Fucking with Neoliberalism

If you watch the video of Simon Springer delivering the original Fuck Neoliberalism talk, at the end there are questions. A Marxist asks why Springer eschews the language of revolution that is at heart of Marxist ideology (Fuck Neoliberalism 15:45). The ideas Springer is talking about are Socialist ideas, and Springer himself is an Anarchist rather than a Marxist. He's strived against the Marxist orthodoxy in his discipline.

"For an opportunity to move beyond Neoliberalism, we don't have to think of a revolutionary moment to do this... that implies the politics of waiting, right? The [revolution], well maybe it will come, but we'll wait for someone else to do the work. But we can actually do the work ourselves, right here in the here and now. The revolution of the every day. If you're stuck on the word revolution, think of it as an everyday process rather than something that is an ideal, somewhere in the future. It is something that we can embrace, here and now, in this moment." (Lightly edited transcript, emphasis added)

Springer emphasises mutual aid, reciprocity and cooperation as ways we can work against Neoliberalism. He says:

"Our community, our cooperation, our care for one another, are all loathsome to Neoliberalism. It hates that which we celebrate."

In other words we fuck with Neoliberalism simply by being active members of our community. Which is fucking brilliant.

But here are a couple of more specific suggestions.

1. Get out of Debt

The basic premise of modern Neoliberalism is to drive economic growth by increasing demand. Demand can be increased in the short-term by banks creating debts. In other words we rent money from the bank to increase our spending power now. A business investing in growth to increase profits makes a certain amount of sense. The investment pays for itself. Similarly with buying a house. But consumer credit is insane for consumers. You are mining your own future and hollowing it out. What you do is impoverish yourself in order to enrich banks. And the banks are corrupt. They don't do any good with your money, they use it to gamble on asset and commodity prices and to gamble on whether their bets will win or lose (aka derivatives and default swaps).

It's quite easy to stop participating in this system. Just stop borrowing money. I have a very low income and live from week to week. But I got out of debt 10 years ago and have vowed never to get into debt now. I don't have any credit cards. Barkleys recently invited to apply for their card which charges 26% APR. No thanks! If you have a lot of debt spread around, consolidate it into one loan and set up regular payments.


2. Don't be a Consumer

"Buy more shit, or we're all fucked." - bag on sale in Fopp some years ago.

Of course there is stuff that we need to buy. The area where we play into the hands of Neoliberalism is in the stuff we only want to buy. We can assess both our needs and our wants. It is of course up to each of us to decide what is essential, what is necessary, and what is not. But the line is something we ought to keep in consciousness. Every time we buy something we don't need, Neoliberalism wins. Every time we remember and resist that is a victory for us and other people who are against Neoliberalism.

We can also look for ways to recycle or re-use rather than buying something new. This is an inherently cooperative strategy, a sharing of resources. If you can't be bothered to sell your used stuff, then give it to a charity. And so on.

Lets all fuck with Neoliberalism in our every day lives. After all Neoliberalism is constantly fucking with us. Fuck Neoliberalism! Each time we save money, pay off debts, recycle, re-use, buy second-hand, give to charity, refrain from mindless consumption, etc we fuck with Neoliberalism and we can say to ourselves "Fuck Neoliberalism!"