Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen — The twilight of neoliberalism: can popular struggles create new worlds from below?

If the ideologists of neoliberalism want to present it as the natural order of humanity, a more sober historical assessment points out that it has lasted about as long as Keynesianism did before it – a few decades.

In our new book We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism we condense four decades of research and activism into an argument about how ordinary people can understand the nature of the world we live in and find ways to push beyond the neoliberal orthodoxy of the last few decades.
We start by asking how we can get beyond the theologies of university economists – impervious to the failures of their ideas and their costs in human lives – and the opinion politics of angry right-wingers on the Internet. We look at how people in struggle learn about the world through attempting to change things (and in the process overthrow apartheid, dictatorships or empires) and develop movement-based theories such as Marxism, feminism or ecological thinking. Often these forms of thought become taken up into the university, and popular movements have to “reclaim, reuse and recycle” them for their own purposes, in attempting to break out of the limits which the powerful and wealthy want to set on them. 

We Make Our Own History rethinks humanist Marxism as a theory of collective action, including the ways in which social movements from below can develop from localised struggles over individual issues to far-reaching projects for social change (a welfare state, an end to patriarchy, an ecologically sustainable society). It also looks at the history of movements from above – those which can draw on the resources of capital, the state or cultural power to impose themselves. Rather than see these as unstoppable, we show how complex the process of constructing power has been, how at every stage of the way popular resistance has shifted the terrain, and how short-lived all historical forms of capitalism have been. If the ideologists of neoliberalism want to present it as the natural order of humanity, a more sober historical assessment points out that it has lasted about as long as Keynesianism did before it – a few decades – and is just as vulnerable to the collapse of the alliances which sustain it.…

Yet any attempt to shortcircuit the slow development of popular agency, whether through opinion politics or intellectual critique which discuss structures in isolation from the kinds of agency which sustain them – and the kinds of agency needed to overcome them – is doomed to failure. The most effective orientation for change is one which starts from dialogue with practically situated struggles – those that people have to engage in to sustain their lives – and supports their extension in alliances across space but also across the social world, into far-reaching projects for change which are grounded in a wide range of differentsituations. These processes of external struggle, internal learning and alliance-building are what matter most, and there is no short-cut (in universities, parties or shouting at the computer screen) that can usefully avoid them. 

Human beings make our own history, but not just as we please: neoliberalism, like all other forms of capitalism before it (and in the bigger picture like every form of class society), had a beginning and will have an end. The key question in this crisis is whether movements from below are able to develop together in a way that enables them to set the direction for what comes next.

Open Democracy

The twilight of neoliberalism: can popular struggles create new worlds from below?
Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen

Naomi Wolf — The brain science of the vagina heralds a new sexual revolution

Finally, women have the neuroscientific knowledge to liberate their bodies from patriarchy's social control and culture of shame

The Guardian | On Making Change
The brain science of the vagina heralds a new sexual revolution
Naomi Wolf

Why is this is a big deal? The Feminist Movement that began in Sixties the was the extension of a trend begun by the Women's Suffrage Movement of the 19th century that eventually succeeded in getting women enfranchised. Since then women have also taken their places on the political scene, many serving in legislature, ministries, and as a prime ministers. It has also been helpful that Britain has been rule by a queen for much of recent memory.

However, since the inception of feminism or "women's lib," the women's movement has been not only a political force but a source of personal empowerment for a great many women. It is not by accident that the Sexual Revolution took place in this context as well.

Women's suffrage is now called "first wave feminism," and the feminism that began in the Sixties, "second wave feminism." "Third wave feminism" began in the 1990's and continues into the present. The firsts and second wave were spearheaded by white Western women and their expressions were culturally defined. Third wave feminism is global and encompasses many views of femininity. The basic aim of this wave of feminism is to throw off patriarchy finally and permanently, globally.

Feminism is a dialectal response to a traditionally imposed master-slave relationship, in which women (and children) were treated culturally and even legally as men's chattel. Quite predictably, there is also a dialectically response to that also, with people like Rush Limbaugh leading the debate from the masculine side and sounding like a "male chauvinist pig" in femi-speak.

Naomi Wolf's work needs to be read in this context. It is significant in that it brings to light scientific research showing that feminism is not "just" anti-traditional and countercultural. It is based in physiological psychology, and it is not going away. This trend is a big deal, and any cultural entity that stands in the way of it is on the wrong side of history. Beware GOP, and proceed at your own risk.

The rise of the woman is no mystery to business people, since they are well aware that the majority of purchases of consumer goods are now either by women or heavily influenced by women. Women are now also taking their places in management and the professions. This trend is having profound cultural and institutional influences economically, as well as socially and politically as women increasingly find themselves and come into their own power.