Description:

Neoliberalism - the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action - has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Its spread has depended upon a reconstitution of state powers such that privatization, finance, and market processes are emphasized. State interventions in the economy are minimized, while the obligations of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens are diminished. David Harvey, author of 'The New Imperialism' and 'The Condition of Postmodernity', here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. While Thatcher and Reagan are often cited as primary authors of this neoliberal turn, Harvey shows how a complex of forces, from Chile to China and from New York City to Mexico City, have also played their part. In addition he explores the continuities and contrasts between neoliberalism of the Clinton sort and the recent turn towards neoconservative imperialism of George W. Bush. Finally, through critical engagement with this history, Harvey constructs a framework not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

Review

David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism is a work of political economy that doubles as a detective story. The crime is the dramatic restoration of upper-class wealth and power since the late 1970s; the suspects are the usual ones — Thatcher, Reagan, Pinochet, Deng Xiaoping — but also the Mont Pelerin Society intellectuals, New York investment bankers, the IMF, and the corporate lobbyists who learned, as Harvey puts it, "to spend as a class." The book's central and most provocative argument is that neoliberalism was never primarily about achieving efficient markets or stimulating growth. It was, from the beginning, a political project to restore class power — and by that measure, it succeeded spectacularly, even as it failed on its own stated terms.

Harvey traces neoliberalism's origins from the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, through its incubation in think tanks and economics departments, to its explosive implementation beginning in 1978-80 across Chile, China, Britain, and the United States. He is particularly sharp on the mechanisms of what he calls "accumulation by dispossession" — privatization, financialization, the management of debt crises, and the state-driven redistribution of wealth upward. The New York City fiscal crisis of 1975 emerges as a pivotal case study: investment bankers refused to roll over the city's debt, forced it into technical bankruptcy, and imposed austerity that gutted public services while protecting bondholder returns. This template, Harvey argues, was later deployed at national and international scales through the IMF and structural adjustment programmes.

The book's geographical range is one of its great strengths. Harvey moves deftly between Mexico's peso crises and the privatization of ejido lands, South Korea's chaebol-driven development and its humiliation during the 1997 Asian crisis, Sweden's employers' federation gradually dismantling social democracy through propaganda and EU integration, and Argentina's catastrophic collapse. The chapter on China is especially illuminating, showing how Deng's reforms produced something genuinely novel — neoliberalism interdigitated with authoritarian state control — while also generating staggering inequality and the largest mass migration in human history.

Harvey writes with the analytical precision of an academic geographer and the moral urgency of a critic who sees the numbers behind the theory as human lives. When he notes that the ratio of CEO compensation to average worker pay in the US went from 30-to-1 in 1970 to nearly 500-to-1 by 2000, or that the world's 200 richest people doubled their net worth in four years, the statistics land like indictments. His use of Karl Polanyi's 1944 warnings about market utopianism degenerating into authoritarianism is prescient, particularly in light of the neoconservative turn he identifies in the book's later chapters.

If the book has a weakness, it is that the relentless focus on class restoration as the explanatory key can occasionally feel reductive. Harvey acknowledges the "chaotic" and "uneven" character of neoliberalization, the role of contingency and internal contradictions, but sometimes these caveats seem pro forma before the analysis returns to its central thesis. The final chapter on alternatives, while intellectually honest about the difficulty of the task, is necessarily thinner than the diagnosis that precedes it — a common problem in works of critical political economy.

Published in 2005, the book reads now with an almost eerie timeliness. Harvey's warnings about unsustainable US deficits, the fragility of financialization, and the potential for a major crisis at the heart of the neoliberal order anticipated the 2008 financial collapse by three years. His observation that "the upper classes, insisting on the sacrosanct nature of their property rights, preferred to crash the system rather than surrender any of their privileges and power" could serve as a summary of much that has happened since. For anyone seeking to understand how the world economy was remade in the image of a small intellectual movement and the class interests it served, this remains an essential text.

Reviewed 2026-03-28

Notable Quotes

The central values of civilization are in danger. Over large stretches of the earth's surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared. In others they are under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy.

The founding statement of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, the intellectual seedbed of neoliberal thought founded by Friedrich von Hayek — neoliberal origins, freedom, Mont Pelerin Society

Economics are the method, but the object is to change the soul.

Margaret Thatcher declaring the deeper purpose of her neoliberal programme — not merely economic reform but a fundamental transformation of British society — Thatcher, ideology, cultural transformation

There is no such thing as society, only individual men and women — and their families.

Thatcher's famous formulation, which Harvey cites as encapsulating the neoliberal project to dissolve all forms of social solidarity in favour of individualism and private property — individualism, Thatcher, social solidarity

Neoliberalization has not been very effective in revitalizing global capital accumulation, but it has succeeded remarkably well in restoring, or in some instances creating, the power of an economic elite.

Harvey's central thesis, summarizing the paradox at the heart of the book — neoliberalism failed as economic policy but succeeded as a class project — class power, core thesis, capital accumulation

It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power.

Harvey's summation at the close of Chapter 4, after tracing neoliberalization's effects across Mexico, Argentina, South Korea, and Sweden — ideology, rhetoric vs reality, class power

The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery.

Karl Polanyi writing in 1944, quoted by Harvey to show how liberal utopianism inverts the meaning of freedom — a passage Harvey finds 'peculiarly appropriate to our contemporary condition' — Polanyi, freedom, regulation

The idea of freedom 'thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise', which means 'the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property'.

Polanyi's diagnosis quoted by Harvey to frame the book's argument about the selective nature of neoliberal freedom — freedom, inequality, Polanyi, class

What a peculiar world, in which the poor countries are in effect subsidizing the richest.

Joseph Stiglitz quoted by Harvey on the perverse flow of wealth from developing countries to their creditors in the financial centres through structural adjustment programmes — global inequality, debt, IMF, Stiglitz

Business was learning to spend as a class.

Mark Blyth's characterization, cited by Harvey, of the coordinated corporate campaign in the 1970s US — through think tanks, PACs, and the Business Roundtable — that laid the political groundwork for the neoliberal turn — class formation, corporate power, political strategy

The coup, against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, was promoted by domestic business elites threatened by Allende's drive towards socialism. It was backed by US corporations, the CIA, and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Harvey describing the 1973 Chilean coup as the 'first experiment with neoliberal state formation,' carried out on 'the little September 11th' — Chile, Pinochet, US imperialism, origins of neoliberalism

The management of the New York fiscal crisis pioneered the way for neoliberal practices both domestically under Reagan and internationally through the IMF in the 1980s. It established the principle that in the event of a conflict between the integrity of financial institutions and bondholders' returns, on the one hand, and the well-being of the citizens on the other, the former was to be privileged.

Harvey's analysis of the 1975 NYC fiscal crisis as a turning point — where investment bankers led by Walter Wriston forced the city into technical bankruptcy — New York City, finance capital, austerity, bondholders

This amounted to a coup by the financial institutions against the democratically elected government of New York City, and it was every bit as effective as the military coup that had earlier occurred in Chile.

Harvey comparing the financial disciplining of New York City in 1975 to the Pinochet coup, arguing both served the same class interests through different means — financial power, New York City, Chile, democracy

To get rich is glorious.

Deng Xiaoping's famous declaration after touring southern China in 1992, adding 'What does it matter if it is a ginger cat or a black cat as long as it catches mice?' — opening the whole of China to market forces — China, Deng Xiaoping, market reform

Neoliberal theorists are profoundly suspicious of democracy. Governance by majority rule is seen as a potential threat to individual rights and constitutional liberties.

Harvey describing the anti-democratic core of neoliberal theory, which prefers governance by experts, executive order, and insulated institutions like central banks — democracy, authoritarianism, neoliberal state

The upper classes had to move decisively if they were to protect themselves from political and economic annihilation.

Harvey describing the crisis of the 1970s when the share of assets held by the top 1% of the US population plunged precipitously, motivating the counter-revolution that became neoliberalism — class power, 1970s crisis, wealth inequality

Between two rights, force decides.

Marx quoted by Harvey to frame the clash between the neoliberal rights of private property and profit versus alternative conceptions of human rights, self-determination, and social justice — rights, Marx, class struggle, power

Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.

Lewis Powell's confidential 1971 memo to the US Chamber of Commerce, urging business to organize a coordinated assault on universities, media, and courts — shortly before his elevation to the Supreme Court — Powell memo, corporate strategy, political organization

The main substantive achievement of neoliberalization has been to redistribute, rather than to generate, wealth and income.

Harvey's verdict on neoliberalism's economic record, introducing his concept of 'accumulation by dispossession' — privatization, financialization, crisis management, and state redistribution upward — redistribution, accumulation by dispossession, economic record

Necessitous men are not free men.

Roosevelt's 1935 message to Congress, cited by Harvey in the final chapter to contrast the New Deal vision of freedom — freedom from want — with the neoliberal reduction of freedom to market freedom — Roosevelt, freedom, alternatives, social democracy

The first lesson we must learn is that if it looks like class struggle and acts like class war then we have to name it unashamedly for what it is.

Harvey's call in the final chapter to reject the neoliberal fiction that class is a meaningless category, arguing that progressives must recognize the thirty-year campaign to restore elite class power — class struggle, alternatives, political strategy

To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment would result in the demolition of society.

Polanyi's warning, quoted at length by Harvey, that treating labour, land, and money as pure commodities destroys the social fabric — a passage Harvey finds vindicated by the neoliberal record — Polanyi, commodification, social destruction, market fundamentalism

In a depression assets return to their rightful owners.

Andrew Mellon quoted in the context of the Asian financial crisis, where Western and Japanese corporations acquired domestic assets at bargain prices after IMF-facilitated devaluations — financial crisis, accumulation by dispossession, Asia

The reduction and control of inflation is the only systematic success neoliberalization can claim.

Harvey's stark assessment of neoliberalism's economic track record — global growth rates declined from 3.5% in the 1960s to barely 1% after 2000 — economic performance, inflation, growth failure

There is a far, far nobler prospect of freedom to be won than that which neoliberalism preaches. There is a far, far worthier system of governance to be constructed than that which neoconservatism allows.

The book's closing lines, Harvey's call for democratic alternatives to both neoliberalism and the neoconservative authoritarianism emerging in response to its contradictions — freedom, democracy, alternatives, conclusion