Harvey, A brief history of neoliberalism

The main sub­stan­tive achie­ve­ment of neo­li­be­ra­li­za­tion, howe­ver, has been to redis­tri­bute, rather than to gene­rate, wealth and income. I have elsew­here pro­vi­ded an account of the main mecha­nisms whe­re­by this was achie­ved under the rubric of « accu­mu­la­tion by dis­pos­ses­sion ». By this I mean the conti­nua­tion and pro­li­fe­ra­tion of accu­mu­la­tion prac­tices which Marx had trea­ted of as « pri­mi­tive » or « ori­gi­nal » during the rise of capi­ta­lism. These include the com­mo­di­fi­ca­tion and pri­va­ti­za­tion of land and the for­ce­ful expul­sion of pea­sant popu­la­tions (com­pare the cases, des­cri­bed above, of Mexico and of China, where 70 mil­lion pea­sants are thought to have been dis­pla­ced in recent times); conver­sion of various forms of pro­per­ty rights (com­mon, col­lec­tive, state, etc.) into exclu­sive pri­vate pro­per­ty rights (most spec­ta­cu­lar­ly repre­sen­ted by China); sup­pres­sion of rights to the com­mons ; com­mo­di­fi­ca­tion of labour power and the sup­pres­sion of alter­na­tive (indi­ge­nous) forms of pro­duc­tion and consump­tion ; colo­nial, neo­co­lo­nial, and impe­rial pro­cesses of appro­pria­tion of assets (inclu­ding natu­ral resources); mone­ti­za­tion of exchange and taxa­tion, par­ti­cu­lar­ly of land ; the slave trade (which conti­nues par­ti­cu­lar­ly in the sex indus­try); and usu­ry, the natio­nal debt and, most devas­ta­ting of all, the use of the cre­dit sys­tem as a radi­cal means of accu­mu­la­tion by dis­pos­ses­sion. The state, with its mono­po­ly of vio­lence and defi­ni­tions of lega­li­ty, plays a cru­cial role in both backing and pro­mo­ting these pro­cesses. To this list of mecha­nisms we may now add a raft of tech­niques such as the extrac­tion of rents from patents and intel­lec­tual pro­per­ty rights and the dimi­nu­tion or era­sure of various forms of com­mon pro­per­ty rights (such as state pen­sions, paid vaca­tions, and access to edu­ca­tion and health care) won through a gene­ra­tion or more of class struggle. The pro­po­sal to pri­va­tize all state pen­sion rights (pio­nee­red in Chile under the dic­ta­tor­ship) is, for example, one of the che­ri­shed objec­tives of the Republicans in the US.