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Neoliberalism is a social, political, and economic system that advocates for the removal of the welfare state. Yet, for it to legitimize its tenants:  individualism, free market, and privitization, it must also produce an ideology that dominates ideological apparatuses. Therefore, when I think of neo-liberalism, I also think of the internalization of its ideas. For example, having a hard time taking breaks, feeling lazy for taking a break or having a hard time asking for help from others.

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Theme 1: welfare and social reproduction

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Theme 1: welfare and social reproduction

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I learned that welfare is government support programs that assist people in maintaining a livable standard of life. In a welfare state, citizens will feel a sense of civic solidarity because everyone is leaning on one another for support making people who live across a large area of land to feel tied together, promoting a sense of nationalism. An example I can think of is Canada's healthcare. While Canadians may complain about long wait times, opposed to the U.S., Canadians may feel tied together or a sense of solidarity in the fact that they support each other through healthcare. This then manifests in nationalism as it contributes to Canada's identity as the "nice" country.

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Neoliberalism and the military simultaneously rely on each other, yet the military also contradicts neoliberal ideals. Neoliberalism frames itself as making the government smaller. As national defence is linked with the government, neoliberalism should want to abolish military spending as it literally places the lives of individuals in the hands of foreign policy. However, in practice, neoliberalism relies on foreign military intervention to open markets or protect trade routes. Thus, while claiming to have freedom from government, neoliberalism also relies on the government to ensure free markets. To settle the dissonance between the two, neoliberalism frames national defence as an individual choice of soldiers. Soldiers are constructed as having the freedom to choose to join the military or not in a post-conscription liberal order. Yet, this is in practice also not true. Just because individuals are not forced to join the military does not mean that their material conditions leave other options. Soldiers are promised the benefits that a welfare state would provide. As a result, under neoliberalism, soldiers are forced to give their bodies to the government in exchange for welfare - a concept that contradicts what neoliberalism claims to provide (freedom from the government).

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To me, family abolition means reducing the responsibilities placed on the individual units of the family and broadening our conceptions of them. The family is a form of social organization that acquires the reproductive responsibilities that the state fails to. By taking these responsibilities and shifting them to the state or within the collective, the family as a political, social and economic form of organizing is abolished.

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Social reproduction is the making and maintaining of the labour force - it may take the form of housework, emotional labour, giving birth, education etc. One concept I find interesting about social reproduction is the naturalization of the family performing social reproduction. For example, the idea that parents are responsible for paying their children's higher education, rather than publicly funded higher education. This is really interesting to me because it is so normalized that I often do not think about the fact that this would not be the case in a different state formation. I often assume my parents are responsible for social reproductive labour because having children is framed as an individual choice that the parents make for their own benefit (love). Yet, what is often left out is that having children also benefits the economy because it supplies the labour force. Branching off - this made me visualize how historically, people who owned farms would try and have a lot of children because it meant more workers for the field.

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My vision for the post- neoliberal, capitalist world involves a change in our relationships with each other. To me, this is the only way we counter the ideology of individualism that lies at the heart of the neoliberal project. This change involves collectivity, care, and equity. In this world, rather than surveillance and policing, we support those who have been harmed, hold those who caused harm accountable, and focus on why people cause harm, rather than harming them in return. The military does not exist and neither do borders - people have the freedom to move wherever they choose. Wealth is distributed evenly and people don't live on the streets or spend most of their paycheque on rent. We get to pursue whatever we want and are not constrained by access, opportunities, and discrimination. Overall, life is enjoyable rather than extractive. After looking at Cairnes' work and looking around at the views of my friends, I feel as though this is not a utopia that will never happen. I think my generation is slowly taking over political spaces and eventually social relations will look somewhat like a post-neoliberal world. I am not sure if this will happen in my lifetime, but I know I will be around to see some of the slow transitions towards it.

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In my view, these terms hold immense explanatory power because they apply to the real world. I see this a lot with policing and abolitionist organizations. Just as Gilmore talks about the rhetoric of the anti-state state, in the U.S., elites argue for a shrinking state while pursing policy that expands the carceral regime. When these policies neglect victims of interpersonal violence, non-profit organizations take the role of caring for these individuals. Yet, through researching restorative justice organizations, I have seen how those who are still reliant on policing for some aspects of the organization or who specialize in protecting one type of individual (Indigenous women, Queer folks, sex workers - a specialization/not a wholistic lens that incorporates multiple social relations) are provided more public funding and have larger platforms to expand the recruitment of workers.

For the photo: I tried to find something that revealed a puppet master holding a puppet who was mastering a smaller puppet. Unfortunately, I was unable to and some horror movie images started to show up. Thus, I used one that was not defined at the bottom. Please accept my description as the interpretation of the bottom of the photo.

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There are many contradictions within neoliberal ideology and justification. One of them is the contradiction between political freedom and material unfreedom (the freedom to speak but not to eat). Within neoliberal, democratic societies, citizens are granted certain freedoms: negative and positive rights. They are free from explicit state oppression and can speak freely/assemble/conduct themselves in whatever manner they choose. However, they are not free from poverty: "If one does not have money or land one may not eat, at least not with ease or safety" (Carpenter, 2021, pg. 182). For example, if you steal to eat, you are considered a criminal. Thus, while claiming to provide freedom, neoliberalism only grants some political freedoms to certain individuals and neglects the fact that social relations of power exist and contribute to material unfreedom. The distinction between material and political freedoms are then created through the notion that the political and material are two different spheres. Yet in reality, they are interconnected. Political freedom and material unfreedom work to undermine one another. Because people facing material unfreedom have to spend more time trying to survive, they have less time to participate in political systems. Thus, material unfreedom leads to political unfreedom in some groups of the population.