The future of humanity on planet earth is in the balance due to the cumulative outcomes of human behaviour. In other words, the dominant modes of how we currently relate to and engage with the world, and each other, are symptomatic of a deadly pathology. This pathogenic culture defines an era – the Capitalocene – which, in more recent times, has given rise to a distinctive form of liberal capitalism – neoliberalism. The neoliberal paradigm was birthed via highly influential institutions and state implemented socio-economic structures, shaping our values and defining the parameters of our choices. The result is a moulding and binding of the thought and imagination, creating a subjectivity that limits the scope for radical cultural change.
We have become so destructive to life on the planet we are causing mass extinction, an event of such magnitude that it also threatens to end the human race (Extinction Rebellion, 2019). The scientific evidence in support of this message is strong (Sánchez-Bayo & Wyckhuys, 2019; Humphreys et al., 2019; Ceballos et al., 2017; Pimm et al., 2014; Masson-Delmotte et al., 2018; Steffen et al., 2015). Indeed, humankind’s impact on the planet has led some to the conclusion that we are the cause of a new geological era. Ecologist Eugene Stoermer is credited with having coined the term Anthropocene (the age of the human) when he began using it informally during the 1980s (Ellis, 2018). However, it was not until he and Paul Crutzen published an article at the turn of the millennia that the debate surrounding the birth of a new geological era began in earnest (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000).
Within the academic discipline of geology, much of the debate centres on whether (and when) our activity on the earth began to leave evidence that could later be found in the geological record. It has been postulated that the Anthropocene commenced when human agriculture first blossomed in ancient times, others argue it was the beginning of the industrial revolution in Britain, yet others suggest it was the explosion of the first atomic bomb in 1945 (Ellis, 2018). In the geological context, the term has yet to be formally accepted. However, it has ignited the imagination of many outside of the field of geology and is frequently used as a signifier when making arguments about the detrimental effects human development is having on the planet. One of the key arguments for the Anthropocene era is that we have pushed the planet off balance and out of the Holocene — an unusually stable 10 000 year period commencing at the end of the last great ice age (Steffen et al., 2004). The equilibrium of this era enabled the human species to develop to its current size and stage of technological advancement; we may have brought it to an end.
Critics of the Anthropocene tag suggest that the Capitalocene is a more accurate label because it identifies the intrinsic properties of capitalism as the cause of contemporary woes (Moore, 2017). The etymological origin of the word capital is said to stem from the Latin for head – caput – and the tradition of measuring wealth as a count of head of cattle (Aspers & Cole, 2010). The concept of a capitalist therefore originates from a person whose personal wealth and status is begot through the extent of their ownership, exploitation, and reproduction of subjugated nature (animals and the plants they feed on). In time, capital came to be synonymous with any form of personal wealth and is now usually measured in monetary terms (Mulgan, 2013). Using money as a token of exchange and trading goods on markets is not capitalism, both activities can take place without it. The essence of capitalism is using wealth to acquire more wealth – a process that, by its very nature, cannot end unless capitalism itself ends (Marx, 2013). The quest for endless economic growth fails to recognize a fundamental fact about reality – we live on a finite planet with finite resources. This lack of grounding has caused dreadful ecological damage to the planet (Foster et al., 2010). Hence, the Capitalocene suggests that a particular cultural habit is responsible for the recent change in the Earth’s metastate rather than inferring that catastrophe is something intrinsic to all of human nature. The concept of the Capitalocene is therefore imbued with some hope — rather than having to change the essence of human nature, we may only need to change our culture. Nonetheless, this is still an enormous challenge and one that necessitates a historical perspective to understand how contemporary society took shape.
Patel & Moore (2017) suggest that 15th century Genoese banking sparked the Capitalocene. In 1408, the first merchant bank, the bank of Saint George, was created in the Republic of Genoa; Columbus would later become one of its customers (Boland, 2009). This bank was a precursor to modern central banks, inventing public debt and government bonds (Caprio, 2013; Boland, 2009). Such techniques raise finance for the state, but importantly they act as a tool for capital to harness the activities of an entire population and reproduce itself effortlessly, and invisibly, through interest payments. The need to pay debt plus interest is effectively a demand that future populations increase their metabolism of nature to create wealth; the organization of the state therefore becomes focused on increasing economic activity. The 15th century saw a fundamental change in the metabolism of the world — ecology. Colonial forces including Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Dutch Republic and the English invaded foreign lands and peoples, claiming them as property, depriving them of subsistence, and consuming their resources (Koch et al., 2019).
Much of this savagery was committed to enable the production of commercial agricultural commodities such as wheat and sugar (Patel & Moore, 2017). The bones of the dead and the scars of deforestation and mining that commenced in this era will no doubt have left a significant trace in the geological record; a chequered history of slaughter, death, theft, and deforestation largely absent from Anthropocentric discourses (Haraway, 2016). Economic expansion gave rise to a new class of super-rich merchant capitalists; the money business bloomed. The first stock exchanges were established in the trading ports of Antwerp (1530), London (1571), and Amsterdam (1602). Money and contracts changed hands in the city-based financial centres while bloody acquisition was taking place across the globe — not least within the countryside of England. Here, the enclosure movement was used to cleave peasants from the very land that gave them sustenance. Collective resistance was fierce, lasting from the 14th century through to the later 19th century; it was frequently met with a deadly military response, imprisonment, and public executions (Wall, 2014).
The long process of the dispossession of peasants in Britain resulted in a landscape largely devoted to sheep farming to supply wool merchants. Initially, this was not altogether detrimental to common folk, giving rise to numerous cottage industries (Polanyi, 1957). However, over time the pattern of this transformation was to eviscerate non-market access to food; subsistence was out, profit-making was in. With no other means for survival, increasingly urban populations were forced into servility as industrial labourers. Vagrancy and begging were criminalized with severe punishments for transgression. Assistance for the poor was basic and subject to invasive and subjective validation – only the ‘deserving’ poor would receive assistance. The main sanctioned fallback for those who failed to secure their subsistence in the bondage of employment became the onerous regime of the workhouse. Initiated as ‘houses of correction’ under Elizabeth I, the workhouse became central to government policy in the mid-19th century (McIntosh, 2005). Families were broken up and held in large dormitories. Hours of work were long, often involving meaningless repetitive tasks, such as breaking stones (Clark & Page, 2019). This was a moral discipline to reform those who failed to support themselves through work; it was also a means for ‘the making of machine-men’ – unreflective and unquestioning docile bodies acting in rhythms of obedience to hierarchical command (Foucault, 1995, p. 242). Rewards for successful obedience were limited to sustaining ‘bare life’ – keeping the machine alive (Buchanan, 2010).
Shaping the mentality and behaviour of the proletariat was key to the installation of the ‘stark utopia’ of a self-regulating market (Polanyi, 1957). However, the proliferation of the ‘satanic mill’ of the unfettered market economy in the 19th century was met with significant resistance (Ibid., p.35). The Chartist movement campaigned for real democracy (at the time, only male property owners over 21 years of age were permitted to vote) (Ashcraft, 1993). Ideas such as reclaiming private land as commons, the right to land for autonomous work and subsistence, and cooperative worker-owned enterprises were popular. Such political pressure occasionally won concessions from the ruling class, i.e. the passing of the 1887 Allotments Act and the 1892 Smallholdings Act (Howkins, 2002). Thus, we see the two opposing forces Polanyi called the ‘double movement’ (Polanyi, 1957). One force, the market-economy, sought to subjugate nature (including humans), reducing it to its market utility, discarding the unwanted and unproductive. The opposite force claimed sanctity, refusing to be reduced to mere objects of utility.
The market-economy was predicated on three fictitious commodities – land, labour, and token money (Polanyi, 1957). They are fictions because they are not objects that are produced for the market, like a pair of shoes or a watch, but are complex living entities exanimated into market objects. By creating the labour fiction, the market- economy disposed of ‘the physical, psychological, and moral entity “man” attached to that tag.’; similarly, through the creation of the land fiction, ‘Nature [was] reduced to its elements…neighbourhoods and landscapes defiled, rivers polluted…’ (Ibid., p.76). Conversely, the third fiction — the money commodity — was not a degradation of the true nature and complexity of its being, rather it was the aggrandisement of an illusion. Money originated as a socially constructed token to facilitate the exchange of real commodities. However, financial markets objectified it as though it were a real, tangible commodity. Hence, the market became the realm of the phantom money commodity extracting the life essence from humans and nature in order to reify and reproduce itself.
Polanyi’s dialectical battle – the double movement – continued into the 20th century. Laissez-faire liberalism largely dominated society in the late 19th and early 20th century. Centuries of liberal thought had produced varied, complex, and often contradictory theories but liberalism came to be understood in relatively base terms — the sanctity of private property and the freedom for property owners to do as they wished with minimum intervention from the state (Gilbert, 2014). However, the first half of the 20th century was a turbulent time. The first world war, the rise of communism, the great depression, and the rise of fascism, were but a few events that challenged the liberal consensus. It was during this perturbed period, that economist John Maynard Keynes became highly influential in the economic sphere. Contrary to laissez-faire liberalism, he advocated state intervention in economic activities. In Britain, many of his recommendations were implemented toward the end of the 1930s and his thinking dominated economic policy in the post-war period up to the 1970s.
One of Keynes’ most vocal critics was Friedrich Hayek, who founded the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) in 1947 (Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009). Fearful of the mild social capitalism that was emerging in the USA and Europe during the post-war period, the aim of the MPS was to develop a long-term plan for re-establishing liberal governance on a global scale. However, the MPS considered classical laissez-faire liberalism naive. Rather than minimizing the role of the state, they favoured using the state for the implementation of a framework of legislation and policy that could entrench market idealism and restrain national democratic powers. This was a new form of liberalism, neoliberalism. Hayek theorized a double government. On one hand, a transnational network of non-democratic institutes to govern global trade and ensure the sovereignty of capital; on the other, national governments were to assist in implementing market economies run according to transnational rules but could be permitted to govern their cultures (Slobodian, 2018). The basis of Hayek’s advocacy for the market was almost mystical. Rejecting the idea of homo-economicus – the rational self-oriented utilitarian, he believed that individuals acted impulsively, unpredictably, and with imperfect knowledge (Rodrigues, 2013). Instead, Hayek proposed that the market would act as a giant information processor, converting the cumulative effect of these imperfect signals into the most rational outcome possible (Slobodian, 2018). No evidence was provided supporting this idea. Indeed, if the market system is truly unknowable, it precludes the possibility of testing this claim. Rather, Hayek seems to advocate persuasion and compulsion (Hayek, 1944, p.167, emphasis added):
[neo]Liberalism regards it as desirable that only what the majority accepts should in fact be law, but it does not believe that this is necessarily good law. Its aim, indeed, is to persuade the majority to observe certain principles.
There were 39 members at the inaugural meeting of the MPS in 1947 (Mirowski & Plehwe, 2009). They included journalists, business owners, and academic economists – one of whom was Milton Friedman. Following this meeting, a consensus mission statement was produced; it was normative with an implied omniscience. The MPS claimed to know what the ‘central values to civilization’ were; further, they laid claim to ‘absolute moral standards’, inferred to be embedded in ‘private property and the competitive market.’ (Plehwe, 2009, p.23-24). With no hint of irony, the MPS asserted that any opposition to these moral absolutes would signify the conspiracy of an ‘ideological movement’ which should be countered with ‘the reassertion of valid ideals’ (Ibid., p.23-24, emphasis added). The goals of the MPS were to be achieved by no lesser means than ‘The redefinition of the functions of the state’, ‘re-establishing the rule of law’, ‘the creation of an international order’ and, in a rather foreboding Orwellian tone, ‘combatting the misuse of history for the furtherance of creeds hostile to liberty.’ (Ibid., p.23-24). It would be for the MPS to decide which ideals and histories were valid, and which laws should be re-established in this new international order. Thus, we see the makings of a global ideological hegemony.
The MPS were unclear as to how they intended to implement their ideas, but they did ‘not aspire to conduct propaganda.’ (Plehwe, 2009, p.23-24, emphasis added). However, perhaps they did not need to aspire. Hayek’s ‘Road To Serfdom’ had already been published in cartoon format in the Reader’s Digest, reaching over 1 million readers in 1945 (McInnes, 1998). Milton Friedman went on to write extensively for numerous popular publications including Newsweek and The New York Times (Noble, 2006). He also featured in radio and television broadcasts, including a serialized program based on his popular book, ‘Free to Choose’, where he appeared alongside celebrities such as Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Moore, 2013). Members of the MPS were not solely concerned with public relations. Their goal of redefining the functions of the state required political engagement, much of which was initiated through a growing network of think tanks. In Britain, one of the most influential was the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) which was founded in 1955 by MPS member and businessman Anthony Fisher (Tribe, 2009). Such think tanks proliferated and by 2005 there were at least 104 organizations with primary links to the MPS spanning 34 countries — 7 located in Britain; MPS membership had also grown to over 1000, 90% male and 40% from the USA; 43 of these members were directly involved in politics, 38 worked in media, and 11 for the IMF or World Bank (Plehwe & Walpen, 2006).
The relentless work of the neoliberal movement began to bear fruit in the 1970s. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher rose to prominence. She was inspired by Hayek and Bauer (another MPS member) and had worked with Milton Friedman as early as the 1950s (Tribe, 2009). Her infamous quote, ‘Economics is the method: the object is to change the soul.’, illustrates that her goal in office was not to serve the public but to fundamentally change its ontology (Butt, 1981). Thatcher’s rise to power as Prime Minister in 1979 was built on a common myth — that the troubles of the 1970s were largely the fault of troublesome trade unions. The truth is significantly more complex. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a global productivity crisis, destabilized international financial speculation, a fiscal crisis in the US (due to the financial cost of the Vietnam War), subsequent US abandonment of the gold standard, falling US oil production, and a huge rise in the price of crude oil instigated by OPEC countries (Smith‐Nonini, 2016; Hay, 2010; Patel & Moore, 2017). The effects of these events on interlocking global markets led to inflation that fast-outpaced wage increases. In the UK, workers saw their real income drop significantly in a very short space of time leading to industrial action, intended to protect living standards (Hay, 2010). Media reports focussed on the worst effects in very limited areas of the country, vastly exaggerating stories and creating nationwide hysteria; the underlying narrative was of a horrific crisis caused by an unreasonable and militant workforce (Thomas, 2007). A myth that was further embedded throughout the 80s and 90s and persists today (Ibid.).
In the first six months of the Thatcher government both inflation and unemployment doubled; after 18 months unemployment reached 3 million — higher than at any time since the Great Depression in 1935 (Triami Media, 2019; ONS, 2019). Riots broke out in many major areas resulting in bloody physical battles with the police (Frost & Phillips, 2012). Thatcher’s reputation was in tatters, only to be saved by the Falklands war in 1982 (Norpoth, 1987). With support from the privately owned British press, Thatcher used the nationalist sentiment stoked by the war to narrowly win a second term in 1983 (Newton, 2006). By the time of her demise in 1990, Britain had experienced over a decade of the roll-out of neoliberal policy and legislation backed up relentless propaganda (Thomas, 2007; Wagner, 2014). Thatcher’s early mismanagement of the economy was buffered by windfalls from North Sea Oil, the expansion of the arms trade, and a fire sale of national infrastructure and assets including British Rail, British Airways, and water and energy utilities (Phythian, 1996). Communities were broken and collective action demonized; greed and excess wealth were valorized. Inequality in Britain widened dramatically; citizens became more spiteful, more divided, less socially mobile, and less healthy (Scott- Samuel et al., 2014). The goal of changing the soul of the nation – the creation of docile subjugation to market forces – had largely been achieved. Notably, between 1979 and 1990, total national debt rose from £100 billion to £150 billion (Chantrill, 2019). The John Major government continued Thatcher’s trajectory, by 1997 total national debt was near £350 billion (Chantrill, 2019).
In the first six months of the Thatcher government, both inflation and unemployment doubled; after 18 months, unemployment reached 3 million — higher than at any time since the Great Depression in 1935 (Triami Media, 2019; ONS, 2019). Riots broke out in many major areas resulting in bloody physical battles with the police (Frost & Phillips, 2012). Thatcher’s reputation was in tatters, only to be saved by the Falklands war in 1982 (Norpoth, 1987). With support from the privately owned British press, Thatcher used the nationalist sentiment stoked by the war to narrowly win a second term in 1983 (Newton, 2006). By the time of her demise in 1990, Britain had experienced over a decade of the roll-out of neoliberal policy and legislation backed up relentless propaganda (Thomas, 2007; Wagner, 2014). Thatcher’s early mismanagement of the economy was buffered by windfalls from North Sea Oil, the expansion of the arms trade, and a fire sale of national infrastructure and assets including British Rail, British Airways, and water and energy utilities (Phythian, 1996). Communities were broken and collective action demonized; greed and excess wealth were valorized. Inequality in Britain widened dramatically; citizens became more spiteful, more divided, less socially mobile, and less healthy (Scott-Samuel et al., 2014). The goal of changing the soul of the nation – the creation of docile subjugation to market forces – had largely been achieved. Notably, between 1979 and 1990, total national debt rose from £100 billion to £150 billion (Chantrill, 2019). The John Major government continued Thatcher’s trajectory, by 1997 total national debt was near £350 billion (Chantrill, 2019).
Tony Blair’s New Labour largely continued Thatcher’s legacy, expanding the involvement of private finance in the public sector and, in a key move, relinquishing government power to set interest rates to a private group in the Bank of England (Davidson, 2013). Blair pushed the idea of a new pragmatism – the third way – a ‘progressive’ form of governance that abandoned core socialist values, favouring instead to maintain and expand free market ideology (Steger & Roy, 2010). Large sections of the electorate were unconvinced; many felt they no longer had any party representing their interests and voter turnout after Blair’s first term dropped to its lowest in 80 years (Dempsey & Loft, 2019). Under Blair’s steerage, public servants were set performance targets through a programme called ‘Best Value’, a label that could equally be applied to budget toilet paper (Hesmondhalgh et al., 2015). This was a programme of formalized standardization and performance management with the aim of demonstrating ‘economy, efficiency, and effectiveness’ via criteria that included ‘comparison’ and ‘competitiveness’ (Ibid.).
Gordon Brown took the helm after Blair stepped down in 2007 – just in time for the global financial crisis. The event unveiled the deep corruption and incompetence at the heart of private international finance; the taxpayer was forced to pay for the bailout. By 2010, total public debt had hit £1 trillion (Chantrill, 2019). Despite this, neoliberal idealism redoubled as the basis for government policy. A revanchist Conservative-led coalition took power in 2010. The welfare state was viciously attacked with cuts to social care, disability benefits, education, and health care. Privatization expanded and generous tax cuts were handed out, especially for higher earners. In 2015, the Conservatives took full control of government, further intensifying their neoliberal strategy. Media coverage has largely supported a glib narrative of responsibilization and demonization of the poor, sick, and disabled, as well as scapegoating immigrants and diverting attention from widening inequality and failing public services with a never-ending Brexit circus. Total public debt is now over £1.8 trillion, with interest payments exceeding £48 billion per year (Chantrill, 2019; Keep, 2019).
Gramsci (1971) suggested hegemony could be understood as a series of processes through which certain perceptions of reality rise to dominance, outcompeting and subordinating other views. I have argued that neoliberalism emerged as a deliberate project that, from the outset, was aimed at building a global hegemonic ideology. Additionally, I have outlined how this ideology became part of mainstream British culture where it remains strongly entrenched to date. However, I also hope to have impressed how this project is merely the current form of an ontology that can be traced back at least 600 years to the origins of the Capitalocene. Hence, we can begin to envisage how the current hegemony is founded on a subjectivity that is ‘a contingent historical possibility rather than a universal or essential truth about human nature’ (Heyes, 2014, p.159), and avoid the error of underestimating ‘how the present is the product of a long past – a bloody history of power, capital, and class…’ (Patel & Moore, 2017, p.205).
Subjectivity can be understood as the field of potential, shaped by power relations, within which a person experiences and interacts with the world (Heyes, 2014). Foucault (2008) pioneered the critical examination of the web of power embedded in neoliberal society and how this gives rise to a particular subjectivity. Building on the work of Foucault among others, McGuigan (2014) defines the neoliberal subject (or self as he prefers to call it) as an ‘ideal type’ – something strived for rather than something existing. This ‘ideal type’ serves to conduct attitudes and behaviour in the face of savage competition and individualistic indifference. For example, the neoliberal self views education as a tool for building human capital; an instrument of speculative financial investment rather than as ‘care of the self’ – a means of enriching the life experience through self-knowledge and moral contemplation (Foucault, 2005). In 1941, future MPS member Frank Knight used the concept of human capital in a portently titled paper – ‘The role of the Individual in the Economic World of the Future’ (Knight, 1941). Gary Becker (a former MPS president), launched it into the popular lexicon with his popular book, ‘Human Capital’ (Becker, 1964). However, it might be Milton Friedman who uses the term most presciently in what could be considered a profoundly succinct summary of neoliberal subjectivity, ‘The individual always has a dual status…he is a resource, a piece of human capital. On the other hand, he is a consumer…’ (Friedman, 1943, p.58, emphasis added). Thus, we see human beings reduced to two market functions.
Such linguistic semiotics are crucial to the subsumption of the person into the market (Gershon, 2016). Each piece of human capital must invest in its future, develop its personal brand, and sell itself to outcompete others. This ontology is reinforced through a framework of neoliberal governmentality – ‘…the management and organization of the conditions in which one can be free…’ through the ‘…establishment of limitations, controls, forms of coercion, and obligations relying on threats…’ (Foucault, 2008, p.63-64). Techniques of state, education, and corporate governance include certificates, grades, targets, performance reviews, and welfare sanctions all bound up in a strict matrix ‘regulated not by the flow of activity or the seasons but by a new kind of time – abstract, linear, repetitive.’ (Patel & Moore, 2017, p.98). There are constant demands for flexibility, reskilling, life-long learning, reinvention, innovation, and self- entrepreneurship (Gershon, 2016; Foucault, 2008). These demands are framed as opportunities – false freedoms where the choice is effectively do or die, all the while the neoliberal subject must discipline themselves to be happy in their bondage to capital demands (Davies, 2014). The piece of human capital is never encouraged to question their lot, let alone take collective action to change it. Rather, happiness and freedom of expression are to be found in the market through their other mode of being, the consumer (McGuigan, 2014).
In addition to subjectivity, Foucault also spoke of the corresponding concept of governmentality. Governmentality can be thought of as the predefined parameters within which a person is expected to exercise their ‘freedom’ (Foucault, 2009). The matrix of techniques of governance include the employment market, the welfare system, and modalities of consumerism, but it is the degree to which the subject internalizes the constraints of this matrix that forms their subjectivity. Hence, it is possible for an individual who has not fully adopted neoliberal subjectivity to still operate within the expectations of society, but to feel constrained and lacking aspects of freedom they desire.
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