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The Developmental State The state, civil society and development The neo-liberal state
On Planning for Development: On neo-liberal economics

Editor: Dr. Róbinson Rojas Sandford


From Finance&Development, June 2016, Vol. 53, No2, IMF

Neoliberalism: Oversold?
Ostry, J.D., Loungani, P. and Urceri, D.

However, there are aspects of the neoliberal agenda that have not delivered as expected. Our assessment of the agenda is confined to the effects of two policies: removing restrictions on the movement of capital across a country’s borders (so-called capital account liberalization); and fiscal consolidation, sometimes called “austerity,” which is shorthand for policies to reduce fiscal deficits and debt levels. An assessment of these specific policies (rather than the broad neoliberal agenda) reaches three disquieting conclusions:
•The benefits in terms of increased growth seem fairly difficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries.
•The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.
•Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.

Gender and Development - Programme Paper Number 14 - February 2012
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development

Neoliberal Development Macroeconomics. A Consideration of its Gendered Employment Effects
Elissa Braunstein

The term Washington consensus, used to refer to a policy perspective that relies largely on markets to deliver economic development, seems almost old-fashioned these days. However, from a macroeconomic perspective at least, there is little that differentiates today’s effective development policy menu from that prescribed by the most orthodox characterizations of the Washington consensus. In fact, so little has changed over the years that the Washington consensus’ macroeconomic policy conventions—liberalization, privatization and macro stability—are rarely critically singled out by the academic and policy establishment as a failure in need of a new macroeconomic paradigm.

This paper expands on this contention, reviewing the primarily empirical research on the employment impacts of the macroeconomic policy environment, with a particular focus on women’s employment whenever extant research allows. It begins by briefly characterizing the terrain of neoliberal development macroeconomic theory and policy, both of which are at the heart of the opportunities and constraints that emerging and developing economies face today. Though it focuses on laying out general principles, this paper emphasizes those aspects that are central to employment issues. It covers the following research areas:
(i) the slowdown in economic growth and the decline in the responsiveness of employment to growth;
(ii) trade and investment liberalization and its impact on employment;
(iii) informalization and its relationship to liberalization and macroeconomic performance;
(iv) the impact of inflation targeting on employment;
(v) the impact of the increasing frequency of crisis and volatility on growth and employment; and
(vi) the public sector.
These areas not represent an exhaustive list of the relevant employment effects, but they also capture the main areas of research into the employment effects of neoliberal macroeconomic development policy. A lot remains to be done and understood about these relationships, as demonstrated by the gaps in evidence and contentions covered in this paper.

Series papers

From Monthly Review:
Essays on Globalization
and Neoliberalism

Beyond Liberal Globalization: A Better or Worse World
Samir Amin

The CIA (together with its associated intelligence organizations) gathers an unparalleled mass of information of all kinds on all the world’s countries. However, its analysis of this material is banal in the extreme. This is undoubtedly because its leaders cannot see beyond their imperialist prejudices or their Anglo-Saxon worldview and lack critical interest and imagination.

December 2006


The Worldwide Class Struggle
Vincent Navarro

A trademark of our times is the dominance of neoliberalism in the major economic, political, and social forums of the developed capitalist countries and in the international agencies they influence—including the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and the technical agencies of the United Nations such as the World Health Organization, Food and Agricultural Organization, and UNICEF. Starting in the United States during the Carter administration, neoliberalism expanded its influence through the Reagan administration and, in the United Kingdom, the Thatcher administration, to become an international ideology.

September 2006


Neoliberalism: Myths and Reality
Martin Hart-Landsberg

Agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) have enhanced transnational capitalist power and profits at the cost of growing economic instability and deteriorating working and living conditions. Despite this reality, neoliberal claims that liberalization, deregulation, and privatization produce unrivaled benefits have been repeated so often that many working people accept them as unchallengeable truths. Thus, business and political leaders in the United States and other developed capitalist countries routinely defend their efforts to expand the WTO and secure new agreements like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) as necessary to ensure a brighter future for the world’s people, especially those living in poverty.

April 2006


Fixed, Footloose, or Fractured: Work, Identity, and the Spatial Division of Labor in the Twenty-First Century
Ursula Huws

The combination of technological change and globalization is bringing about fundamental changes in who does what work where, when, and how. This has implications which are profoundly contradictory for the nature of jobs, for the people who carry them out, and hence for the nature of cities.

March 2006


Ideology and Economic Development
Michael A. Lebowitz

Economic theory is not neutral, and the results when it is applied owe much to the implicit and explicit assumptions embedded in a particular theory. That such assumptions reflect specific ideologies is most obvious in the case of the neoclassical economics that underlies neoliberal economic policies.

May 2004


After Neoliberalism: Empire, Social Democracy, or Socialism?
Minqi Li

Since the early 1980s, the leading capitalist states in North America and Western Europe have pursued neoliberal policies and institutional changes. The peripheral and semiperipheral states in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, under the pressure of the leading capitalist states (primarily the United States) and international monetary institutions (IMF and the World Bank), have adopted “structural adjustments,” “shock therapies,” or “economic reforms,” to restructure their economies in accordance with the requirements of neoliberal economics.

January 2004


After Neoliberalism?
William K. Tabb

What comes after neoliberalism? To answer that question we must ask a more fundamental question: What do neoliberalism and neoconservatism have in common with the antiglobalization and antiwar movements? The answer is that all ostensibly share a focus on redefining democracy in the contemporary world system. “Spreading democracy” is the rallying cry of both the Washington Consensus and the Bush Doctrine. The “Washington Consensus” is the claim that global neoliberalism and core finance capital’s economic control of the periphery and the entire world by means of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only realistic alternative to misery and disaster. The “Bush Doctrine” is the bald neoconservative justification of U.S. global military domination and preemptive war—as part of a renewed attempt to make the world safe for democracy. For the antiglobalization and antiwar movements these establishment doctrines, insofar as they profess to be “spreading democracy,” are nothing but window dressing for the global dictatorship of the U.S. and core corporate governing elites. While focusing their attack on the institutions that enforce this dictatorship, these movements also strive to create an alternative, a genuine participatory democracy.

June 2003


REVIEW OF THE MONTH
Monopoly Capital and the New Globalization
JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER

This Review of the Month was originally written as a chapter (“Paul Sweezy and Monopoly Capital”) for Douglas Dowd, ed., Understanding Capitalism: Critical Analysis from Karl Marx to Amartya Sen, to be published by Pluto Press in July 2002. It is printed here by permission. For more information on Pluto Press see http://www.plutobooks.com.

We live at a time when capitalism has become more extreme, and is more than ever presenting itself as a force of nature, which demands such extremes. Globalization—the spread of the self-regulating market to every niche and cranny of the globe—is portrayed by its mainly establishment proponents as a process that is unfolding from everywhere at once with no center and no discernible power structure. As the New York Times claimed in its July 7, 2001 issue, repeating now fashionable notions, today’s global reality is one of “a fluid, infinitely expanding and highly organized system that encompasses the world’s entire population,” but which lacks any privileged positions or “place of power.” *

January 2002


Imperialism and “Empire”
JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER

This article is based on a talk on István Mészáros’ Socialism or Barbarism delivered to the Brecht Forum in New York on October 14, 2001.

Only a little more than a month ago at this writing, before September 11, the mass revolt against capitalist globalization that began in Seattle in November 1999 and that was still gathering force as recently as Genoa in July 2001 was exposing the contradictions of the system in a way not seen for many years. Yet the peculiar nature of this revolt was such that the concept of imperialism had been all but effaced, even within the left, by the concept of globalization, suggesting that some of the worst forms of international exploitation and rivalry had somehow abated.

December 2001


Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement
BARBARA EPSTEIN

Many among today’s young radical activists, especially those at the center of the anti-globalization and anti-corporate movements, call themselves anarchists. But the intellectual/philosophical perspective that holds sway in these circles might be better described as an anarchist sensibility than as anarchism per se. Unlike the Marxist radicals of the sixties, who devoured the writings of Lenin and Mao, today’s anarchist activists are unlikely to pore over the works of Bakunin. For contemporary young radical activists, anarchism means a decentralized organizational structure, based on affinity groups that work together on an ad hoc basis, and decision-making by consensus. It also means egalitarianism; opposition to all hierarchies; suspicion of authority, especially that of the state; and commitment to living according to one’s values. Young radical activists, who regard themselves as anarchists, are likely to be hostile not only to corporations but to capitalism. Many envision a stateless society based on small, egalitarian communities. For some, however, the society of the future remains an open question. For them, anarchism is important mainly as an organizational structure and as a commitment to egalitarianism. It is a form of politics that revolves around the exposure of the truth rather than strategy. It is a politics decidedly in the moment.

September 2001


A Prizefighter for Capitalism:
Paul Krugman vs. the Quebec Protesters

THE EDITORS

A few weeks ago, the New York Times columnist on economics devoted his space to scolding the demonstrators at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, (April 22, 2001, Op-Ed page). The writer, Paul Krugman an MIT professor, is considered by many to be a leading light of the profession, and a likely candidate for the economics Nobel Prize.

June 2001


Imperialism and Globalization
SAMIR AMIN

This article is a reconstruction from notes of a talk delivered at the World Social Forum meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January 2001.

Imperialism is not a stage, not even the highest stage, of capitalism: from the beginning, it is inherent in capitalism’s expansion. The imperialist conquest of the planet by the Europeans and their North American children was carried out in two phases and is perhaps entering a third.

June 2001


The New Economy: Myth and Reality
THE EDITORS

In the last few years the idea of a “New Economy” has gained wide currency, almost rivaling “globalization” as a neologism that characterizes our era. Thus The Economic Report of the President, 2001, begins: “Over the last 8 years the American economy has transformed itself so radically that many believe we have witnessed the creation of a New Economy.” This New Economy is seen, first and foremost, as consisting of those firms and economic sectors most closely associated with the revolution in digital technology and the growth of the Internet. The rapid convergence of information technologies—including computers, software, satellites, fiber optics, and the Internet—has, it is believed, fundamentally altered the economic landscape. Since the mid-1990s, these revolutionary technological developments have, it is argued, spilled over into the wider economy, generating higher productivity growth, a sustained acceleration of economic growth, lower unemployment, lower inflation, and an attenuation of the business cycle.

April 2001


New Economy…Same Irrational Economy
WILLIAM K. TABB

What can we say about the assertion that there is a “New Economy”? That depends on what we mean by this term. It is nonsense to claim, and few do any more, that the business cycle has been eliminated or that the contradictions of capitalism have been resolved. In 2000 we witnessed a massacre of technology and Internet stocks ending what many considered the country’s biggest financial mania of the past hundred years. The NASDAQ lost over half of its value, a paper loss of 3.33 trillion dollars, the equivalent of a third of the houses in the United States sliding into the ocean, as one Wall Street wag tells us. While only a few months ago, all we heard about was the magic of the market and that crises are the result of bad government policies, whether “crony” capitalism or simply failure to make information available to markets in a full and timely fashion, and that the new information technology now makes markets even more efficient; all of this talk is now shown to be the usual exaggeration we find in the up stage of most long expansions. As in the past it disappears as the economy weakens. Indeed as inventories pile up the nature of capitalism becomes clear to even the financial press and the politicians.

April 2001


Toward a New Internationalism
THE EDITORS

Those on the left who have abandoned all hope in social relations or who, in desperation, have turned to the idea that only global (no longer national) struggle is now possible and that we have to think and act in cosmopolitan terms—as a "global civil society"—are simply the dialectical twins of those who preach that globalization has ended all possibility of change. What has really disappeared is the kind of middle-ground, mixed economy often lauded in the Cold-War years. Social democratic and Keynesian strategies, supposedly the result of a class accord, are no longer viable under today's global neoliberalism. But all of this merely points to the need for a much more radical, universal, internationalist strategy, rooted in national realities and struggles as the only way forward for the movement.

July/August 2000


The Language of Globalization
PETER MARCUSE

The distinction between technological globalization and the globalization of power is critical—not only analytically but also politically. It raises the question, "What might the other possibilities be if the two were separated?" We should speak of the existing combination of technological globalization and the globalization of power as really existing globalization; that would highlight the possibilities of an alternative globalization. Opponents of the damaging consequences of really existing globalization, from left as well as from liberal perspectives, are divided on the appropriate response to it. The slogan from Seattle in regard to the World Trade Organization (WTO)—"fix it or nix it"—and the equivalent suggested in the Washington demonstrations in April as to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)—"shrink it or sink it"—and the related questions about whether we want a seat at the table or a different table or no table at all show an ambivalence about goals. The issues are difficult indeed.

July/August 2000


More Form than Substance:
Press Coverage of the WTO Protests in Seattle

WILLIAM S. SOLOMON

The mainstream U.S. news media have been shifting rightward for at least two decades, as their corporate owners enforce tighter ideological conformity. Oliver North and Pat Buchanan, for example, are now regular commentators on television talk shows. And all of the media now refer to people as "consumers," cogs in a capitalist machine. But still, news is less than half as profitable as entertainment, and media firms are intensifying pressures on their "news properties" for higher profits, which means the pursuit of upscale demographics. Owners are removing journalism's much-vaunted separation of newsroom practices and business decisions, blurring the line between news and entertainment, and forming partnerships with one another to offer online news services. As William Glaberson said in the New York Times in July 1995, "It is now common for publishing executives to press journalists to cooperate with their newspapers' `business side,' breaching separations that were said in the past to be essential for journalistic integrity."

May 2000

After Seattle:
Understanding the Politics of Globalization

WILLIAM K. TABB

The "Seattle Shock"—as Business Week called it in an editorial that warned of a popular backlash against "our very economic system"—reflects heartfelt indignation by the financial press at the intrusion of mass democracy into an elite discourse. In the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman raged at anti-World Trade Organization (WTO) protesters, whom he presents as "flat-earth advocates" duped by knaves like Pat Buchanan. Friedman, perhaps the most obtuse of the big-time columnists, complains that "What's crazy is that the protesters want the WTO to become precisely what they accuse it of already being—a global government.

March 2000

The World Trade Organization? Stop World Takeover
WILLIAM K. TABB

On November 30, 1999, when the World Trade Organization (WTO) opened its third round of ministerial meetings, the three thousand official delegates, two thousand journalists, and other registered observers were greatly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of protesters who came from all over the world to denounce the organization... The still-growing movement in opposition to efforts of institutions such as the WTO to take over the management of the international economy may well be larger than any popular protest movement of the last twenty years or more.

January 2000

Global Economic Crisis, Neoliberal Solutions,
and the Philippines

KIM SCIPES

The economic crisis that has been affecting the global economy for the last two and a half years started in East Asia. We've heard story after story about the problems in Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, and even Japan—but we've heard almost nothing about the situation in the Philippines. Is there something that the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank don't want us to know about the situation there?

December 1999

Eras of Power
FRANCES FOX PIVEN and RICHARD A. CLOWARD

We agree with much of the empirical basis for the MR challenge to the new catechisms about globalization and technological change. We agree, for example, with the arguments, made variously by Wood, Tabb, and Henwood in the pages of Monthly Review, and by Gordon, Zevin, Hirst, and Thompson, and others elsewhere, that the competitive pressures in domestic markets attributed to increased global trade and capital movement have been vastly overstated, especially with regard to the United States, which remains less exposed to international trade and capital flight than most other rich industrial countries.3 And we also agree that much of this is not really new in any case, that international integration characterized earlier periods of capitalist development, particularly the years before the First World War.

But if the system is basically the same, why is so much changing? In particular, why are class power relations changing? The evidence is considerable.

January 1998


More (or Less) on Globalization
PAUL M. SWEEZY

Globalization is not a condition or a phenomenon: it is a process that has been going on for a long time, in fact ever since capitalism came into the world as a viable form of society four or five centuries ago; (dating the birth of capitalism is an interesting problem but not relevant for present purposes). What is relevant and important, is to understand that capitalism is in its innermost essence an expanding system both internally and externally. Once rooted, it both grows and spreads. The classic analysis of this double movement is of course Marx's Capital.

September 1997


Globalization Is AnIssue, The Power
of Capital Is The Issue

WILLIAM K. TABB

The globalization hypothesis asserts that there has been a rapid and recent change in the nature of economic relations among national economies which have lost much of their distinct claim to separate internally driven development, and that domestic economic management strategies have become ineffective to the point of irrelevance. Internationalization is, in this view, seen as a tide sweeping over borders in which technology and irresistible market forces transform the global system in ways beyond the power of anyone to do much to change. Transnational corporations (TNCs) and global governance organizations, such as the World Bank and the IMF, enforce conformity on all nations no matter their location or preferences. The corollary to such thinking is that radical alternatives are not possible, and that in Margaret Thatcher's memorable phrase, TINA, "There is no alternative."

June 1997

All material © copyright 2008 by Monthly Review


E. Martinez/A. García (1997):
What is Neoliberalism?
"Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.
"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.
Economic development and the anatomy of crisis in Africa: from colonialism through structural adjustment
By H. Stein - 2000
Africa is mired in a developmental crisis, not the common narrow monetary or financial crisis portrayed in the standard literature but a crisis of a more profound and protracted nature. A developmental crisis refers to the generalized incapacity of an economy to generate the conditions necessary for a sustained improvement in the standard of living. The problem is basically structural in nature. The antecedents lay in the colonial period and in the inability of post-colonial governments to fundamentally transform the economies inherited at independence. While structural adjustment has exacerbated the underlying weaknesses of African economies, its greatest crime is located in its inherent inability to structurally and institutionally transform African economies. The major reason can be found in its roots that lie in neo-classical economic theory with its misplaced emphasis on balancing financial variables in a hypothetical axiomatic world. Adjustment is simply incapable of either assessing the nature of Africa’s problems or putting in place the policies that will put African countries on a trajectory of sustainable development. 1

D. O'Hearn (2001):
Time to think global and act local
Opening this year's Desmond Greaves Summer School, professor Denis O'Hearn, of Queen's University, Belfast attempted to bring some clarity to the debate about 'globalisation'. Describing it as the current 'buzzword' that few really understood, he stresses that, contrary to popular opinion, globalisation is long-standing feature of capitalism. What we are experiencing now could more appropriately be defined as the "current neo-liberal phase of globalisation", he said.
C. Rodríguez (1994):
The struggle of the Zapatistas run clearly and directly against the policies of Neo-liberalism
Neo-liberalism is a set of global economics re-hashed in the 70's by Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago, and Friedrich Von Hayec and are not well-known to North Americans as such. I want to describe them to you, because I am sure each of you will recognize them, once I do that. Neo-liberalism states that economic crises or problems, are the fault of government intervention in the economy. Its fundamental principle is "economic liberty". What does this mean? It means that an economy must be free of impediments in order to operate. It therefore views things like social programs and regulations as impediments (in fact in GATT it calls them "barriers to the free flow of trade and capital") and so requires the elimination of social security programs, government housing programs, minimum wage laws, environmental protection laws, labor legislation which protects workers, import taxes, price controls, subsidies. Because the principal goal of neo-liberalism is to maximize the profits of private enterprise it dedicates itself to the privatization, and liberalization or de-regularization of the economy, while carrying out so-called stabilization programs. What does this mean?...
D. Maheshvarananda (1999):
Amazon activists protest neo-liberalism
Zapatistas with black masks and a message of armed resistance organized the first conference in Chiapas, Mexico two years ago. Now Workers' Party (PT) Mayor Edmilson Rodrigues of Belém on the on the mouth of the Amazon River in the far north of Brazil was sponsoring the Second Encounter of the Americas for Humanity and Against Neo-liberalism. More than 3,000 delegates officially registered, and several thousand more attended from 6-11 December, 1999.
PROUT:
Progressive Utilization Theory
"The world needs new socioeconomic structures that are more just, stronger and less self-centered like Prout; and we need to make systematic changes that free us, too." Maria Dirlene Trindade Marques, President of the Union of Brazilian Economists
"Prout is very important to all who yearn for a liberation which starts from economics and opens to a totality of personal and social human existence."Leonardo Boff, Founder of Liberation Theology
"Alternative visions are crucial at this moment in history. Prout’s cooperative model of economic democracy, based on cardinal human values and sharing the resources of the planet for the welfare of everyone, deserves our serious consideration."Noam Chomsky, Critic of U.S foreign policy, supporter of libertarian socialist objectives
"Sarkar's theory is far superior to Adam Smith's or that of Marx."Johan Galtung, Founder UN Institute of Peace Studies
"P.R. Sarkar was one of the greatest modern philosophers of India." Giani Zail Singh, former President of India
"Prout’s vision is both holistic and systemic, with a concrete way
of reorganizing society. It has the power to construct itself in a post-capitalist project. Prout is transforming and profoundly revolutionary, and I support all of its dimensions." Marcos Arruda, leading Brazilian activist, economist and educationalist, expert on the international financial institutions, and head of an influential NGO.
M. McKinley:
Mental illness in neo-liberal economics and among neo-liberal economists: a satire
This paper is an attempt to psycho-pathologize neo-liberal economics, and neo-liberal economists through the literary device of satire. The argument is quite simple: neo-liberalism is a proven danger to the health - indeed, the lives - of the great majority of people who live on this planet. Since mainstream political-economic, and strategic discourse have proven themselves inadequate to the task of critique, this paper, with a little inspiration from Lewis Lapham, suggests another way -- to send "humour on a moral errand," to commit the crime of intellectual arson with the object of achieving or promoting "death-by-ridicule."
P. Bourdieu (1998):
The essence of neoliberalism
What is neoliberalism? A programme for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic.
S. George (1999):
A short history of Neo-liberalism
Twenty Years of Elite Economics and Emerging Opportunities for Structural Change

The Conference organisers have asked me for a brief history of neo-liberalism which they title "Twenty Years of Elite Economics". I'm sorry to tell you that in order to make any sense, I have to start even further back, some 50 years ago, just after the end of World War II.
In 1945 or 1950, if you had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today's standard neo-liberal toolkit, you would have been laughed off the stage at or sent off to the insane asylum...
Global Exchange
Global Exchange is a membership-based international human rights organization dedicated to promoting social, economic and environmental justice around the world.
P. Treanor (2005):
Neo-liberalism: origins, theory, definitions
Since the 1990's activists use the word 'neoliberalism' for global market-liberalism ('capitalism') and for free-trade policies. In this sense, it is widely used in South America. 'Neoliberalism' is often used interchangeably with 'globalisation'. But free markets and global free trade are not new, and this use of the word ignores developments in the advanced economies. The analysis here compares neoliberalism with its historical predecessors. Neoliberalism is not just economics: it is a social and moral philosophy, in some aspects qualitatively different from liberalism. Last changes 02 December 2005.
S. Kangas (2000)
The long FAQ on liberalism
Entry-level workers do not usually agree to their wages; they take whatever is offered. This is because there are more workers than jobs in the economy, and workers are in competition for those jobs -- the alternative is starvation. Employers often take advantage of this to let wages fall as low as they can get away with and still meet their needs. Allowing such a trend has historically resulted in greater income inequality. (The top half of the labor market operates by different dynamics from the bottom half.) Researchers have produced a broad body of evidence that higher levels of inequality are correlated with higher mortality rates. Thus, this sort of exploitation is deadly, and a violation of the right to life. Democratic government can stop this trend by regulating capitalism (through minimum wage laws, for example) and creating progressive taxes. Labor unions are an even more effective method in solving the destructive competition between individuals seeking jobs.
Compañía de Jesus:
A letter on Neo-liberalism in Latin America
As Provincial Superiors of the Society of Jesus in Latin America and the Caribbean, hearing the call of the 34th General Congregation to deepen our mission: "to proclaim the faith which seeks justice", we wish to share some reflections about the so-called neo­liberalism in our countries with all those who participate in the apostolic mission of the Society of Jesus throughout the continent and all those who make common cause with our people, especially the poorest. To claim that the economic measures applied in recent years in every Latin American and Caribbean country represent the only possible way of shaping the economy, and that the impoverishment of millions of Latin Americans is the inevitable price for future growth, are claims we cannot accept with equanimity. These economic measures are fruit of a culture. They propose a vision of the human person and mark out a political strategy that we must discern from the perspective of models of society to which we aspire and for which we work along with many men and women motivated by the hope of living in a more just and human society and of leaving it so for future generations.
T. Gounet (1998)
Workers Party of Belgium
Is neo-liberalism a "neo-reformism" theory?
Globalization, delocalisation and deregulation: all terms that indicate the changes in the world-economy. Some even claims that all these changes are expressions of a new stage of capitalism. They call it neo-liberalism, liberalism adapted to the situation of the worldmarket. They take it on themselves to fight against this neo-liberalism more than to fight capitalism itself.
Never before there has been so much poverty in the world. Never before wealth was so enormous. 225 multibillionairs, with Microsoft boss Bill Gates in front, have a fortune at their disposal which is more extensive than 47% of the yearly income of the rest of the planet. Never before the gap between the richests and the poorests was so deep. And the arrogance of the capitalists increases in keeping with it. According to them there's no good except the unconditional agreement with and even submission to the market-laws. An example of this is the negotiation about the Multilateral Investment Agreement (MIA) within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (O.E.C.D.), which organises the 29 richest countries.
 
.I. Wallerstein (1997)
Liberalism and Democracy: Frères Ennemis?
Both liberalism and democracy have been sponge terms. Each has been given multiple, often contradictory, definitions. Furthermore, the two terms have had an ambiguous relationship to each other ever since the first half of the nineteenth century when they first began to be used in modern political discourse. In some usages, they have seemed identical, or at least have seemed to overlap heavily. In other usages, they have been considered virtually polar opposites. I shall argue that they have in fact been frères ennemis. They have been members in some sense of the same family, but they have represented pushes in very different directions. And the sibling rivalry, so to speak, has been very intense. I will go further. I would say that working out today a reasonable relationship between the two thrusts, or concepts, or values is an essential political task, the prerequisite for resolving positively what I anticipate will be the very strong social conflicts of the twenty-first century.
J. Real (2001)
Feminist movements, opposed to neo-liberal economics
Feminist movements are not against globalization, “we are against neo-liberal economics”, said the speakers from the Mercosur Feminist Network, Chilean Rosalba Todaro, Uruguayan Lilian Celiberti and Argentinean Haydee Birgin.
Feminists “don’t want to return to the past”, they said on Saturday during the workshop “Political and Economic Reorganization of the World Order: Continuity and Change”, as part of the 9th International Forum of the Association for the Rights of Women in Development (AWID).
Lilian Celiberty said there is an agenda pending which “women must again raise”. She added that: “we women of the world don’t want to return to the past and that is why we are a force to be reckoned with today, a force with the ability to say that in this game (neo-liberal economics) we are not only betting our lives but the planet’s future”.
From Monthly Review - 2008
Ecological civilization
Harry Magdoff
The Mexican Farmers' Movement: Exposing the Myths of Free Trade
by Laura Carlsen- 2003
from Americas Program
Even long-time Mexico observers sat up and took notice on January 31. The march that day by campesino organizations, which counted on the support of unions, universities, and civil society groups, broke the mold in a city accustomed to large demonstrations. By the time they reached the Zócalo, they numbered nearly a hundred thousand. Not since the late thirties had so many campesinos marched in the nation's capital. And perhaps not since the revolution had such a diverse crowd united behind such radical demands. The farmers no longer demanded government programs to alleviate their poverty or help sell their products. The central demands of the march—renegotiation of the agricultural chapter of NAFTA and a far-reaching national agreement on rural development-shot straight to the heart of the neoliberal model and called for a new vision. . . . .

World Economic Outlook Reports

A Survey by the IMF Staff usually published twice a year. It presents IMF staff economists' analyses of global economic developments during the near and medium term. Chapters give an overview as well as more detailed analysis of the world economy; consider issues affecting industrial countries, developing countries, and economies in transition to market; and address topics of pressing current interest. Annexes, boxes, charts, and an extensive statistical appendix augment the text.
See also, the World Economic Databases. -- November 07, 2006

IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) -- Financial Systems and Economic Cycles, September 2006
Description: World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format. While the central focus of World Economic Outlook is a comprehensive review of recent global developments, forecasts and risks, and current policy recommendations, it also contains analytical chapters providing an in-depth analysis of a variety of topical policy issues that help underpin the policy advice.
Date: September 14, 2006
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) -- Globalization and Inflation, April 2006
Description: April 2006 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: April 13, 2006
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) -- Building Institutions, September 2005
Description: September 2005 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: September 14, 2005
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) -- April 2005
Description: The April 2005 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: April 07, 2005
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO)-- September 2004
Description: The September 2004 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: September 29, 2004
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO)-- April 2004
Description: The April 2004 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: April 14, 2004
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO)-- September 2003
Description: The September 2003 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: September 13, 2003
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO)-- April 2003
Description: The April 2003 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: April 09, 2003
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO)-- September 2002
Description: The September 2002 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: September 25, 2002
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), April 2002--Contents
Description: The April 2002 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: April 18, 2002
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), The Global Economy After September 11, December 2001--Contents
Description: The December 2001 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: December 18, 2001
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), The Information Technology Revolution, October 2001--Contents
Description: The October 2001 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: September 26, 2001
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), Fiscal Policy and Macroeconomic Stability, May 2001--Contents
Description: The May 2001 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: April 26, 2001
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), Focus on Transition Economies, October 2000--Contents
Description: The October 2000 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: September 19, 2000
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), Asset Prices and the Business Cycle, May 2000--Contents
Description: The May 2000 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: May 12, 2000
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), Safeguarding Macroeconomic Stability at Low Inflation, October 1999 -- Contents
Description: The October 1999 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: September 22, 1999
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), International Financial Contagion, May 1999--Contents
Description: The May 1999 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: May 01, 1999
World Economic Outlook and International Capital Markets--Interim Assessment, December 1998 -- Table of Contents
Description: The December 1998 World Economic Outlook (WEO) and International Capital Markets Interim Assessment Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: December 21, 1998
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), Financial Turbulence and the World Economy, October 1998--Contents
Description: The October 1998 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: October 01, 1998
IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO), Financial Crises: Causes and Indicators, May 1998--Contents
Description: The May 1998 World Economic Outlook (WEO) Table of Contents with links to the full text in PDF format
Date: May 01, 1998
BBC World News: - 17 March 2005
Wolfowitz to spread neo-con gospel

By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website
By nominating Paul Wolfowitz to be head of the World Bank, President George Bush appears to be sending a message to the world that he intends to spread into development policy the same neo-conservative philosophy that has led his foreign policy.
--------------------------------------
Wolfowitz seeks to calm critics
Dismay at Wolfowitz's nomination
Bush backs hawk for World Bank
Wolfensohn quits World Bank
Profile: Paul Wolfowitz
Wolf at World Bank's door?
Head-to-Head: The right choice?
In quotes: Wolfowitz reaction
Q&A: What the World Bank does IMF and World Bank: reform underway?

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E. Lander (1994): Neoliberalismo, sociedad civil y democracia



Introducción


I. Acción social, efectividad simbólica y nuevos ámbitos de lo político


II. Democratización y autoritarismo: tendencias actuales del sistema político


III. El impacto del ajuste neoliberal (1989-1993)


IV. Movimientos sociales urbanos, sociedad civil y nuevas formas de ciudadanía


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Notas
El marcador del desarrollo: 25 años de progreso disminuido
Septiembre 2005, Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, y David Rosnick
Este reporte examina el crecimiento de los países en vías de desarrollo en los últimos veinticinco años.  Es una versión actualizada de un reporte con el mismo título escrito en el año 2000. (SP200509A)
Informe pdf
En inglés