Margaret Thatcher’s mantra ‘there is no alternative’ was not a statement of historical fact but a strategic objective. She shared with Hayek, Pinochet, Mises, Trump, Bolsonaro, and Macron a commitment to utilizing ideology, constitutional economics, labour discipline, and culture wars, as well as police and military force, to prevent popular resistance from organizing. Whatever their doctrinal differences, they all see the state’s tight control of democracy as the most effective means of defeating egalitarian alternatives.
Neoliberalism persists today thanks to its ability to defeat opponents while deepening social and cultural regression.
Pierre Dardot is a philosopher and specialist in Hegel and Marx. His previous books include Sauver Marx?: Empire, multitude, travail immatériel (with Christian Laval and El Mouhoub Mouhoud) and Marx, prénom: Karl (with Christian Laval).
Haud Guéguen is a philosopher at the Conservatoire des arts et métiers in Paris. She works on the epistemology of the possible in the social sciences and the genealogy of neoliberal anthropology. She is the author, with Laurent Jeanpierre, of La perspective du possible, Paris, La Découverte, 2022.
Christian Laval is Professor of Sociology at the Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. His other books include L'Ambition sociologique: Saint-Simon, Comte, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Weber; Jeremy Bentham, les artifices du capitalism; L'École n'est pas une entreprise: Le néo-libéralisme à l'assaut de l'enseignement public; and L'Homme économique: Essai sur les racines du néolibéralisme.
Pierre Sauvêtre is a sociologist at the University of Paris Nanterre. He works on Michel Foucault, Murray Bookchin, the commons and communalism. He is the author of Foucault, Paris, Ellipses, 2017.
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