Neoliberalism

By Julia Berkman

Back before the Trump era, Simón Sedillo emailed famed linguist and anarchist Noam Chomsky with one question: “How do I make Neoliberalism a wide- spread term?”
Chomsky replied, “Good luck.”
Thus began Sedillo’s grand endeavor to bring the concept of neoliberalism to the masses.
Sedillo started off their lecture by saying, “I hate this word with a passion… and I made a career out of talking about it. I must be a masochist or something.”
So, once and for all, what is neoliberalism? Is it the next threshold of liberalism? Is it economic leftism? Is it another potentially meaningless string of buzzwords?
To quote Sedillo, it’s “a military political economy that prioritizes the interest of transnational corporations over the rights of human beings.”
In layman’s terms, it’s palatable capitalism with a vintage imperialist twist. It’s the whitewashed coverup of the neglect for basic human needs all corporations seem to share. And it all started in Chile in the late 1970s.
In 1973, Chile democratically elected Salvador Allende, a socialist. The United States at the time was staunchly anti-socialism so, in true American fashion, conspired to replace Allende with a more palatable and U.S.-friendly leader. The CIA, with help from transnational companies and the Chilean military, staged a coup and replaced Allende with Augusto Pinochet, a dictator and figurehead of the freshly installed military dictatorship.
With the new government came a new economic plan. Luckily for the Chilean government, several economic scholars just happened to be studying a new plan at the Chicago School of Economics. They brought back the plan, known as “the Brick” for its density, to Pinochet’s cabinet. All reforms in the Brick specifically benefitted transnational corporations and financial institutions.
Pinochet loved it! So, neoliberalism was born from the approval from a man who incarcerated over 27,000 of his own citizens. This format of a working economy is still in place today in Chile, as well as in the United States.
So that’s the history, right? But where’s the beef? Well, ironically, neoliberalism is in the beef. The agricultural and food production market, that is. Both pollute, use underpaid or slave labor, and are whispering in the ears of lobbyists all across D.C. In 1996, 1 percent of the food industry controlled over 80 percent of global food assets. The latter figure has only gone up since.

Ironically, despite being a huge conglomerate, most transnational companies don’t provide many jobs in the United States. Clothing production, in particular, is a thankless job you won’t find anywhere in the states… except the prison industrial complex.
Here’s the tea: the prison industrial complex is, at its root, slavery. Companies like Victoria’s Secret and Aramark rely on prisoners with hourly wages in the cents. This is all swept under the rug because prison labor is hugely profitable. The Vicky’s “5 for $25” underwear deal is all thanks to someone doing 20 to life.
Whenever there are resources this country can’t find and exploit, they usually just stage a coup or sell weapons to a country that has them. Afghanistan, for instance, is the number one exporter of opiates in the world right now. They’re also militarily occupied by the United States. The United States is currently fac- ing an opioid crisis. These dots connect themselves, folks!
The reason we can occupy any and all countries with exploitable resources is because of our reputation.
“The U.S. is the most powerful country in the world because we turned the weapons industry into a for-profit industry,“ said Sedillo.
During the Cold War, while the Soviet Union was making tons of weapons, so was the U.S. government. The breakthroughs that were made in weaponry were simply too profitable to keep to ourselves, so we took the arms race to the market.
The steps were simple- sell weapons to unstable countries, watch them start wars, step in and stabilize their government with whoever was a U.S. sympathizer, control and exploit their resources.
And what, pray tell, can countries with transatlantic occupation do about their intruders? According to Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, nothing. Chapter 11 states that if an occupied country stops the production of any transnational company, the company has the right to sue their landlords. That means that if a company occupying a country breaks the law and is sued by the country, they can sue right back. There are currently multiple open cases in the U.S. and Canada because of NAFTA Chapter 11.
The government is, of course, also in the back pocket of neoliberalism. Lobbying, or according to Sedillo, “legitimized corruption,” is just another way for corporations to get their foot in the door. Political candidates accept money from corporations because they have the ability to sponsor their multi-million dollar campaigns in a way that the average person would never be able to. Maybe soon candidates will be decked out in NASCAR-esque jumpsuits with BP and Nestlé emblazoned across their bodies. A girl can dream of a little transparency.

Of course, when it comes to neoliberalism, there is always a victim. Disproportionately, they’re com- munities that have already incurred a fair amount of marginalization. People of color, people living in rural or low income areas, and LGBTQ+ people are all thrown under the campaign bus. Whether they’re exploited for their labor, ousted for their income, or oppressed for their identities, marginalized people will never benefit from neoliberalism. In fact, most people won’t benefit at all, except for the wealthiest of them all.
Banks control the corporations, and the corporations control the politicians, and it’s all one big circle of corruption, no tinfoil hat required. If you’ve ever seen “The Big Short”, a movie about the 2008 housing crash, you can probably guess what this next one’s gonna be. The brilliant idea of giving long-term loans to at-risk loanees meant that hundreds of thousands of people defaulted on their loans, which basically means cancelling them for a fee. The banks kept the cancellation cash and went about their business. For a while, this plan meant everyone could be a homeowner. However, once the masses started to default on their loans, there were too many foreclosed houses and the market collapsed.
In the mid-2000s, financial company HSBC started a new branch, Wachovia. A money-laundering center, Wachovia flopped after two years, and all the money left in it was bought by Wells-Fargo for a nominal fee. HSBC should have been donezo; their execs should have been jailed for the egregious amount of laundering they did. However, according to congress, no executives could be fired and the bank couldn’t be shut down. They cited one reason: if they jailed
or stopped HSBC, there was high chance the whole financial market could collapse. HSBC was too powerful to kill.
As the Trump era drags on like a sack of trash slow- ly tipping off a Long Island garbage truck, it’s important to realize that these problems are happening here and now. They may be overwhelming and scary and disenheartening, but they’re important.
“I don’t want things to get more uncomfortable for y’all,” Sedillo said, “but I do want you to find more ways to become uncomfortable.”