Morbid symptoms: edging towards the end of the neoliberal age

This paper explores the commodification of contemporary politics. Contemporary democratic politics is absent of genuine alternatives. This has led to the seamless reproduction of established political and economic conventions. Neoliberalism is now as accepted on the political left as it is on the political right. However, despite the continued supremacy of neoliberal thinking in corporate and governmental institutions, neoliberalism’s global market system is clearly undergoing significant change. Neoliberalism is now less stable and coherent, and opportunities exist to challenge and replace it with a less socially injurious socio-economic system. However, the organised left has little to offer. Its failure to interrupt the rolling reproduction of neoliberalism, leaving neoliberals to determine the shape and content of our shared future, raises a disquieting possibility: perhaps, rather than expecting the return of social democracy or the construction of an entirely new socio-economic platform, we in the west should expect things to get even worse. Perhaps we have already left neoliberalism behind. Perhaps we are already living through the early decades of a new feudal era.
Keywords: neoliberalism, democracy, left politics, neo-feudalism