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Volume 37.3 May 2013 108390 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research
DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12065

Neoliberalism is Dead . . .
Long Live Neoliberalism!
MANUEL B. AALBERS

Abstract
In this essay I argue that the ideology of neoliberalism may have failed, but that
neoliberal practice is alive and kicking. Most of the solutions to the crisis are in the
spirit of neoliberalism, rather than enraptured by neoliberal spirit. Yet, this neoliberal
solution is not a solution; it is part of the problem in the sense that it is leading to more
problems not just today but also in decades to come. This so-called solution is often
presented as Keynesian, but it is only partly so. A better way to classify this solution
is as an attempt to save the existing, neoliberal, system. The big crisis of our time did
not become a crisis of the hegemony of neoliberalism, because actually existing
neoliberalism is flexible enough to influence policy in other ways than through the
mantra of free markets: it thrives on presenting existing socioeconomic conditions as
failing and neoliberalism as the best solution. Considering the many blows neoliberal
ideology has received during this crisis, it should already be dead, but like a creeping
cancer neoliberal practice is able to resurface and show up in both new and unexpected,
and old and predictable, ways.
We saved the economy, but we kind of
lost the public doing it.
Timothy Geithner, US
secretary of the
Treasury, quoted in
Cassidy (2010)

Introduction
Is the global financial and economic crisis a crisis of neoliberalism? It could easily be
argued that that this crisis should be for Friedmanism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was
for authoritarianism an indictment of an ideology (Klein, 2007) but in this essay
I will argue that neoliberalism not only remains dominant, but also seems to continuously
come up with new ideas on how to save and revamp the system. The ideology of
neoliberalism may have failed, but neoliberal practice is not running out of ideas yet, as
Smith (2008) has suggested. Reflecting on the various crises of the last three decades,
Brenner et al. (2010: 41) make the important point that:
In the midst of these crises, many commentators predicted the imminent demise of
neoliberalism, but in each case, regulatory failure appears, paradoxically, to have facilitated an

A much earlier version of this essay was presented as a keynote lecture at the of the RC21, Sociology
of Urban and Regional Development annual international conference, So Paulo, Brazil, 2325 August
2009. The author would like to thank James Sidaway, Ewald Engelen and the late Neil Smith for their
comments on an earlier draft of this essay. More than ever, all remaining errors are mine.

2013 Urban Research Publications Limited. Published by John Wiley & Sons. 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA
1084 Debate

intensification of aggressively market-disciplinary forms of regulatory reorganization, in some

cases to alleviate or circumvent the dysfunctional consequences of earlier rounds of reform.

So far, most of the solutions to the crisis are in the spirit of neoliberalism, rather than
enraptured by neoliberal spirit. The neoliberal spirit is very much alive; it has different
forms and is more flexible than most of us would like to think (Peck and Tickell, 2002).
Moreover, neoliberalism does not mind pretending it is something else. In fact, it is us
who label them as neoliberals most neoliberals, in particular policymakers, would
not label themselves so, notwithstanding important exceptions like Milton Friedman.
The height of the financial crisis coincided with the election of Barack Obama as
president of the United States. Considered not only a Democrat but also a liberal (which
in the US context generally means left wing or progressive rather than neoliberal),
Obamas victory has also been seen as the end of the neoliberal era but it is not.
Peck (2010) speaks of Obamanomics, which is cementing rather than challenging
neoliberalism. Indeed, a large element of Obamas economic team comprises agents of
neoliberalism, including some old faces from the Clinton era. We should remember
that, while Bill Clinton was no Ronald Reagan, he was in many ways an agent of
neoliberalism too. Many poor people and ethnic minority groups still love Bill Clinton
but, in the 8 years that he was president, the gap between rich and poor increased more
than under Reagan or Bush Senior. In addition, many of the roots of the current crisis also
go back to the Clinton era.
It is sometimes argued that discussions of perceived neoliberalism are false, since
there are no completely neoliberal systems. This is true, but at the same time an empty
statement, as we should see neoliberalism or, perhaps better, neoliberalization
as a process, not a condition. Moreover, neoliberal practice was never about total
withdrawal of the state; it was about a qualitative restructuring of the state, involving not
so much less state intervention as a different kind of state intervention, not aimed at the
benefit of the population at large but at the benefit of a few. Neoliberal practice was all
about redistribution, but not from the rich to the poor, but rather to the elites from
everyone else. Neoliberal practice is not as foreign to government support, including
bailouts, as is often believed (and the same applies to neoliberal ideology). In fact, I
believe that corporate welfare (a term often credited to Ralph Nadar, but already used
by the Canadian New Democratic Party as early as 1972) is a central tenet of actually
existing neoliberalism.
The ideological project hides what neoliberalism actually wants and does.
Redistribution is inherently part of this redistributing like water running up the hill,
not trickling down. Therefore, it is often not so much deregulation that we see, but rather
re-regulation (Aalbers, 2012). In that sense, the policies and practices of privatization are
more central to neoliberalism than the ideology of free markets. States are not external
but central to neoliberalism, because the freedoms the neoliberal state embodies reflect
the interest of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations, and
financial capital (Harvey, 2005: 7). In this process, the state starts to view the pursuit of
profit by firms as a social goal, even for the achievement of objectives that cannot
be achieved directly by profit maximization itself (Crouch, 2011: 167). The giant
corporation, not the market, becomes the model to which both government and the
market have to adapt: market regulation is tailored to benefit the giant corporation and the
public sector is restructured to resemble the giant corporation (ibid.).
The current financial crisis heralds the failure not only of an economic system but also
of an ideology: the ideology of free markets and the ideology of neoliberalism. Now, it
is important to note that these are not the same thing or rather, the practice of
neoliberalism (i.e. actually existing neoliberalism) and the ideology of free markets, and
by extension the ideology of neoliberalism, have less in common that one may think.
Mainstream economics has presented the free market idea as the only alternative
indeed as the natural order of things. Yet, there is nothing natural or objective about
the so-called free market. Outside of mainstream economics in heterodox

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economics, international political economy, economic sociology, economic geography

and economic anthropology there is a growing opposition claiming that free market
models are neither free nor objective. That opposition has been right from the start, but
never seems to win any battles, since mainstream economists, as well as most politicians
and administrators, are simply not listening. Mainstream economists could and would
simply ignore most of what happened outside their discipline. It is not just neoliberalism
that became hegemonic in many parts of the world, it is also free market economics that
became hegemonic. It is important to understand that the two are intrinsically linked.
The political practice of neoliberalism was often based on the recipes of mainstream
economists; likewise, economists were used to endorse neoliberal policies as the only
sane ones because they adhered to the so-called natural order of things. But free markets
are not natural: markets are institutions created by the state and maintained by state
intervention. The invisible hand of free markets needed the state to create that market
(Polanyi, 1944; Immergluck, 2004).

The neoliberal solution

What we have witnessed in the last couple of years is not the dismantling of
neoliberalism but, by and large, the furthering of neoliberalism. Or, in other words:
neoliberalism responds to the crisis with more neoliberalism (Vainer, 2009 in his
discussion of Le Gals, 2009). As David Harvey (2009) has argued, the solutions to the
crisis look more like a qualitative transformation than a terminal event or reversal. The
financial crisis is leading to cutback after cutback. A core element of the state response
to the crisis has been government bailouts of private companies on the one hand and
austerity measures for everybody else on the other. Although there is now a lot of talk
about more regulation, much of it may be beneficial to the neoliberal agenda. Moreover,
the end result of this crisis may very well be further dismantling of the welfare state.
There are already many examples pointing in this direction, both at the local and the
national level.
In the US, what is happening in states like California and Florida (not just at state level
but also at the municipal level) typifies this situation. Many municipalities in these states,
but also in countless others, are facing lower tax revenues (in particular real estate taxes)
and cuts in funding of schools, social services, garbage collection, infrastructure, etc.
This is not so different from the town of Narvik in Norway, where bad investments in
securities and derivatives forced the town to cut back on elderly care and the fire
department, close several schools and cancel the construction of a new school, child-care
center and nursing home (Aalbers, 2009). One complication in the US, and possibly
elsewhere too, is that municipalities (as well as many states) are not allowed to run a
deficit. While the national government tries to stimulate the economy by spending more,
municipalities and many states that are faced with decreasing revenues also have to
cut back on expenses. This is by no means a marginal development. State revenues in
New York, a state that in no way represents a worst-case scenario, have reduced by 36%
in a year.
Life in Iceland, another country hit particularly hard by the financial crisis, is
changing in so many ways that it will become a very different place, probably with a
much weaker welfare state. The power of neoliberalism is like that: it can further its
agenda both during economic booms and economic busts. This is also evident in many
European countries with relatively strong welfare states, where the current crisis
provides neoliberals with the opportunity to cut money on state spending and to further
the commodification of labor power, for example by adjusting collective labor
agreements or by forcing workers to choose between unemployment for some and wage
cuts for all. The story is now repeating itself, not just in American cities hit hard by
foreclosures such as Stockton (California) and Cleveland (Ohio), but also in many

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European countries, from badly damaged ones like Greece, Spain, Iceland and Ireland to
those less affected such as the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands. Both local and
national governments around the globe propose cuts in public expenditure. Ironically,
neoliberalism is to blame for the problem but also prescribes the solution: showering
giant corporations with public money and cutting all other public spending. As Timothy
Geithner says in the opening quote of this essay: We saved the economy, but we kind of
lost the public doing it. In a way, the aftermath of the crisis is turning out to be a
neoliberal dream in the making.
We may think that the financial crisis should mean the end of the neoliberal era, but
in reality it is in many ways furthering it, in a manner that benefits fewer actors than was
the case when neoliberalism expanded in good economic times. David Harvey likes to
quote Andrew Mellon, a former US banker turned secretary of the Treasury (between
1921 and 1932), who said that in a crisis, assets return to their rightful owners. For
Harvey (2005), a crisis is often used to consolidate class power and this is exactly what
the bailouts of the financial firms on Wall Street and the Detroit car manufacturers were
doing (see also Dumnil and Lvy, 2004). However the other Detroits, the cities and
their many foreclosed homes, are not being bailed out. Now, under the Obama
administration, there is a significant program to help people in foreclosure or to prevent
foreclosure, but it cannot keep up with the continuing high numbers of people losing
their homes (Aalbers, 2012). So far, the program is a far cry from being a success. In
addition, the state is doing very little to allow bankruptcy judges to modify a mortgage
on a primary residence to make it affordable. Oddly, bankruptcy judges can cram down
a mortgage on a second home or a yacht both most likely owned by a rich person
but not on a primary residence (Lobel, 2008: 32). This suggests that government is
aimed at aiding one class of Americans the extremely wealthy (ibid.).
Mellons quote reaches further though: now, more than at anytime during the
preceding boom, accessible capital gives privileged access to buying assets on the cheap,
as knockdown prices are to be had in certain parts of the economy. This is not just
because stocks, securities, companies and all kinds of other assets are now relatively
cheap and in need of investors, but also because the state (at least in the case of the US)
is facilitating the process. Early in 2009, Timothy Geithner, Obamas secretary of the
Treasury, launched a series of plans to stimulate the financial sector, all of which include
publicprivate partnerships between government and private investors. One plan is meant
to match private money with government money, whereby the government basically
offers to lend up to 85% of the private stake. In another plan, the government provides
money to buy toxic assets while also offering a line of credit to private investors to buy
more assets. This part of the plan is called the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan
Facility (TALF). It is the best and most direct example of socializing risk and privatizing
profit I have come across so far. In TALF, the additional government money comes in the
form of a non-recourse loan, meaning that if the investment turns bad the government
will not see its money back:
The non-recourse loans can constitute up to 85 per cent of the total investment. The private
investors get all the upside if the price goes up. This is a truly amazing sweetener to persuade
private money in practice, if the plan works, that will be made up of hedge funds, sovereign
wealth funds and private equity groups to get involved in buying up the toxic assets. The
idea, the hope, the longing, is that this will create a market in the assets; and once a functioning
market is created, the thinking goes, the market will realise that these assets are in fact
undervalued, and the prices will recover, and bank balance sheets will recover, and peace and
order will break out and the financial sector will be restored to health. Itll be like the last act
of Fidelio, except the people emerging from the cellars blinking with joy will be bankers
(Lanchester, 2009: 10).
This plan is great if you happen to be one of the investors: you will lose very little if the
investment goes wrong, while your profits will be multiplied if the investment does well.
It gives a whole new twist to Mellons in a crisis, assets return to their rightful owners;

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a twist that may seem counter-neoliberal because there is very strong state intervention
in the market, but is in fact almost a textbook case of neoliberalism as it is all about the
state facilitating the financial sector and well-off investors to make a lot of money at
reduced risks. Such solutions to the crisis make one think not only of socializing risk
and privatizing profit (see also Stiglitz, 2010), but also of related ideas like corporate
welfare, the hidden welfare state (Howard, 1997) and socialism for the rich and
capitalism for the poor. Indeed, what actually happens is that state policies assure that
more resources flow to the rich than to the poor. This is neoliberalism at its best and
at its worst.
We could call this Neoliberalism 3.0 (Hendrikse and Sidaway, 2010) but that would
suggest neoliberalism has entered a new phase characterized by different features than
previously. Yet it is nothing new that neoliberal policies take the opportunity of a crisis
to promote public cuts this is the modus operandi of neoliberalism. Furthermore,
geopolitical shifts and the connection between security, terrorism and neoliberalism
(ibid.) were arguably more prominent in the years before the crisis than they currently
are. The global crisis may have started in the West, but it quickly spread to the rest and
we should not forget that despite high unemployment rates in many countries of the West,
the real problems are more severe in many countries of the rest. Actually existing
neoliberalism is thriving in many places in both the West and the rest, but it is also
intrinsic to neoliberalization that it does not work in exactly the same way in different
places.
Some commentators see a little light against the dark sky of neoliberal reform, even
in the US. French and Leyshon (2010), for example, mention the Dodd-Frank Wall Street
Reform and Consumer Protection Act as a positive example. Although the Dodd-Frank
Act (signed into law by Barack Obama on 21 July 2010 and consisting of 2,300 pages
directing regulators to create 533 new rules) is clearly an important step in the right
direction, it could also be argued that it is a minimal improvement considering what is
needed to patch up the previous system that enabled the financial crisis. Cassidy (2010)
argues that the measures actually taken represented the least that could have been done.
The Dodd-Frank Act has also been criticized for trying to forestall the last crisis rather
than the next one but this is intrinsic to post-crisis regulation. More problematic is
that, with this legislation in place, the financial crisis of 2008 would probably not have
been forestalled. The Dodd-Frank Act also saw heavy lobbying by the financial sector,
because too big to fail also implies big enough to twitch and steer public policymaking.
Partly as a result of these lobbying activities, some securities and derivatives are still
exempt from new regulation, big banks face no effective limits to their debt pile and will
still be too big to fail (and the biggest of them are now actually bigger than ever before),
the credit rating agencies remain under-regulated, the situation of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac and their implicit government backing remains unresolved, and finally the
new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be part of the Federal Reserve Board
and can be overruled by the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a body known for
prioritizing bank profitability. All things considered, the Dodd-Frank Act is a necessary
yet insufficient step in the direction of a de-neoliberalized financial sector.1

Conclusions
The neoliberal solution, i.e. the current solution, is not a solution; it is part of the problem
in the sense that it is leading to more problems not just today but also over the coming
decades. The question is: who will have to pay for the solutions of today? The

1 The situation is not necessarily better in the European Union (see e.g. Posner and Vron, 2010) or
elsewhere.

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neoliberal solution is not repairing the system very well: it adds some very expensive
patches here and there. At best, it is a short-term solution. Early commentators, not only
in the media but academics too (e.g. Birch and Mykhnenko, 2010; De Grauwe, 2010;
OConnell, 2010), viewed the solutions as a Keynesian redux, but this so-called solution
is only partly Keynesian. A better way to classify this solution is as an attempt to save the
existing system. The idea of intervening in economies suffering from a speculative bust
may be Keynesian, but the early interventions are limitedly Keynesian because they do
not so much stimulate investment, but rather spending and deleveraging. This is
Keynes-minus at best. Deleveraging is not investing; although it is necessary, it has little
to do with Keynesian policies or economics.
More recent responses to the crisis have even less to do with Keynesianism: while
support for the financial sector (and to some degree other giant corporations too) is
maintained, other strategies contain little stimulus spending and great doses of cutbacks
on labor and public services, in some extreme cases (such as Greece) combined with a
total sellout of the public sector. What decades of neoliberalism could not accomplish
now happens almost overnight. If there is a transformation of neoliberalism taking place,
it is not so much a qualitative shift (Harvey, 2009) or a new phase characterized
by different features (Hendrikse and Sidaway, 2010) but a quantitative shift, i.e. an
intensification of neoliberalization, in many places. The differences between countries
are easy to see: Greece isnt the US or the Netherlands, but that should not prevent us
from seeing the dominant trend of intensified neoliberalization clearly visible in these
three countries (and indeed many others).
There are many actually existing neoliberalisms, but what many responses to the
financial crisis and related crises seem to have in common is a mixture of the following:
bail-outs and stimulus packages for the financial sector and other giant corporations, the
socialization of private debt and the privatization of public debt and risk, further
privatization of public assets, further commodification and depoliticization of labor and,
particularly in many EU countries, austerity measures (see also Hendrikse and Sidaway,
2010; Walks, 2010; Rossi, 2013, this issue). As Peet (2011: 398) summarizes: the
neoliberal state imposes sanctions, not on the speculators, but on the hard-working
people whose taxes bailed out the financial system. Austerity is societal punishment for
the crimes of the wealthy. It is imposed on everyone but the guilty.2 The end results are
different in different places, just like the starting points were different, but what the
manifestations of the crisis in most North American and (Western) European countries
have in common is not neo-Keynesianism or post-neoliberalism, but rather intensified
neoliberalization in favor of the elites, the wealthy and particularly the financial sector
and giant corporations, at the expense of the lower and middle classes as well as at the
expense of smaller firms, particularly those outside the financial sector. Perhaps this is
late neoliberalism or intensified neoliberalization, but it certainly isnt an indication of
something replacing neoliberalism.
In recent years, investors, CEOs and market analysts have continued to stress that
prices are unnaturally low. Well, if this is the case if this follows a period in which
prices were unnaturally high. Moreover, it is not so unnatural but part of the capitalist
system. Fluctuations are intrinsic to capitalism in general, and in particular to
financialized capitalism. In fact, market fluctuations are how a lot of people, such as
traders, make money not by high or low prices, but by their fluctuation. The current
financial system not only needs to be constantly expanding to survive, it also needs
constant fluctuation. The scenario of growth-crisis-growth-crisis, etc. is better for many
actors in financial markets than the scenario of stability or slow steady growth. This
could not be more different for society at large.

2 As Oosterlynck and Gonzalez (2013, this issue) observe, URBACT points to a shift in the way cities
respond to the crisis: while they largely focused on using national recovery funds in 2009, they
shifted to minimizing the impact of scal austerity programs in 2010.

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Solving the problem of neoliberalism would require the agents of neoliberalism (on
Wall Street, in the boardrooms of giant corporations, in Washington, Brussels and
elsewhere, the lobby groups and so-called think-tanks) to have less power, but at this
point in time that is wishful thinking. The current crisis may undermine the ideology of
free markets, but it does not undermine the adaptive capacity inherent in neoliberalism.
The big crisis of our time did not become a crisis of the hegemony of neoliberalism (see
also Oosterlynck and Gonzalez, 2013, this issue). The challenges to neoliberalist
ideology were easily turned into neoliberal solutions. Actually existing neoliberalism is
flexible enough to influence policy in other ways than through the mantra of free
markets: it thrives on presenting existing socioeconomic conditions as failing and
neoliberalism as the best solution. Therefore crisis moments are key to the formulation
and implementation of neoliberalism. Many have heralded the death of ideological
neoliberalism; actually existing neoliberalism is flexible enough to incorporate criticism
in its discourse. Considering the many blows neoliberal ideology has received in this
crisis, it should already be dead, but like a creeping cancer neoliberal practice is able to
resurface and show up in both new and unexpected, and old and predictable, ways.

Manuel B. Aalbers (m.b.aalbers@gmail.com), Department of Geography, University of

Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200e bus 2409, 3001 Heverlee, Belgium

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