their struggles as universal:

"If we respond to this article about Rocketship by villainizing the organization, we fail to learn."

"Again this is not a Rocketship problem. All schools in the 21st century will wrestle with the balance of tech and teacher time as they integrate new technologies into teaching and learning practices."

"Exactly how students and teachers spend their time in school is at the core of our schools. We must ask these questions-not just of Rocketship but of every school we encounter."

Navigating the Financial Sector

So what do we do? Educate ourselves. Follow critical educators on Twitter, read books that expose corporate interests, and support the work of people like Audrey Watters who act as independent journalists.

Mobilize. Noam Chomsky often points out how it's really difficult to do the work of critical media analysis on your own unless you are totally obsessive (like Chomsky is), and so creating Slack groups and Twitter DM groups to share and amplify critical perspectives can help us gain more voice.

And educate. Venture philanthropists wouldn't be mobilising to fund new media outlets if they weren't afraid of us. Teachers still teach, right?
Image credit correction: Dec 18 - my apologies for misspelling Beth Rabbitt's last name

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The Propaganda behind Personalised Learning

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I have long thought of writing a book that would take off with Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent and focus on how different media outlets and educelebrities talk about education. Chomsky and Herman conduct a structural analysis that reveals how the media, government, and corporations end up constructing very narrow narratives that serve elite interests.

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What have schools got to do with neo-liberalism? – Combatting Schooling Injustice: Comenius Dreaming

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What have schools got to do with neo-liberalism? – Combatting Schooling Injustice: Comenius Dreaming

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Neoliberalism is not a term that everyone is happy to use. Some see it as ideological jargon and for others it might describe what is happening but its use by education academics seems to get in the way of teachers and practitioners hearing its central message.

My own view is that the basic assumptions, frameworks and processes of neo-liberalism have been so well incorporated into our economic frameworks, social policies and thinking, that unless we name it and unpack it, we cant talk about what is happening sensibly or view things through any other lens.

In this blog I want to point out just how deeply school education has become infected with the neoliberal ideas.

So what is neoliberalism? In a recent post by Chris Thinnes[1] the following definition is used

[Neoliberalism is] ...an ensemble of economic and social policies, forms of governance, and discourses and ideologies that promote individual self-interest, unrestricted flows of capital, deep reductions in the cost of labor, and sharp retrenchment of the public sphere. Neoliberals champion privatization of social goods and withdrawal of government from provision for social welfare on the premise that competitive markets are more effective and efficient

Now its not hard to see the relevance of this to school reform policies of the US, UK and increasingly in Australia:

School choice and competition - highly entrenched in Australia

MySchool providing the information to support parents voting with their feet and forcing schools to worry more about student test performance than about the school learning and well being environment

high stakes testing - creating commodities out of smart kids and relegating others to a 'take a sick day on testing' status,

performance pay for teachers - introducing competition where there needs to be collaboration and team building

competing for a place in the PISA top 5 - turning school quality into an international productivity competition

Thynne's post, The Abuse and Internalization of the 'Free Market' Model in Education, shows how school policies and practices promote individual self-interest over the common good and the market as the arbiter of values. In this he is not unique. But Thinnes also reminds us that its fundamental ideas exist at a much deeper level - how this way of thinking has become the air we breathe in school policy and practice, even within the field of education.

His very first example emerges from comments made by both teachers and students about the challenges and opportunities of collaborative or group work in classrooms:

The problem with group projects is that somebody might end up doing all the work, but somebody else will get the credit It's too hard to grade each student when you're not sure how they contributed Collaboration is great, but somebody ends up not carrying their weight When you try to help each other, the teachers sometimes treat you like you cheated

The message coming through from these comments is that although student collaboration might be important to learning in theory, "the assessment and affirmation of individual contributions, achievements, and accomplishments is what matters most in our schools".

Thinnes observes that

The persistence of such beliefs should come as no surprise to any of us, who find ourselves in a society with an education system that has embraced prevailing myths about competition, meritocracy, and economic and social mobility in its education policy. It should strike us with a great sadness, however, for those of us who question and resist those myths in our classroom practice and learning communities. This internalization of neoliberal commitments to the individual achievements of our students and teachers, and the market competition of our schools, is naturalized even in our most informal, everyday conversations about education. It is enforced by many of our classroom practices. It is celebrated in many of our school-wide rituals. But I find it perhaps most disturbing when it frames our thoughts, subconsciously or purposefully, about how to improve our schools.

Unfortunately we see evidence of this in the Australian context wherever we look.

The only two items mentioned in the 2013 budget speech in relation to Indigenous education and closing the gap were scholarships for individual Indigenous students to attend elite schools and the Clontarrf Football academy. Neither of these offer any systemic strategies for improving Indigenous education. It seems we have decided to give up on structural systemic improvements in Indigenous education, in spite of appalling and systemic failure - particularly in remote contexts. The vast majority of Indigenous students and their families are left untouched by these two strategies. In fact it is possible they will be worse off as the more aspirational students - those who can contribute to the quality of learning in a classroom - are plucked out and removed. And of course the fact that both these strategies result in the funding of non Government bodies to deliver the programs has not even been seen as odd or of concern.

Today in the Canberra Times Tony Shepherd argues that wealthy parents who choose to suck of the public teat by going to public schools should be charged a levy. This only makes sense of schools are considered a commodity - a product and students it customers. This is a total repudiation of the fundamental democratic purpose of schools but the impact of neoliberal thinking and its saturation is to make these seem like a logical and sensible idea.

Thynne ends his article with the following message

The end-run of the logic of the 'free market model' and its application to schools is simple: the repudiation of schools as we have come to know them; the abandonment of democratic principles on which they are based; and the service of a technocratic vision of education as matrix of individual relationships with private providers....This internalization of neoliberal commitments to the individual achievements of our students and teachers, and the market competition of our schools, is naturalized even in our most informal, everyday conversations about education. It is enforced by many of our classroom practices. It is celebrated in many of our school-wide rituals. But I find it perhaps most disturbing when it frames our thoughts, subconsciously or purposefully, about how to improve our schools.

We should take note before it is too late.

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What have schools got to do with neo-liberalism?

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Neoliberalism is not a term that everyone is happy to use. Some see it as ideological jargon and for others it might describe what is happening but its use by education academics seems to get in the way of teachers and practitioners hearing its central message.

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Crazy transfer fee of Gonzalo Higuaín leads us into theatre of the absurd | Rob Smyth | Football | The Guardian

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Crazy transfer fee of Gonzalo Higuaín leads us into theatre of the absurd | Rob Smyth | Football | The Guardian

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The world transfer record was broken twice in the summer of 1996. The Brazilian forward Ronaldo went from PSV Eindhoven to Barcelona for around £13.2m but his record did not last long. Twenty years ago on Friday, Newcastle United paid Blackburn Rovers £15m for Alan Shearer. Both theoretically had their best years ahead - Ronaldo was 19, Shearer 25 - and were probably the best strikers in the world at the time. In that year's Ballon d'Or they finished second and third, behind the Germany sweeper Matthias Sammer.

The contrast between those two and Gonzalo Higuaín, who has moved from Napoli to Juventus for £75.3m, shows the extent to which football has changed in the last two decades. Money doesn't just talk; it never shuts up. Higuaín is a superb attacker, whose 36 goals in 2015-16 equalled the record for a Serie A season, but he will be 29 in December and few would regard him as one of the world's best players. Last October he did not even make a 23-man shortlist for the Ballon d'Or. And he is worth £75.3m.

The Higuaín transfer might mark the day the last sane person was bundled out of the asylum. He is the third most expensive player of all time, behind Real Madrid's Gareth Bale (£85m) and Cristiano Ronaldo (£80m). He may soon be fourth on the list, if Paul Pogba joins Manchester United or Real for a world-record fee. A 25-year-old Ronaldo or Lionel Messi would probably be worth £200m.

The reaction to the Higuaín move feels instructive. There was a bit of surprise but little disgust at a fee that not so long ago would have been seen as a vulgar indictment of the decadence of society. We have been desensitised to such grotesque transfer fees - and to reports Pogba's agent, Mino Raiola, will receive £20m if his client leaves Juventus.

Stratospheric agents' fees are an accepted part of football. From October 2015 to February 2016, Manchester United paid out £10m in them - and they did not buy a single player. That money was paid to agents for their part in negotiating contract extensions.

Football has developed its own economy, with its own inflation rate. While the real world is looking down the back of the sofa, football burns money for a laugh - literally in the cases of some especially offensive players. A socialist sport has become an orgy of unashamed, self-congratulatory avarice.

The transfer market has become such big business there are times when the actual football feels almost secondary. The excitement of buying players trumps the reality of watching them play, and transfer deadline day has replaced the FA Cup final experience as the most keenly anticipated date on the calendar.

Agents such as Raiola and Jorge Mendes are now some of the most important people in football. Except calling them agents is not enough: they are "super agents", the football equivalent of Cindy Crawford, Eva Herzigova and the other supermodels on the famous Vogue cover of 1990. Their battle for supremacy is a game of its own. They even have their own power rankings on some websites.

The unprecedented worldwide popularity of football has allowed all this to happen. Twenty years ago, when the Deloitte Money League was published for the first time, Manchester United were top with revenues of £88m. The most recent table, for the 2014-15 season, had Real Madrid top with £439m. The broadcasting war between Sky and BT drove the last TV deal up to £5.14bn over three seasons, while the Chinese Super League has so much money Shandong Luneng can pay a reported £230,000 a week to Graziano Pellè.

It is a culture that is hard to relate or warm to, even before you consider the nefarious elements that are inevitable when so much money is involved. Nor is this just an idle point of principle. Football's obsession with money is the principal reason for the dramatic change in the game in the last 25 years, from pricing out younger fans to the lack of leaders and characters on the pitch.

It is hard to see how this greed-is-good culture can be arrested. If you don't like it, you can go and watch cricket. This is not a midlife crisis or a temporary state; this is the value system of 21st-century football. A value system in which paying £75.3m for a 28-year-old barely raises an eyebrow.

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Crazy transfer fee of Gonzalo Higuaín leads us into theatre of the absurd | Rob Smyth

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The world transfer record was broken twice in the summer of 1996. The Brazilian forward Ronaldo went from PSV Eindhoven to Barcelona for around £13.2m but his record did not last long. Twenty years ago on Friday, Newcastle United paid Blackburn Rovers £15m for Alan Shearer.

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In Brexit and Trump, neoliberalism has reached its natural conclusion. What now?

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In Brexit and Trump, neoliberalism has reached its natural conclusion. What now?

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I knew an unemployed artist who found work with a registered training organisation. Not teaching art. Teaching forklift drivers. "You ever drive a forklift?" I asked in surprise. He said no, unnecessary. He'd done a short course (not in forklift driving). He'd ticked the VET boxes for the TAE certificate from the RTO. All good. To me it made no sense, even sans the alphabet soup. Still doesn't. But this is what we have now instead of an education system: a market. Caveat emptor.

It has to end. Neoliberalism was always based on a fundamental failure of self-knowledge. Now surely it has run its course. For decades, belief in The Market as divine presence - guaranteeing fairness and quality and providing a universal template for everything from museums to democracy to prisons - has been sewn like a nasty neoliberal pellet under our social skin.

Gradually, as it released its low-dose toxicity into our bloodstream, we've deprived and debilitated our health system, our vocational education, our universities, our ports, our public service, our postal system, our electricity provision, our public assets, our parks and institutions, our public housing, our super, our correctional system, our building regulation and our motorways.

As the rich get richer and the fragile vanish from the conversation, the world starts to feel like that scene in The Lion King where Scar takes control and the Pride Lands become the deathlands, tided in misery.

Now, at last, this is starting to reverse. The jasmine is flowering and a sweetness tinges the air. People are shaking off the "greed is good" corset. More and more young people, recognising that altruism is not a chore but a pleasure, are self-styled "social entrepreneurs". I feel it. Simba is gathering courage. Inside 10 years we'll be reverting to some kind of neo-Galbraithianism. Just hope there's something left when it happens.

This is not lefty claptrap. An International Monetary Fund paper argued in June that neoliberalism "increases inequality". Australian Competition and Consumer Commission boss Rod Sims said in July that privatisation has increased prices to consumers.

Yes, their moral tone was a surprise. We don't associate economists with morality. Neoliberalism in particular has conditioned us to expect all public utterance to hover between the emotionally absent and downright morally bankrupt. Somehow we've become OK with this.

But neither the IMF nor the ACCC were making moral points. Both were saying "and so it cannot work". Economically. Not possible.

Too much inequality, says the IMF, renders growth unsustainable. Neoliberalism's spiralling prices, says the ACCC, diminish productivity. Even in its own, strictly utilitarian terms, neoliberalism has failed us.

"I am now at the point of almost opposing privatisation," concluded Sims, as though he'd just woken from a dream and was kinda surprised to hear himself saying it.

Neoliberalism, as defined in 1938 by Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, (with whom Margaret Thatcher corresponded personally for years and to whom she credited "our ultimate victory"), springs from two principles. Market freedom and small government. These bring Darwinian competition in all things, and government conceived not as provider of essential services but merely as regulator of those who do.

Yet it has failed, for many reasons, all blindingly obvious. One, because neoliberalism, as modified by Milton Friedman (and adopted by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) did a major u-turn, from opposing monopoly to approving of it as proof of "merit". Hence, for example, Rupert Murdoch. So the market's role as magical guardian of diversity and choice vanished, just like that.

Too much inequality, says the IMF, renders growth unsustainable. Neoliberalism's spiralling prices, says the ACCC, diminish productivity. Even in its own, strictly utilitarian terms, neoliberalism has failed us.

Second. Universal competition - between universities or schools or cities - needs universal definition, quantification, regulation and, especially, enforcement. This produces a massive bureaucracy, directly contradicting "small government".

Third, competition as a guarantor of excellence (and therefore consumer satisfaction) works if - but only if - the consumer can assess and compare products. This is possible in, say, restaurants but not in master of philosophy degrees or breast surgeries. Or forklift courses. In most things that matter, product quality is not discernible until it's way too late to change, and often not even then.

Fourth, governments are not corporations, and the effort to behave that way renders them permanently third rate. Government and commerce are fundamentally different and opposed, since one seeks to benefit the people and the other seeks to exploit them.

Fifth is this: economics isn't really about economics. We're not really driven by yields and profits and internal rates of return. Economics is really about desire.

Suddenly you're interested, right? Desire means chocolate, fast cars, sunshine, sex - not necessarily in that order. Desire makes us human. It makes us think, yearn, scheme, invent and create. It makes us motile. But it's not really about dollars. We want money, of course, because money - after food and shelter - brings status and power and beauty and freedom and perhaps even love.

Those things we want. So to sacrifice them for money is deeply counter-productive. Neoliberalism has failed because its ruthless pursuit of money as the sole human good generates an equally ruthless race to the cruel and sludgy bottom. Trump and Brexit are simply Reagan and Thatcher's pigeons, home to roost.

This is not a plea for the return of Labor. Jimmy Carter's US government and Jim Callaghan's in Britain were first to embrace neoliberal monetarism. In New Zealand and Australia it was the "right-wing Labor" governments of David Lange and Paul Keating that instituted neoliberal social policies, destroying especially free university education, which cannot be forgiven.

J.K. Galbraith famously defined conservatism as "the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness". But even selfishness, properly defined, requires a functional ecosystem. You can't run the Pride Lands for long feeding only the hyenas. In the end, the ostriches and warthogs must also be happy.

Weirdly, neoliberalism and communism both failed for a reluctance to understand humans. Profit is not our only motive. Putting it at the wheel of prisons or schools or breast surgery then relying on "competition" and regulation to ensure quality was always doomed to substitute box-ticking for substance. Sooner or later, you need people who can actually drive forklifts.
Twitter @emfarrelly

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In Brexit and Trump, neoliberalism has reached its natural conclusion. What now?

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I knew an unemployed artist who found work with a registered training organisation. Not teaching art. Teaching forklift drivers. "You ever drive a forklift?" I asked in surprise. He said no, unnecessary. He'd done a short course (not in forklift driving). He'd ticked the VET boxes for the TAE certificate from the RTO.

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Neoliberalism has had its day. So what happens next? | Martin Jacques | Opinion | The Guardian

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Neoliberalism has had its day. So what happens next? | Martin Jacques | Opinion | The Guardian

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The western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate repercussions were surprisingly modest. The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed. The banks were bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their crimes; and the price of their behaviour was duly paid by the taxpayer. Subsequent economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western economy has stagnated and is now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight.

After almost nine years, we are finally beginning to reap the political whirlwind of the financial crisis. But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster for seven decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the right, centre and left had all bought into its philosophy, New Labour a classic in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic. But that hegemony cannot and will not survive the test of the real world.

The first inkling of the wider political consequences was evident in the turn in public opinion against the banks, bankers and business leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong: they were feted as the role models of our age, the default troubleshooters of choice in education, health and seemingly everything else. Now, though, their star was in steep descent, along with that of the political class. The effect of the financial crisis was to undermine faith and trust in the competence of the governing elites. It marked the beginnings of a wider political crisis.

But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion.

It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.

But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in inequality. Until very recently, this had been virtually ignored. With extraordinary speed, however, it has emerged as one of, if not the most important political issue on both sides of the Atlantic, most dramatically in the US. It is, bar none, the issue that is driving the political discontent that is now engulfing the west. Given the statistical evidence, it is puzzling, shocking even, that it has been disregarded for so long; the explanation can only lie in the sheer extent of the hegemony of neoliberalism and its values.

But now reality has upset the doctrinal apple cart. In the period 1948-1972, every section of the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top 10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has stagnated for over 30 years.

A not so dissimilar picture is true of the UK. And the problem has grown more serious since the financial crisis. On average, between 65-70% of households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real incomes between 2005 and 2014.

Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot

The reasons are not difficult to explain. The hyper-globalisation era has been systematically stacked in favour of capital against labour: international trading agreements, drawn up in great secrecy, with business on the inside and the unions and citizens excluded, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being but the latest examples; the politico-legal attack on the unions; the encouragement of large-scale immigration in both the US and Europe that helped to undermine the bargaining power of the domestic workforce; and the failure to retrain displaced workers in any meaningful way.

As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable.

Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot, as graphically illustrated by the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK. This popular revolt is often described, in a somewhat denigratory and dismissive fashion, as populism. Or, as Francis Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent essay in Foreign Affairs: "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both.

Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental cornerstone of UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in fact about much more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left behind, whose living standards have stagnated or worse since the 1980s, who feel dislocated by large-scale immigration over which they have no control and who face an increasingly insecure and casualised labour market. Their revolt has paralysed the governing elite, already claimed one prime minister, and left the latest one fumbling around in the dark looking for divine inspiration.

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Brexit was the marker of a working-class revolt. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Alamy

The wave of populism marks the return of class as a central agency in politics, both in the UK and the US. This is particularly remarkable in the US. For many decades, the idea of the "working class" was marginal to American political discourse. Most Americans described themselves as middle class, a reflection of the aspirational pulse at the heart of American society. According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population.

Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt. Hitherto, on both sides of the Atlantic, the agency of class has been in retreat in the face of the emergence of a new range of identities and issues from gender and race to sexual orientation and the environment. The return of class, because of its sheer reach, has the potential, like no other issue, to redefine the political landscape.

The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, is a function of politics

The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labour movement. They are not synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.

Indeed, Ukip has been as important - in the form of immigration and Europe - in shaping its current attitudes as the Labour party. In the United States, both Trump and Sanders have given expression to the working-class revolt, the latter almost as much as the former. The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, as the left liked to think, is a function of politics.

The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of economic growth has never been particularly strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger than it was on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done better but even its growth has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation.

Worse, because the recovery has been so weak and fragile, there is a widespread belief that another financial crisis may well beckon. In other words, the neoliberal era has delivered the west back into the kind of crisis-ridden world that we last experienced in the 1930s. With this background, it is hardly surprising that a majority in the west now believe their children will be worse off than they were. Second, those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate - they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s.

A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western financial crisis, the centre of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly. This is most obvious in the United States, with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been a massive seller. His work and that of Tony Atkinson and Angus Deaton have pushed the question of the inequality to the top of the political agenda. In the UK, Ha-Joon Chang, for long isolated within the economics profession, has gained a following far greater than those who think economics is a branch of mathematics.

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'Virtually no one foresaw the triumph of Jeremy Corbyn', pictured at rally in north London last week. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile, some of those who were previously strong advocates of a neoliberal approach, such as Larry Summers and the Financial Times's Martin Wolf, have become extremely critical. The wind is in the sails of the critics of neoliberalism; the neoliberals and monetarists are in retreat. In the UK, the media and political worlds are well behind the curve. Few recognise that we are at the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate, whether on the BBC's Today programme, in the rightwing press or the parliamentary Labour party.

Following Ed Miliband's resignation as Labour leader, virtually no one foresaw the triumph of Jeremy Corbyn in the subsequent leadership election. The assumption had been more of the same, a Blairite or a halfway house like Miliband, certainly not anyone like Corbyn. But the zeitgeist had changed. The membership, especially the young who had joined the party on an unprecedented scale, wanted a complete break with New Labour. One of the reasons why the left has failed to emerge as the leader of the new mood of working-class disillusionment is that most social democratic parties became, in varying degrees, disciples of neoliberalism and uber-globalisation. The most extreme forms of this phenomenon were New Labour and the Democrats, who in the late 90s and 00s became its advance guard, personified by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, triangulation and the third way.

But as David Marquand observed in a review for the New Statesman, what is the point of a social democratic party if it doesn't represent the less fortunate, the underprivileged and the losers? New Labour deserted those who needed them, who historically they were supposed to represent. Is it surprising that large sections have now deserted the party who deserted them? Blair, in his reincarnation as a money-obsessed consultant to a shady bunch of presidents and dictators, is a fitting testament to the demise of New Labour.

The rival contenders - Burnham, Cooper and Kendall - represented continuity. They were swept away by Corbyn, who won nearly 60% of the votes. New Labour was over, as dead as Monty Python's parrot. Few grasped the meaning of what had happened. A Guardian leader welcomed the surge in membership and then, lo and behold, urged support for Yvette Cooper, the very antithesis of the reason for the enthusiasm. The PLP refused to accept the result and ever since has tried with might and main to remove Corbyn.

Just as the Labour party took far too long to come to terms with the rise of Thatcherism and the birth of a new era at the end of the 70s, now it could not grasp that the Thatcherite paradigm, which they eventually came to embrace in the form of New Labour, had finally run its course. Labour, like everyone else, is obliged to think anew. The membership in their antipathy to New Labour turned to someone who had never accepted the latter, who was the polar opposite in almost every respect of Blair, and embodying an authenticity and decency which Blair patently did not.

Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better

Corbyn is not a product of the new times, he is a throwback to the late 70s and early 80s. That is both his strength and also his weakness. He is uncontaminated by the New Labour legacy because he has never accepted it. But nor, it would seem, does he understand the nature of the new era. The danger is that he is possessed of feet of clay in what is a highly fluid and unpredictable political environment, devoid of any certainties of almost any kind, in which Labour finds itself dangerously divided and weakened.

Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better. David Cameron was guilty of a huge and irresponsible miscalculation over Brexit. He was forced to resign in the most ignominious of circumstances. The party is hopelessly divided. It has no idea in which direction to move after Brexit. The Brexiters painted an optimistic picture of turning away from the declining European market and embracing the expanding markets of the world, albeit barely mentioning by name which countries it had in mind. It looks as if the new prime minister may have an anachronistic hostility towards China and a willingness to undo the good work of George Osborne. If the government turns its back on China, by far the fastest growing market in the world, where are they going to turn?

Brexit has left the country fragmented and deeply divided, with the very real prospect that Scotland might choose independence. Meanwhile, the Conservatives seem to have little understanding that the neoliberal era is in its death throes.

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'Put America first': Donald Trump in Cleveland last month. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Dramatic as events have been in the UK, they cannot compare with those in the United States. Almost from nowhere, Donald Trump rose to capture the Republican nomination and confound virtually all the pundits and not least his own party. His message was straightforwardly anti-globalisation. He believes that the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favour of the big corporations that have been encouraged to invest around the world and thereby deprive American workers of their jobs. Further, he argues that large-scale immigration has weakened the bargaining power of American workers and served to lower their wages.

He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in the US. He believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has had the effect of exporting American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP and the TTIP. And he also accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports.

To globalisation Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His appeal, above all, is to the white working class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's) arrival on the political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the 1980s. Given that their wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary how their interests have been neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have voted Republican, but the Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich and Wall Street, whose interests, as hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the white working class. With the arrival of Trump they finally found a representative: they won Trump the Republican nomination.

Trump believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources

The economic nationalist argument has also been vigorously pursued by Bernie Sanders, who ran Hillary Clinton extremely close for the Democratic nomination and would probably have won but for more than 700 so-called super-delegates, who were effectively chosen by the Democratic machine and overwhelmingly supported Clinton. As in the case of the Republicans, the Democrats have long supported a neoliberal, pro-globalisation strategy, notwithstanding the concerns of its trade union base. Both the Republicans and the Democrats now find themselves deeply polarised between the pro- and anti-globalisers, an entirely new development not witnessed since the shift towards neoliberalism under Reagan almost 40 years ago.

Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal - "Make America great again" - is his position on foreign policy. He believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is unfair, with America bearing most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little. He points to Japan and South Korea, and Nato's European members as prime examples.He seeks to rebalance these relationships and, failing that, to exit from them.

As a country in decline, he argues that America can no longer afford to carry this kind of financial burden. Rather than putting the world to rights, he believes the money should be invested at home, pointing to the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure. Trump's position represents a major critique of America as the world's hegemon. His arguments mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology that has reigned since the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period. These arguments must be taken seriously. They should not be lightly dismissed just because of their authorship. But Trump is no man of the left. He is a populist of the right. He has launched a racist and xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump's appeal is to a white working class that feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic immigration, and often resentful towards African-Americans who for long too many have viewed as their inferior.

A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse, scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a deeply polarised and divided society. His threat to impose 45% tariffs on China, if implemented, would certainly provoke retaliation by the Chinese and herald the beginnings of a new era of protectionism.

Trump may well lose the presidential election just as Sanders failed in his bid for the Democrat nomination. But this does not mean that the forces opposed to hyper-globalisation - unrestricted immigration, TPP and TTIP, the free movement of capital and much else - will have lost the argument and are set to decline. In little more than 12 months, Trump and Sanders have transformed the nature and terms of the argument. Far from being on the wane, the arguments of the critics of hyper-globalisation are steadily gaining ground. Roughly two-thirds of Americans agree that "we should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems". And, above all else, what will continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalisers is inequality.
Topics

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Neoliberalism has had its day. So what happens next? | Martin Jacques

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The western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate repercussions were surprisingly modest. The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed.

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The Myth of Neoliberalism | Public Investigations

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The Myth of Neoliberalism | Public Investigations

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Neoliberalism is a myth. It's a pervasive myth on one side of politics - the left. But it is nevertheless a myth. Let's start with one simple and obvious fact - no-one claims to be a neoliberal. [NB since this was written, and partly provoked by the controversy it threw up, the Adam Smith Insitute...

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Did we baby boomers bring about a revolution in the 60s or just usher in neoliberalism? | Polly Toynbee | Opinion | The Guardian

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Did we baby boomers bring about a revolution in the 60s or just usher in neoliberalism? | Polly Toynbee | Opinion | The Guardian

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I was right there in 1966. Was it bliss, very heaven to be young? To be honest, I'm not sure. Yes and no. The young are too full of self-conscious anxiety to be good at bliss. (You get better at it later).

The Victoria and Albert Museum's exhibition You Say You Want a Revolution?, celebrating 1966-1970, opens on Saturday, a glorious spectacular of gigantic themes and minute detail from an extraordinary time. Or was it? Is this just cultural imperialism by us baby boomers imposing our "best ever" youth by sheer weight of numbers and purchasing power? My generation has earwormed our music into the heads of our children and grandchildren, and we didn't die before we got old.

I came away overwhelmed, lump in the throat, with a flashback and memory shock, and the soundtrack of John Peel's record collection doing my head in (as I might or might not have said, I can't remember). But also a kind of horror, maybe just at the passing of so many years, at the fossilising of ephemera, things once quick, bright and throwaway now dog-eared and motheaten in glass cases. Yes, I had a paper dress just like that! Oh and Biba and Granny Takes a Trip dresses too.

That's the trouble with history. Those of us who were there are unreliable witnesses, let alone the younger curators who sweep up history's remains to shape them into sense. But by the time you exit through the gift shop, you will be beaten into submission: no, there is no doubt these few years 1966-70, were mindblowingly extraordinary, bookended by the Beatles. You know the images (like the music) too well - the 400,000 with Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, John and Yoko giving peace a chance in bed, Oz and the schoolkids issue.

Yes, I wrote a bit for Oz, and sadly Richard Neville died this week. Sixty-six was an electric year for me, working for Amnesty in Rhodesia until I was deported, arriving at Oxford, and publishing a novel that certainly would never have been printed had publishers been less anxious to grab on to anything - anyone - young, regardless.

I dropped out of Oxford the next year and lived in a filthy one-room, no-bathroom bedsit above the Spaghetti House in Greek Street. Later I worked in Tate & Lyle's sugar-packing factory in Wandsworth, believing in the honesty of manual work. But by 1968 I had landed a temporary job at the Observer and covered the Grosvenor Square Vietnam demo: one foot reporter, one foot demonstrator. Fleet Street and central London were boarded up as the establishment panicked about a reprise of the Paris riots.

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'This brilliantly curated exhibition pulls together inter-related themes, making sense of psychedelia, politics, protest and pot-heads.' Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Drugs? A bit, not much. I had a junior doctor friend in Poplar hospital who brought green medicine bottles of tincture of cannabis, still legal in the pharmacopoeia at the time. I went to interview the now ultra-respectable Release, campaigning against long prison terms for drug possession, where someone insisted I puffed their hookah, and I reeled back to the Observer office with nothing but tiny squiggles in my notebook.

I was at the 1969 Dylan Isle of Wight festival, where the press tent had one enormous bed where everyone slept: I was squashed up against Christopher Logue.

'It's a clever exhibition about ideas as much as style.' Polly Toynbee in the 1960s.

None of that makes me a useful witness; it's just anecdotes. This brilliantly curated exhibition pulls together inter-related themes, making sense of psychedelia, politics, protest and potheads. The soft-headed hippy daftness of the summer of love always grated with those of us who were more political, and yet it infused the air, bringing wit to protest. Though goodness knows, the myriad warring splinter groupuscules of Marxists and Trots assembled for the 68 demo were oblivious of any hippy stuff.

Serious things were happening: those Woodstock kids with daisy-painted faces had the Vietnam draft hanging over them. Women's lib, gay lib and black power movements burst out, with a new environmentalism of Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome and the Whole Earth Catalog. It's all there in glass cases, videos and music.

Step back at the end of this epic show and ask what lasting effect it had? Auras of the moment grip the imagination and get set in the aspic of history - but what changed?

The co-curator Geoffrey Marsh, taking me round, points out how most protest failed. In 1970 Richard Nixon was elected in the US, and Edward Heath in Britain. Too many rock greats of the Janis Jopling-Jimi Hendrix stamp died young, while others went into tax exile (the Rolling Stones and David Bowie). The yippies became Wall Street bankers. And yet nothing was ever the same again.

Unglamorous, unhip Harold Wilson with pipe, Gannex and compromises, emerges as the unlikely 60s hero. Under his aegis, thanks to Roy Jenkins, came abolition of capital punishment, divorce reform, abortion reform, an end to theatre censorship, the Race Relations Act, the gay rights Sexual Offences Act and the Equal Pay Act.

The Open University was a pure 60s inspiration, education for all springing from the comprehensive ideal. I would add the extraordinary flourishing of high-minded collective endeavour resulting in the founding of Shelter, Crisis, Centrepoint, the Child Poverty Action Group, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Brook Advisory, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the Playgroups Association, toy libraries and much more.

But the curators end with a reminder of another child of the flower children: out of all this revolution against "the system" came a "me" individualism that grew into neoliberalism. Early hippy ideals of silicon valley soon morphed into each-for-yourself, pay no taxes, screw all governments. Anti-establishment "freedom" has many dark sides and the Beatles had it right: "We all want to change the world / But when you talk about destruction / Don't you know that you can count me out".

It's a clever exhibition about ideas as much as style, style as reflection of thought - but walking through this history of an explosive era is an unsettling time warp for those of us who were there.

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Did we baby boomers bring about a revolution in the 60s or just usher in neoliberalism? | Polly Toynbee

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I was right there in 1966. Was it bliss, very heaven to be young? To be honest, I'm not sure. Yes and no. The young are too full of self-conscious anxiety to be good at bliss. (You get better at it later).

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Only a cash-strapped public sector still finds ‘smart’ technology sexy | Evgeny Morozov | Opinion | The Guardian

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Only a cash-strapped public sector still finds ‘smart’ technology sexy | Evgeny Morozov | Opinion | The Guardian

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The irony must be lost on Silicon Valley: Uber, a company run by an unabashed admirer of libertarian novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, is increasingly touted as the saviour of American public transport systems, establishing partnerships with many municipalities to offer a parallel, privately run alternative.

Some local governments already offer impressive discounts to their citizens who use Uber; why, after all, spend all this taxpayer money on infrastructure upgrades if one can simply hand it over to Silicon Valley firms? Others consider outsourcing particular functions - like the transportation of the disabled mandated by law - with Uber being the most obvious candidate to benefit.

Uber's foray into public services is part of a broader trend of technology firms pitching their services to cash-strapped municipalities and governments. They do so in the hope of convincing local authorities that the company's superior ability to gather, analyse and act on data would yield tremendous savings for the public sector, while stimulating innovation and entrepreneurship.

It all began with an explosion of "smart" programs - with "smart" nothing but a euphemism for "privatised". From smart cities to smart elderly care, the promise has been to retrofit crumbling public infrastructure with the shiny and privately operated gadgetry that can get the job done on the cheap.

"Smart" might no longer be a sexy adjective but its spirit lives on. Online home rental company Airbnb is building community centres in Japan, probably betting on the fact that the rapidly ageing Japanese population would inevitably push the government to search for an "Uber of smart ageing". With all the data they have accumulated about our travel and living habits, Airbnb could, in fact, be in a perfect position to build social housing that might actually be fit to live in.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is also making overtures to local administrations. Flow, its new software developed by Sidewalk Labs, aims to deploy troves of Alphabet data in order to mitigate the effects of intractable problems such as parking. And what city wouldn't pay Alphabet a small fee, for the benefit of running super-efficient real-time auctions for each parking spot, thus helping to fill public coffers?

Perhaps Alphabet will solve the parking problem by simply discouraging people from driving altogether: Alphabet is also launching its own car-sharing service - a competitor to Uber and rival taxi app Lyft - built around Waze, its service for analysing traffic data. The idea is for Alphabet to match up passengers with drivers who are headed in the same direction, thanks to all the data that it has accumulated about us and our movements.

Then there's Google Fiber, Alphabet's other project, that hopes to provide fast and accessible internet connectivity to communities neglected by traditional telecom operators. As if this weren't generous enough, Alphabet has also committed to wire up various public housing projects in the US, essentially subsidising internet access for low-income citizens - a tactic the company, along with Facebook, also pursues in the developing world.

This entanglement between Silicon Valley and the public sector explains why tech executives prefer Democrats to Republicans. Having realised that there's a lot of money to be made, technology firms have no desire to shrink the public sector: why deprive themselves of lucrative government contracts? A bloated government, which turns the administration of its programmes over to the private sector, would do just fine.

The blame, of course, does not reside solely with Silicon Valley. The public sector itself can no longer think outside the neoliberal toolkit of corporations, markets and networks. But it also cannot and would not abandon itself. So it simply recruits the private sector to run its affairs. For governments, such deals promise speed and savings. For Silicon Valley, they promise guaranteed revenue - as well as guaranteed access to customers' data, which, in the long run, might be more important than the revenue.

This model makes the provision of essential services - once the preserve of the welfare state and local governments - dependent on the whims of corporations and their business models. And such whims are aplenty: markets that once looked so lucrative often prove to be loss-making in the light of new developments that were not part of the initial modelling. At this point, most firms prefer to cut their losses and quietly exit the scene, leaving citizens deprived of an important service.

Such seems to be the fate of Obamacare - a quintessential product of remodelling welfare provision on the market model. Insurance providers, which were expected to compete with each other to offer customers the best deal, have realised that it's mostly old people knocking on their doors, while the young - who are generally healthier and do not need much healthcare - tend to shy away. This means that many insurance providers find their participation in Obamacare too costly. As a result, they quit the insurance exchanges, leaving some communities with just one or no insurance providers to choose from.

Silicon Valley does not have its own high-profile equivalent of Obamacare yet. There is, however, no reason to believe that tech firms will prove more effective at predicting their own failures than the insurance industry. Alphabet might have hoped to save the world but Google Fiber is in dire straits: the company now wants to halve the number of its employees, freezing plans for further extension in several areas. Apparently, building infrastructure is more difficult than selling online ads.

A similar fate has overtaken Alphabet's other "moonshot" ventures: Project Ara - an effort to make a modular smartphone out of interchangeable components - has just been suspended, joining the likes of Google Glass. Nest, the subsidiary that produces "smart' thermostats, is also doing badly, with its former CEO Tony Fadell moving on to other projects and its staff reassigned to work on the "smart home" instead.

Nest, too, was once pitched as a welfare-enhancing device: some insurance companies, having struck deals with Alphabet, offered Nest smoke detectors to their customers free of charge, in exchange for their data.

Uber's tempting offers are also far less straightforward than they appear. Its fares are, indeed, extremely low - which makes it very attractive to consumers and local governments alike. But such low rates mask layers of subsidies and tenuous assumptions that might or might not pan out. Uber's low rates are premised on two developments: its ability to dispense with its drivers altogether - thus significantly reducing its labour costs - and the continuation of its impressive and virtually unopposed growth in every important market.

A tiny change in those underlying assumptions and the promised savings might evaporate overnight. Uber's users in China learned this the hard way when, just days after the company made a deal with its Chinese competitor Didi Chuxing, its rates reportedly doubled, at least for some Chinese users. Factor in the likely regulatory backlash, thousands of angry drivers who stand to lose their jobs, along with the aggressive anti-Uber lobbying pursued by its competitors: there's little that is not unstable or fragile in Uber's welfare model.

What happens once the tech firms do become the only game in town? Will they be like those drug companies that, having entered into profitable and seemingly eternal deals with the government, can charge the public sector exorbitant prices, simply because there's not much competition around? In the end, welfare by corporations is nothing but welfare for corporations.

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Only a cash-strapped public sector still finds 'smart' technology sexy | Evgeny Morozov

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The irony must be lost on Silicon Valley: Uber, a company run by an unabashed admirer of libertarian novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, is increasingly touted as the saviour of American public transport systems, establishing partnerships with many municipalities to offer a parallel, privately run alternative.

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Face the facts: competition and profit don't work in health, education or prisons | John Quiggin | Opinion | The Guardian

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Face the facts: competition and profit don't work in health, education or prisons | John Quiggin | Opinion | The Guardian

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Following a long series of unsuccessful attempts at developing a workable lightbulb, Thomas Edison is supposed to have said, "I've not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." This quote comes irresistibly to mind when thinking about Tony Blair's famous commitment to "what works", as opposed to ideology, in public policy.

In retrospect, it seems that Blair, and like-minded reformers throughout the English-speaking world, have delivered an Edison in reverse. Edison experimented with many things that didn't work, but ended up with a light bulb. Market-oriented reforms, particularly in the provision of human services like health, education and public safety, have begun with a working system and replaced it with a string of failed experiments.

Here are a few examples from recent news stories around the English-speaking world:

The emergency closure of 17 Scottish schools due to safety concerns. These schools were built under the Private Finance Initiative, begun under Thatcher but greatly expanded by Blair and Gordon Brown.

Crippling costs incurred by hospitals throughout the UK, again as a result of PFI, threatening insolvency for many hospital trusts.

Private prisons operator Serco forced to repay bonuses in New Zealand.

For-profit educator ITT closed down without notice, right at the beginning of a new semester, after being cut off from Pell grant funding due to allegations of misleading students. This is one of many such collapses.

Following a damning report, the US Department of Justice announced it will no longer use private prisons.

Charter schools (some openly for-profit, many others run as businesses) have been failing at a starting rate.

The disastrous shift to for-profit vocational education in training, most notably in Victoria and more recently in NSW, where the number of students has halved in three years. The cost to the budget from unrepayable loans for bogus courses has been estimated at $1.2bn for 2015 alone.

These examples could be multiplied endlessly, and not as the result of a selective choice of reports. A Google search on terms like "PFI hospital" or "private vocational training" will produce dozens more reports, nearly all describing financial and human disasters.

Yet despite this string of disasters, the push for market-oriented reform goes on. In the US, the Obama administration continues to promote the failed idea of charter schools, and Obama allies like Rahm Emanuel have carried on the war against teacher unions. The conservatives in Britain have backed away from the worst failures of the PFI. However, they are still enamoured of other Blair ideas like converting local authority schools into "academies" despite the absence of any evidence of improved performance.

Even by comparison with these examples, the Baird government in NSW stands out. It is pushing ahead with the privatisation agenda in Tafe, despite the obviously disastrous nature of the results. It has outsourced teaching in prisons to companies whose staff lack teaching degrees.

Not content with that, the Baird government is outsourcing the provision of public housing. The likely winner, despite its failures here and abroad, is Serco, a firm prominent as both a beneficiary of, and advocate for, outsourcing of human services.

The Australian policy elite seem immune to evidence on the failures of markets in human services. The recent Harper review of competition policy in Australia suggested that, "Consumer choice should be placed at the heart of government service delivery, through policies to encourage diverse and competitive markets populated with innovative and responsive providers."

But it is precisely the firms lauded as "innovative" and "responsive", from the University of Phoenix to the shonky builders of PFI schools and hospitals, that have done most to hurt government service programs.

Sooner or later the advocates of reform will have to answer the Edison-Blair question: "What works?" And what works is traditional public provision. Through all of these failed experiments, the public sector, much-maligned and chronically underfunded, has carried on with the hard work of educating young people, treating the sick and providing the vast range of services needed in a modern society, on a the basis of an ethic of service to the entire community, and not merely those who can pay for premium service.

The only other model with comparable success is not-for-profit provision by organisations with a charitable or service mission. Church-run schools and hospitals, and activist-run services like women's shelters and services for the unemployed and homeless, have complemented the public sector, meeting needs that have been unrecognised or underserved.

The issue is not, in the end, one of public versus private. Rather it is the fact that market competition and the profit motive inevitably associated with it is antithetical to the professional and service orientation that is central to human services of all kinds.

No matter how cleverly market reformers design incentive schemes, competition for profits will always find a way to subvert them. It is time we as a society recognised this, and returned to what actually works.

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Face the facts: competition and profit don't work in health, education or prisons | John Quiggin

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Following a long series of unsuccessful attempts at developing a workable lightbulb, Thomas Edison is supposed to have said, "I've not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." This quote comes irresistibly to mind when thinking about Tony Blair's famous commitment to "what works", as opposed to ideology, in public policy.

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Book Review: Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts by Matthew Eagleton-Pierce | LSE Review of Books

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Book Review: Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts by Matthew Eagleton-Pierce | LSE Review of Books

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While 'neoliberalism' has become a commonplace term to describe the structures of the contemporary world, how easy is it to define such a large and evolving concept? In Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts Find this book: . Matthew Eagleton-Pierce. Routledge. 2016. Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts, Matthew Eagleton-Pierce proposes that it can best be understood through an exploration of key related words, offering 44 short essays examining such terms as 'class', 'finance' and 'market'. Barton Edgerton recommends thispleasurable, engaging and interesting read as a welcome addition to any reference book shelf as Eagleton-Pierce shows the importance of language to any critical engagement with neoliberalism.
Today it is difficult to imagine that there is any US columnist whose work would lead to a conference of leading intellectuals with the purpose of creating a new philosophical paradigm. In 1937, Walter Lippmann wrote a now obscure book entitled The Good Society. By trade, Lippman was a journalist who helped found The New Republic, a liberal and progressive US magazine, and authored a popular newspaper column. At the time, The Good Society was not obscure at all. Its main thesis was that liberalism had lost its way and that a return to a 'proper liberalism' was necessary to save society from totalitarian impulses. Such a thesis was provocative enough that French philosopher Louis Rougier convened the Colloque Walter Lippmann. Here, leading intellectuals would come together to create a new liberalism to overcome the disastrous laissez-faireism blamed for the Great Depression, while also eschewing the consequences of collectivism. It was in this setting, with Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises in attendance, that Alexander Rustow coined the term 'neoliberalism'.

In the time since, 'neoliberalism' has grown from being a gleam in the eye of a handful of intellectuals to, arguably, the ruling ideology of the globalised world. Along the way, its meaning and importance has weaved a winding path. It now rests as a concept seemingly too large to define. In Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts, Matthew Eagleton-Pierce deals with this difficulty by not defining it at all. Rather, through 44 short essays, he attempts to uncover an understanding of 'neoliberalism' through related terms. Each of these entries are focused on a single concept - ranging from 'class', 'finance', 'global', 'market' to 'state', among others - and are interesting in their own right. Collectively, they weave together a rich tapestry, which, from a distance, allows an image of 'neoliberalism' to emerge. In this, neoliberalism is a pervasive ideology, often sitting in the shadows, that nonetheless creates the structures that seem to define the content of our daily economic interactions.
Note: This review gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics.
At the outset, Eagleton-Pierce makes the three aims of the book clear. First, he hopes to give the reader a better understanding of the concepts in the 44 entries. Second, individually and collectively, the entries are intended as a work of synthesis. The author does this by bringing to bear insights from a wide variety of academic fields and combining both empirical and normative concepts. Finally, Eagleton-Pierce intends for the reader to consider the relationship between power and language. Neoliberalism has its own terms and conceptual superstructure. By looking at them systemically, he argues, we can better understand, and critically engage with, neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is self-consciously modelled after Raymond Williams's Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. As such, the book reads like a well-crafted appendix or annotations for a larger text. Most entries start with an etymology. Many of these are surprising and rather interesting. For example, 'emerging market' has its roots not in an academic discipline, but in marketing. The phrase was coined by a former World Bank official who had difficulty selling a 'Third World Equity Fund' to investors. An 'Emerging Markets Growth Fund' was evidently more positive and invigorating. Others, like 'risk', are less straightforward. Originating in the Latin ' rescum', meaning 'that which cuts', the concept travelled to English through the French ' risque' after a stop in Italian as ' risco', denoting danger. Now risks are something to be managed, not because they are dangers to be avoided, but rather because they offer potential opportunities to be taken advantage of. While ' rescum' was originally a nautical term, it is now used extensively in financial services, giving this shift in meaning a long arc. However, other concepts change at a much faster pace, and many of the entries in Neoliberalism point this out.

The etymologies are insightful in and of themselves, but they serve a different, and perhaps primary, purpose. Most of the origin stories show how the meanings of these key terms have changed over time. 'Private', for example, has its roots in 'depravation', but took on its current meaning as conceptions of individualism began to take hold. With 'property' appended, the phrase began to acquire 'totemic status'. This helps to establish how the words we use to denote important neoliberal concepts are malleable, contingent and could be otherwise. 'Private' leads to 'privatization', and this move allows Eagleton-Pierce to approach one of the more contentious aspects of neoliberal policymaking: the privatisation of state enterprises. However, due to the constraints of the short entry format, he is only able to identify common points of disagreement - such as empirical disputes about the fiscal and administrative benefits of privatisation, claims that it enhances competition and its impact on labour relations. Many other entries are similar. In 'governance', for example, the reader is taken from political power to a crisis in the legitimacy of corporate enterprise and the development of 'corporate governance' through to the softer implications of 'global governance' compared to 'global government'.

For the most part, the entries are fun and engaging. The reader is encouraged to thumb from one to another, cross-referencing the serendipitous connections that arise. This experience of discovery through browsing can seem rare in the digital world, and it is refreshing. The breadth of work that goes into the project ensures that the reader has exposure to a wide variety of influences. The result is a book that not only introduces the reader to key concepts in neoliberalism but shows how they could be otherwise, creating a critical engagement with both the individual entries and the main subject.

Although the book is intended for an audience that ranges from interested undergraduates to research professionals, it is difficult to imagine that a novice would be able to grasp the complexity of views that underlie each entry. Perhaps much of this difficulty can be attributed to the format of 44 separate entries. While focusing the reader on each concept, it is difficult for the author to explain the larger thematic debates present across chapters. While these may be obvious to the professional academic, it could be challenging for the uninitiated. It makes one wonder if a traditional book format is a right medium for such a project. Perhaps there is a reason that dictionaries, thesauruses and the like have thrived in digital formats where links between and among concepts can be accessed at the touch of a button.

That said, Neoliberalism is a pleasure in its own right. Each of the entries is well connected to the concept of neoliberalism and there are no obvious omissions. It will make a welcome addition to a reference book shelf and can be enjoyed end to end or through browsing from entry to entry, letting serendipity arise.

Barton Edgerton finished at the LSE in 2009 with a PhD in government. In an academic capacity, he has served as a visiting fellow in the government department at Harvard and as an adjunct in the political science department at Tufts. His research interests focus on the intersection of political theory, international relations and jurisprudence. For the past several years, he has worked in management consulting as an associate director and research consultant working with heads of HR, audit and risk management to help large, global organisations manage their largest strategic risks.

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Book Review: Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts by Matthew Eagleton-Pierce

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While 'neoliberalism' has become a commonplace term to describe the structures of the contemporary world, how easy is it to define such a large and evolving concept? In Neoliberalism: The Key Concepts Find this book: . Matthew Eagleton-Pierce. Routledge. 2016.

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Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian

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Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian

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Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has - or had - a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin's theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages - such as education, inheritance and class - that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it's unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.

***

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the gradual development of Britain's welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises's book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism - the Mont Pelerin Society - it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.

With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as "a kind of neoliberal international": a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement's rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek's view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way - among American apostles such as Milton Friedman - to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.

Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In 1951, Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes 's economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarrassment, developing new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Friedman remarked, "when the time came that you had to change ... there was an alternative ready there to be picked up". With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter's administration in the US and Jim Callaghan's government in Britain.

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice should have been promoted with the slogan 'there is no alternative'

After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed - often without democratic consent - on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, "it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised."

***

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan "there is no alternative". But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet's Chile - one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied - "my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism". The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet's coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Friedman described as "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system" in New Orleans.

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating " investor-state dispute settlement": offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one

Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years of decline, rose rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation.

The privatisation or marketisation of public services such as energy, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons has enabled corporations to set up tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or to government, for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel.

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In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all phone services and soon became the world's richest man. Photograph: Henry Romero/Reuters

Those who own and run the UK's privatised or semi-privatised services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India, oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became the world's richest man.

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can't Afford the Rich, has had a similar impact. "Like rent," he argues, "interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort". As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest

Slogans, symbols and sensation ... Donald Trump. Photograph: Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters

Chris Hedges remarks that "fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the 'losers' who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment". When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.

Judt explained that when the thick mesh of interactions between people and the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared is more likely to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that arises from the delivery of public services, are reduced to "cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them".

***

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of anonymities.

The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry, has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the Tea Party movement. We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his thinktanks, noted that "in order to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be widely advertised".

The nouveau riche were once disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Today, the relationship has been reversed

The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they elucidate. "The market" sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What "the market wants" tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want. "Investment", as Sayer notes, means two quite different things. One is the funding of productive and socially useful activities, the other is the purchase of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest, dividends and capital gains. Using the same word for different activities "camouflages the sources of wealth", leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.

A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors style themselves entre preneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned income.

These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and placelessness of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know for whom they toil; the companies registered through a network of offshore secrecy regimes so complex that even the police cannot discover the beneficial owners; the tax arrangements that bamboozle governments; the financial products no one understands.

The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are influenced by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining - with some justice - that it is used today only pejoratively. But they offer us no substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they suggest that there is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or Friedman's classic work, Capitalism and Freedom.

***

For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal project, at least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.

Neoliberalism's triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 70s, there was an alternative ready. But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic thought for 80 years.

Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 70s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.

What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it's not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century.

* George Monbiot's How Did We Get into This Mess? is published this month by Verso. To order a copy for £12.99 (RRP £16.99) ) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

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Neoliberalism - the ideology at the root of all our problems

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Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it.

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Crisis after crisis is being caused by a failed ideology. But it cannot be stopped without a coherent alternative.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 16 th April 2016

It's as if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007-8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has - or had - a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin's theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions, that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counter-productive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages - such as education, inheritance and class - that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it's unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.

+++

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the gradual development of Britain's welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises's book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism - the Mont Pelerin Society - it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.

With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as "a kind of neoliberal International": a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement's rich backers funded a series of think tanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek's view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way, among American apostles such as Milton Friedman, to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.

Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In 1951, Milton Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The post-war consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes's economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarassment, developing new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Milton Friedman remarked, "when the time came that you had to change ... there was an alternative ready there to be picked up." With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter's administration in the United States and Jim Callaghan's government in Britain.

After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed - often without democratic consent - on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Daniel Stedman Jones notes, "it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised."

+++

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan "there is no alternative". But, as Friedrich Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet's Chile - one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied - "my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism." The freedom neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet's coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Milton Friedman described as "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system" in New Orleans.

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating " investor-state dispute settlement ": offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that, Ludwig von Mises proposed, would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years of decline, rose rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation.

The privatisation or marketisation of public services - such as energy, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons - has enabled corporations to set up tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or to government, for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel.

Those who own and run the UK's privatised or semi-privatised services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India, oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became the world's richest man.

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer points out in Why We Can't Afford the Rich, has had similar impacts. "Like rent," he argues, "interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort." As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Friedrich Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

Chris Hedges remarks that "fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the "losers" who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment." When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Donald Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.

Tony Judt pointed out that when the thick mesh of interactions between people and the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared is more likely to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that arises from the delivery of public services, are reduced to "cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them".

+++

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of anonymities.

The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry, has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the Tea Party movement. We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his think tanks, noted that "in order to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organization is controlled and directed should not be widely advertised."

The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they elucidate. "The market" sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What "the market wants" tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want. "Investment", as Andrew Sayer notes, means two quite different things. One is the funding of productive and socially useful activities, the other is the purchase of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest, dividends and capital gains. Using the same word for different activities "camouflages the sources of wealth", leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.

A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors style themselves entrepreneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned income.

These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and placelessness of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know for whom they toil; the companies registered through a network of offshore secrecy regimes so complex that even the police cannot discover the beneficial owners; the tax arrangements that bamboozle governments; the financial products no one understands.

The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are influenced by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining - with some justice - that it is used today only pejoratively. But they offer us no substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they suggest that there is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or Friedman's classic work, Capitalism and Freedom.

+++

For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal project, at least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.

Neoliberalism's triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 1970s, there was "an alternative ready there to be picked up." But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic thought for 80 years.

Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21 st-century is to ignore three obvious problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 1970s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.

What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it's not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21 st Century.

George Monbiot's new book, How Did We Get into This Mess?, Is published this month by Verso.

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Crisis after crisis is being caused by a failed ideology. But it cannot be stopped without a coherent alternative. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 16 th April 2016 It's as if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism.

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It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump | Naomi Klein | Opinion | The Guardian

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It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump | Naomi Klein | Opinion | The Guardian

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They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

But this leaves out the force most responsible for creating the nightmare in which we now find ourselves wide awake: neoliberalism. That worldview - fully embodied by Hillary Clinton and her machine - is no match for Trump-style extremism. The decision to run one against the other is what sealed our fate. If we learn nothing else, can we please learn from that mistake?

Here is what we need to understand: a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

At the same time, they have witnessed the rise of the Davos class, a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous. Success is a party to which they were not invited, and they know in their hearts that this rising wealth and power is somehow directly connected to their growing debts and powerlessness.

For the people who saw security and status as their birthright - and that means white men most of all - these losses are unbearable.

Donald Trump speaks directly to that pain. The Brexit campaign spoke to that pain. So do all of the rising far-right parties in Europe. They answer it with nostalgic nationalism and anger at remote economic bureaucracies - whether Washington, the North American free trade agreement the World Trade Organisation or the EU. And of course, they answer it by bashing immigrants and people of colour, vilifying Muslims, and degrading women. Elite neoliberalism has nothing to offer that pain, because neoliberalism unleashed the Davos class. People such as Hillary and Bill Clinton are the toast of the Davos party. In truth, they threw the party.

Trump's message was: "All is hell." Clinton answered: "All is well." But it's not well - far from it.

Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left. A good chunk of Trump's support could be peeled away if there were a genuine redistributive agenda on the table. An agenda to take on the billionaire class with more than rhetoric, and use the money for a green new deal. Such a plan could create a tidal wave of well-paying unionised jobs, bring badly needed resources and opportunities to communities of colour, and insist that polluters should pay for workers to be retrained and fully included in this future.

It could fashion policies that fight institutionalised racism, economic inequality and climate change at the same time. It could take on bad trade deals and police violence, and honour indigenous people as the original protectors of the land, water and air.

People have a right to be angry, and a powerful, intersectional left agenda can direct that anger where it belongs, while fighting for holistic solutions that will bring a frayed society together.

Such a coalition is possible. In Canada, we have begun to cobble it together under the banner of a people's agenda called The Leap Manifesto, endorsed by more than 220 organisations from Greenpeace Canada to Black Lives Matter Toronto, and some of our largest trade unions.

Bernie Sanders' amazing campaign went a long way towards building this sort of coalition, and demonstrated that the appetite for democratic socialism is out there. But early on, there was a failure in the campaign to connect with older black and Latino voters who are the demographic most abused by our current economic model. That failure prevented the campaign from reaching its full potential. Those mistakes can be corrected and a bold, transformative coalition is there to be built on.

That is the task ahead. The Democratic party needs to be either decisively wrested from pro-corporate neoliberals, or it needs to be abandoned. From Elizabeth Warren to Nina Turner, to the Occupy alumni who took the Bernie campaign supernova, there is a stronger field of coalition-inspiring progressive leaders out there than at any point in my lifetime. We are "leaderful", as many in the Movement for Black Lives say.

So let's get out of shock as fast as we can and build the kind of radical movement that has a genuine answer to the hate and fear represented by the Trumps of this world. Let's set aside whatever is keeping us apart and start right now.

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It was the Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism that won it for Trump | Naomi Klein

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They will blame James Comey and the FBI. They will blame voter suppression and racism. They will blame Bernie or bust and misogyny. They will blame third parties and independent candidates. They will blame the corporate media for giving him the platform, social media for being a bullhorn, and WikiLeaks for airing the laundry.

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Social media doesn’t make teenagers self-harm, neoliberalism does | The Independent

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Social media doesn’t make teenagers self-harm, neoliberalism does | The Independent

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Social media is being blamed today for the huge increases in the number of teenagers who are self-harming. Is social media really responsible? Can it really explain the sudden leap in child self-harm hospital admissions in just two years?

Almost 19,000 teenagers were admitted to hospital for self-harm in 2015/16, a National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) has revealed, up 14 per cent since 2013/4. Self-harm is when you hurt yourself, normally your body, when feelings, memories or body tensions become too much. This " tearing the body apart " is a way to attack oneself, to try to gain some agency over unbearable pain, and to communicate. Why is self-harm in teenagers on the rise?

Our pain and agency is deeply indexed to the messages we receive about what is and is not acceptable. From birth, we are surrounded by ideals of successful personhood and the good life which we internalise, and compare ourselves against. Our self-respect is thus indexed to how we are seen from outside. Whilst newspaper headlines blame the 24/7 nature of social media for the cult of competitiveness causing distress in this cohort, social media is but a symptom of the root cause.

This generation of teenagers were born in the Blairite era, when a certain type of ideology, neoliberalism, came to dominate. Neoliberalism locates competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. People are consumers, needing to compete successfully in the market from an ever earlier age, or fail. Today's teenagers were the first to be educated using 2000's controversial " Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage" (CGFS). This nappy curriculum for 3 to 5-year-olds meant kids had to follow teacher-led pedagogy rather than learning through play and exploration. Surveillance, measurement and competition were thus ingrained into the psyche of this generation from the age of three, alongside the idea that anyone can produce an interesting "show and tell", and sell " brand me " if they try hard enough.

Neoliberalism has not been without side effects, not least the elite's politically expedient new ability to locate emotional distress as an individual problem in self-esteem or mental health problems. The atomisation inherent to neoliberalism means that we lack ways of conceptualising how sociopolitical distress manifests in our bodies. This makes it easy to attribute the rise in self-harm to something external - in this case, the technological revolution - rather than something we are all involved in producing.

Whilst social media later provides an especially noxious mirror back to our successes and failures, it is but a conduit of the values of any particular time. Technology is inherently value neutral until we pick it up and use it in particular ways. As well as attempting to stop pain, self-harm can be read as an attempt to symbolise something, to demarcate inside and outside, to communicate.

Social media is actively used as a forum through which people who self-harm can connect with one another, to reclaim the experience and scars as meaningful and powerful, to find allies who will hear of the distress, hopelessness and traumas self-harming contain. Rather than blame social media for today's figures, we must encourage youngsters to have a relationship to social media such that it is not a constant pressure to be "on", to sell an impossible image, but as a potential source of creating new ways to be human, and to live a good, connected life.

This is already happening if we attend to the voices of survivors of self-harm who are using social media to create new, more bearable realities. We can read here of a reclaiming of body tension and anger, not as something to feel guilty about, to attack the body for, but to respond to politically. Lack of opportunity, poverty, noxious welfare reforms and sexual violence all impact on teenagers daily reality. Situating self-harm as evidence of " emerging personality disorder " leads teenagers to feel misunderstood and pathologised, rather than individuals in acute distress trying desperately to cope through at least having a powerful relationship to their own bodies.

We must also not allow Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt to get away with attributing the current child mental health crisis to social media, allowing the shaping effects of successive government policies to remain invisible. We must recognise that the current political and mental health crises, the fallout from neoliberalism, are inextricably linked. We must start teaching our children that something different is possible, and learn from the creative, political, collective solutions they are creating here and now on social media.
Dr Jay Watts is a clinicial psychologist and an honorary senior research fellow at the British Psychological Society
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Social media doesn't make teenagers self-harm, neoliberalism does

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Social media is being blamed today for the huge increases in the number of teenagers who are self-harming. Is social media really responsible? Can it really explain the sudden leap in child self-harm hospital admissions in just two years?

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Life Through A Critical Lens: Neoliberalism - The Great Lefty Conspiracy

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Life Through A Critical Lens: Neoliberalism - The Great Lefty Conspiracy

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It's New Year's Day and I'm sat in a pub in Snowdownia. Surrounded by the natural beauty of this glorious landscape I'm attempting to finish a post that I've been meaning to write for a while. To give it some context, it stems from an exchange with one of Twitter's 'Edu Gurus' who claimed that neoliberalism's influence on education was nothing more than a progressive/ lefty conspiracy. I politely beg to differ.......

Neoliberalism has dominated political discourse since the 1980s and has had a devastating impact on many areas of social policy in the United Kingdom (Ball, 2009; Goodson, 2014). Broadly defined, neoliberalism is the belief in minimal state intervention, deregulation, privatisation and individualism (Hursh, 2007). The Laissez Faire economic approach underpins neoliberalism's commitment to unrestricted and unregulated market economies.Consequently, the state's role in providing education, health and security is diminished as individuals are expected to provide for their own social needs (Mouffe, 2005; Davies and Bansel, 2007). This is the antithesis to 'Civic Welfarism' which focuses on 'securing equity through developing approaches to collective rights and needs (e.g. education, health)' (Gunter, 2016, p. 89). One needs only to look at the situation in the National Health Service where the number of contracts being outsourced to private companies has doubled in the past five years (Campbell, 2016). Similarly, Her Majesty's Prison Service, has witnessed a steady and gradual handing-over of public-sector assets to private companies (Poyner, 2012). In education, government policy has been driven by a neoliberalist agenda and desire to transform education services into profit-making commodities (Apple, 2006; Davies and Bansel, 2007; Ball, 2009; Lakes and Carter; 2011; Goodson 2014). This has been reflected in the rapid growth in academies and free schools, whose lack of transparency and accountability has led to widespread criticism and has prompted some observers to suggest that they actually increase segregation and hinder social mobility (West, 2014; Benn and Downs, 2016).

According to Benn and Downs (2016), the marketisation of education has become more prevalent in recent years with education businesses permeating many aspects of policy and practice in the United Kingdom. Ball (2009, p. 86) has suggested that this is because 'education businesses can sell school improvement - offering schools ways of accommodating themselves to the demands of state performativity and the production of new organisational identities'. These privately funded education businesses offer schools training, consultancy, interventions and a plethora of learning 'solutions' (Benn and Downs, 2016). A prime example can be seen within the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) marketplace. One of the leaders in this field is Frog Education Ltd. who claim they are 'helping to re-shape school processes, not just creating efficiency, but improving outcomes' ( www.frogeducation.com) . However, schools are paying companies such as Frog Education Ltd. thousands of pounds per year even though the academic impact of using a VLE has not been widely researched (Demian and Morrice, 2012). The VLE market is but one small example, within one area of education, of how businesses are influencing practice in schools, often out of view from the public (Ball, 2009).

Marketisation of education is by no means only restricted to the United Kingdom. Ball (2009) argues that international consultancy firms now have influence on educational policy on the world stage. For example, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PWC), whose services are now offered worldwide and who have undertaken work for the World Bank and the European Union which has impacted upon education on a global scale (Ball, 2009). Not only are these multinational companies influencing educational policy but concerns have been raised about their financial transparency. Or indeed lack of. Pearson PLC. ( https://uk.pearson.com ) is one of the leading global educational businesses involved in publishing educational literature as well as providing assessment services for educational institutions and corporations. However, this Public Limited Company has been identified as one of many Financial Times Stock Exchange Companies (FTSE) who have used tax avoidance schemes to maximise profits (Tarek, 2015). It could be argued that profit-making organisations making so much money out of public services have a civic duty to contribute an equitable share back into the system.

Ben and Downs (2016) argue that the global education reform movement (GERM) has been able to develop an enticing argument that only increased marketisation and competition can remedy failing public education across the world. This has led to a situation where policy is created in one country and then adopted by the ruling classes, vested interest groups and powerful political elites in another (Goodson, 2014). This has been notable between the United Kingdom and the United States where policy borrowing has been commonplace for many years and yet the respective educational systems remain largely unimpressive on an international stage (Benn and Downs, 2016; Whitty, 2016). One of the main problems is that many of the policies being initiated are 'based on a mix of selective evidence, intuitive prejudice and corporate influence' (Goodson, 2014, p. 774). Furthermore, globalised policy construction has allowed for corporate entry into the shaping of national curricula.

The marketisation of education has an enormous impact on the curriculum and severe consequences for learning and teaching (Ball, 2003). It has been argued by Davies and Bansel (2007) that the purpose of education has now been transformed to ensure children become dutiful subjects who are able to contribute to the knowledge economy. According to Ball (2009) the increase in private interventions has not had a positive impact on learning. If anything, the increased intervention is detrimental to the creation of a socially just educational system. Consequently, marketisation is increasing segregation in schools as they are placed into league tables and judged on every aspect of their provision (Coldron et al., 2010). While defendants of neoliberalism would argue that increased competition means greater choice for parents and pupils, in reality the main beneficiaries of the system are affluent middle-class families who are more likely to find ways of ensuring their children attend the higher achieving schools (Coldron et al., 2010). It has been argued that this segregation is fueling a social injustice and condemning some children to a sub-standard education (McLaren, 1998; Hargreaves, 2003; Benn and Downs, 2016). Indeed, 'research consistently shows that reforms have failed to deliver on the promises of educational equity for students across social class, race, language, ethnicity, and disability' (Gurn, 2011, p. 144).

Francis and Mills (2012) argue that within the neoliberalist educational landscape there is a real urgency to develop policy and practice that can contribute to socially just education. However, the idea of equality and social justice are at odds with neoliberal dogmas as individualism usurps collectivism (Adams, 2013). The obsession with judgements and measures is providing less time for teachers to provide opportunities for their pupils to become more creative and critical in their thinking and learning. Creativity and criticality are too often forced out of the curriculum in favour of subjects such as science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) as they make excellent bedfellows for neoliberalism and the drive towards a knowledge economy (McLaren, 1998; Adams, 2013). Shor (1992) argues that the curriculum is where a dominant culture or ideology can either be maintained or challenged. For neoliberalism, it would certainly appear that the curriculum ebbs towards the former. According to McLaren (1998, p. 6) this is geared towards 'providing students with the requisite technical expertise to enable them to find a place within the corporate hierarchy' (McLaren, 1998, p. 6). It has been suggested that one way to counter this development would be to develop a curriculum focusing on STEAM where the Arts are as equally as important as the sciences (BFI, 2016). Adams (2013) has suggested that by removing subjects that promote criticality and dissent, governments may very well be supressing democracy. O ne need only to look at the current provision for political education to see how it has moved away from a critical focus to something more akin to civic nationalism. A political education should not be 'good for the economy, but because it is the necessary foundation for the life of the citizen (Turner, 2009, p. 293).

The ideological assault on education has had alarming impact on teachers whose 'dreams, desires and voices are often silenced' (McLaren, 1998). Teachers' autonomy has been undermined as they are forced to adopt curricula, pedagogies and assessments determined by someone else (Hursh, 2007). This erosion of teacher autonomy is having a significant impact on retention with more early-career teachers leaving the profession within five years than ever before (Benn and Downs, 2016). Goodson (2014) has argued that this has also led to teachers becoming more compliant and less radical in their pedagogical approach as teachers are expected to be apolitical rather than taking an open stand against inequality and injustice (McLaren, 1998). Throughout professionalised education, the role of the teacher has become one that is viewed through a neoliberalist discursive lens resulting in constant measuring and judgement of teaching practice and teacher 'performativity' (Benn and Downs, 2016). As Ball (2003, p. 217) explains 'performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change based on rewards and sanctions' (Ball, 2003, p.217). The result of increased performativity has led to a weakening of teachers' powers which ultimately has a negative impact on children's learning (Apple, 2006).

It could also be argued that the competitive and individualistic nature of neoliberalism is being transferred to children in schools . Throughout education children are encouraged to compete with each other through merit stickers, higher grades and academic and sporting awards (Kanpol, 1999). There are also external pressures from the inspectorate and league tables which are, often unknowingly, passed on from teachers to pupils. In a recent conference paper Burgess et al., (2016) suggested that offering direct financial incentives to children from disadvantaged backgrounds can help to improve their attainment in subjects such as mathematics and science. This approach is at one with neoliberalism by attaching monetary value to learning. Essentially this viewpoint further strengthens the arguments that 'to support a market economy we need to encourage everyone to think of themselves as individuals who always act in ways that maximise their own interests' (Apple, 2006, p. 23). Furthermore, it instils in young people an ideological view that the main purpose of education is an economic one. This model of education is very much based on creating workers who can contribute to the economy rather than thoughtful citizens who are more concerned with human wellbeing and environmental concerns (McLaren, 1998; Hursh, 2007).

One of the main achievements of neoliberalism has been its ability to convince people that there is no ideological alternative (Hursh, 2007). The neoliberalist model permeates many areas of educational policy and practice with 'market fundamentalism and soulless standardisation' having a hugely negative impact on childrens' learning (Hargreaves, 2003, p. 160). To develop children's capacity to think critically can act as a buffer against ideological indoctrination. Criticality and creativity can also serve as 'the antithesis of the crushing performativity and segregation of market-led education' (Adams, 2013, p. 249). More importantly, however, developing children's political literacy can help them to realise that 'even the world's most dominant political ideologies can be challenged, and their actions are capable of making a positive difference' (McLaren, 1998, p. 6).

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Neoliberalism - The Great Lefty Conspiracy

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It's New Year's Day and I'm sat in a pub in Snowdownia. Surrounded by the natural beauty of this glorious landscape I'm attempting to finish a post that I've been meaning to write for a while.

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Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian

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Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian

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Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has - or had - a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin's theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages - such as education, inheritance and class - that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it's unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the gradual development of Britain's welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises's book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism - the Mont Pelerin Society - it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.

With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as "a kind of neoliberal international": a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement's rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek's view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way - among American apostles such as Milton Friedman - to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.

Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In 1951, Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes 's economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarrassment, developing new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Friedman remarked, "when the time came that you had to change ... there was an alternative ready there to be picked up". With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter's administration in the US and Jim Callaghan's government in Britain.

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice should have been promoted with the slogan 'there is no alternative'

After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed - often without democratic consent - on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, "it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised."

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan "there is no alternative". But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet's Chile - one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied - "my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism". The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.

Naomi Klein documented that neoliberals advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted. Photograph: Anya Chibis/The Guardian

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet's coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Friedman described as "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system" in New Orleans.

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating " investor-state dispute settlement": offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one

Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years of decline, rose rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation.

The privatisation or marketisation of public services such as energy, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons has enabled corporations to set up tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or to government, for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel.

In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all phone services and soon became the world's richest man. Photograph: Henry Romero/Reuters

Those who own and run the UK's privatised or semi-privatised services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India, oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became the world's richest man.

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can't Afford the Rich, has had a similar impact. "Like rent," he argues, "interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort". As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

Slogans, symbols and sensation ... Donald Trump. Photograph: Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters

Chris Hedges remarks that "fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the 'losers' who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment". When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.

Judt explained that when the thick mesh of interactions between people and the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared is more likely to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that arises from the delivery of public services, are reduced to "cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them".

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of anonymities.

The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry, has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the Tea Party movement. We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his thinktanks, noted that "in order to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be widely advertised".

The nouveau riche were once disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Today, the relationship has been reversed

The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they elucidate. "The market" sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What "the market wants" tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want. "Investment", as Sayer notes, means two quite different things. One is the funding of productive and socially useful activities, the other is the purchase of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest, dividends and capital gains. Using the same word for different activities "camouflages the sources of wealth", leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.

A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors style themselves entre preneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned income.

These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and placelessness of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know for whom they toil; the companies registered through a network of offshore secrecy regimes so complex that even the police cannot discover the beneficial owners; the tax arrangements that bamboozle governments; the financial products no one understands.

The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are influenced by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining - with some justice - that it is used today only pejoratively. But they offer us no substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they suggest that there is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or Friedman's classic work, Capitalism and Freedom.

For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal project, at least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.

Neoliberalism's triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 70s, there was an alternative ready. But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic thought for 80 years.

Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 70s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.

What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it's not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century.

George Monbiot's How Did We Get into This Mess? is published this month by Verso. To order a copy for £12.99 (RRP £16.99) ) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

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Neoliberalism - the ideology at the root of all our problems

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Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump - neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

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Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian

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Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems | Books | The Guardian

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Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you'll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has - or had - a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Inequality is recast as virtuous. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin's theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages - such as education, inheritance and class - that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it's unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the gradual development of Britain's welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises's book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism - the Mont Pelerin Society - it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.

With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as "a kind of neoliberal international": a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement's rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek's view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way - among American apostles such as Milton Friedman - to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.

Something else happened during this transition: the movement lost its name. In 1951, Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes 's economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarrassment, developing new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Friedman remarked, "when the time came that you had to change ... there was an alternative ready there to be picked up". With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter's administration in the US and Jim Callaghan's government in Britain.

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice should have been promoted with the slogan 'there is no alternative'

After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed - often without democratic consent - on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, "it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised."

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan "there is no alternative". But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet's Chile - one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied - "my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism". The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty.

Naomi Klein documented that neoliberals advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted. Photograph: Anya Chibis/The Guardian

As Naomi Klein documents in The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal theorists advocated the use of crises to impose unpopular policies while people were distracted: for example, in the aftermath of Pinochet's coup, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina, which Friedman described as "an opportunity to radically reform the educational system" in New Orleans.

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating " investor-state dispute settlement": offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one

Another paradox of neoliberalism is that universal competition relies upon universal quantification and comparison. The result is that workers, job-seekers and public services of every kind are subject to a pettifogging, stifling regime of assessment and monitoring, designed to identify the winners and punish the losers. The doctrine that Von Mises proposed would free us from the bureaucratic nightmare of central planning has instead created one.

Neoliberalism was not conceived as a self-serving racket, but it rapidly became one. Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years of decline, rose rapidly in this era, due to the smashing of trade unions, tax reductions, rising rents, privatisation and deregulation.

The privatisation or marketisation of public services such as energy, water, trains, health, education, roads and prisons has enabled corporations to set up tollbooths in front of essential assets and charge rent, either to citizens or to government, for their use. Rent is another term for unearned income. When you pay an inflated price for a train ticket, only part of the fare compensates the operators for the money they spend on fuel, wages, rolling stock and other outlays. The rest reflects the fact that they have you over a barrel.

In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all phone services and soon became the world's richest man. Photograph: Henry Romero/Reuters

Those who own and run the UK's privatised or semi-privatised services make stupendous fortunes by investing little and charging much. In Russia and India, oligarchs acquired state assets through firesales. In Mexico, Carlos Slim was granted control of almost all landline and mobile phone services and soon became the world's richest man.

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can't Afford the Rich, has had a similar impact. "Like rent," he argues, "interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort". As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

Slogans, symbols and sensation ... Donald Trump. Photograph: Aaron Josefczyk/Reuters

Chris Hedges remarks that "fascist movements build their base not from the politically active but the politically inactive, the 'losers' who feel, often correctly, they have no voice or role to play in the political establishment". When political debate no longer speaks to us, people become responsive instead to slogans, symbols and sensation. To the admirers of Trump, for example, facts and arguments appear irrelevant.

Judt explained that when the thick mesh of interactions between people and the state has been reduced to nothing but authority and obedience, the only remaining force that binds us is state power. The totalitarianism Hayek feared is more likely to emerge when governments, having lost the moral authority that arises from the delivery of public services, are reduced to "cajoling, threatening and ultimately coercing people to obey them".

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. But the zombie doctrine staggers on, and one of the reasons is its anonymity. Or rather, a cluster of anonymities.

The invisible doctrine of the invisible hand is promoted by invisible backers. Slowly, very slowly, we have begun to discover the names of a few of them. We find that the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has argued forcefully in the media against the further regulation of the tobacco industry, has been secretly funded by British American Tobacco since 1963. We discover that Charles and David Koch, two of the richest men in the world, founded the institute that set up the Tea Party movement. We find that Charles Koch, in establishing one of his thinktanks, noted that "in order to avoid undesirable criticism, how the organisation is controlled and directed should not be widely advertised".

The nouveau riche were once disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Today, the relationship has been reversed

The words used by neoliberalism often conceal more than they elucidate. "The market" sounds like a natural system that might bear upon us equally, like gravity or atmospheric pressure. But it is fraught with power relations. What "the market wants" tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want. "Investment", as Sayer notes, means two quite different things. One is the funding of productive and socially useful activities, the other is the purchase of existing assets to milk them for rent, interest, dividends and capital gains. Using the same word for different activities "camouflages the sources of wealth", leading us to confuse wealth extraction with wealth creation.

A century ago, the nouveau riche were disparaged by those who had inherited their money. Entrepreneurs sought social acceptance by passing themselves off as rentiers. Today, the relationship has been reversed: the rentiers and inheritors style themselves entre preneurs. They claim to have earned their unearned income.

These anonymities and confusions mesh with the namelessness and placelessness of modern capitalism: the franchise model which ensures that workers do not know for whom they toil; the companies registered through a network of offshore secrecy regimes so complex that even the police cannot discover the beneficial owners; the tax arrangements that bamboozle governments; the financial products no one understands.

The anonymity of neoliberalism is fiercely guarded. Those who are influenced by Hayek, Mises and Friedman tend to reject the term, maintaining - with some justice - that it is used today only pejoratively. But they offer us no substitute. Some describe themselves as classical liberals or libertarians, but these descriptions are both misleading and curiously self-effacing, as they suggest that there is nothing novel about The Road to Serfdom, Bureaucracy or Friedman's classic work, Capitalism and Freedom.

For all that, there is something admirable about the neoliberal project, at least in its early stages. It was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.

Neoliberalism's triumph also reflects the failure of the left. When laissez-faire economics led to catastrophe in 1929, Keynes devised a comprehensive economic theory to replace it. When Keynesian demand management hit the buffers in the 70s, there was an alternative ready. But when neoliberalism fell apart in 2008 there was ... nothing. This is why the zombie walks. The left and centre have produced no new general framework of economic thought for 80 years.

Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 70s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.

What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it's not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century.

George Monbiot's How Did We Get into This Mess? is published this month by Verso. To order a copy for £12.99 (RRP £16.99) ) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Neoliberalism - the ideology at the root of all our problems

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump - neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?