Abstract
In the pioneering zombie film Night of the Living Dead, a family huddle in a Pennsylvania farmhouse. They are terrified. Outside is a marauding mob of strange, undead creatures who are trying to get into the house. They can only assume that these drooling, stumbling individuals have only the most malevolent intentions. These undead assailants cannot be coaxed off course with reason. The terrified family become even more afraid as they discover from a radio broadcast that the relentless attack they are weathering is not an unfortunate one-off freak event. People all over the country are being hectored by these lurching human-like beasts. Night of the Living Dead might seem like a bit of harmless fun designed to entertain bloodthirsty teenagers. But George Ramero’s zombie films are more than this. They are an important commentary on contemporary capitalism. The films capture the stupefied state that the contemporary economy engenders in us. Ramero’s zombies have an eerie resemblance to the feckless and half-alive look on the face of a knowledge worker staring into a computer screen. The relentless drive of the zombie army sparks off thought of consumers descending on the post-Christmas sales.
But perhaps there is a more profound lesson lurking in Ramero’s films – it is not just the consumers and workers who become zombie-like. Instead, it is the very ideas and institutions which govern us that are undead. This is the central argument made in Colin Crouch’s insightful new book The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism. Crouch asks ‘how it comes about that neoliberalism is emerging from the financial collapse more politically powerful that ever?’ The answer which Crouch gives to this question is striking – it is corporate hierarchies (not markets, networks or any other new institutional model) that have won the day. And it is due to the increasing power of large corporations over markets, networks, communities, states and nearly any other institutional form that neoliberalism continues its zombie like lurch forward.
To make this case, Crouch begins the book by sketching out the historical background. He starts with a look at the past life of liberalism in economic policy. He shows how liberal ideas were central to the post-Second World War global settlements. He then goes on to trace out some of the classic ways in which markets fail. These range from the inability of markets to deal with externalities (the Bhopal problem) through to powerful economic interests becoming political insiders who manipulate the market, often in profoundly anti-market ways (the Berlusconi problem). He then goes on to argue that the rise of neoliberalism throughout the world from the 1980s onwards did not involve the extension of pro-market ideology. Rather, he shows the increasing emphasis placed on the free and unfettered operation of large corporations. This provided intellectual air-cover for the onward march of the dominance of large corporates in most markets. Crouch argues that the rise of large corporates has not meant the retreat of nation states from the economy. Rather, corporations increasingly rely on the state as both a source of contracts and as agents for creating or securing markets.
In the most striking chapter in the book, Crouch considers one of the central ways in which corporations (and their political representatives) have sought to restructure the state in a manner which serves their interests. This is ‘privatized Keynesianism’. He argues that, instead of the state taking on debt in order to create demand (which provides a market for our excessive productive capacity), the debtor role has fallen to individual consumers. Debt has moved off public balance sheets and onto the credit card statements and mortgages of individuals. It is this individual debt which has driven the consumer orgy of the past two decades. But it is also this mountain of individual debt which was at the centre of the financial weapons of mass destruction which sparked off the ongoing waves of economic crisis we are now living through. Our current crisis is a crisis of privatized Keynesianism. And the hero who has sallied to the rescue is the socially responsible corporation. Turning to recent work on corporate social responsibility, Crouch then argues that corporations have increasingly taken on the role of guaranteeing citizenship rights for citizens who have been abandoned by their national political elites. Frequently claims of responsibility are little more than image enhancement exercises. However, Crouch points out that a range of civil society groups frequently seek to hold corporations to account through pressure and activism.
The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism offers many things to its readers. This book gives us a unique answer to the question of why neoliberal ideas continue to dominate the economic landscape, even despite their spectacular recent failures. Instead of referring to the power of ideas or the inexorable workings of a system, Crouch argues that the answers lie within institutions. And his focus is on one of the most powerful of our time – the corporation. By bringing the corporation to the front and centre of the debate, Crouch reminds us that our task is to understand how this peculiar organizational form has gained so much power over our lives in such a short period of time. By looking at the political dynamics of institutions, Crouch gestures towards a kind of refreshing analysis of the kind which has been largely ignored by neo-institutionalists. He does this by showing how the rise of the corporation as the dominant institution of the day is an historically rooted, political project. It is hoped that this book will remind institutional theorists that frequently it does not matter what people think. Rather, it is political power which really matters. In addition, Crouch highlights the importance of civil society in contesting the power of corporations. Echoing themes which are well established in political science, he reminds us how social movements are not just an irrelevant irritant but are actually a crucial part of an emerging new polity. This suggests that understanding the politics of the corporation also requires us to keep an eye on these nimble critics. The final striking feature of the book is the enlightened pessimism that runs throughout. Crouch makes a remarkably level-headed assessment of both the strengths and weaknesses of the market and the corporation. He also gives a pessimistic, but ultimately plausible, account of our future. Some reforms (such as the separation of investment and retail banking or the introduction of a Tobin tax) may be a useful topical treatment, but they are unlikely to get to the root cause. The only hope which Crouch seems to hold out is for the power of social movements to counterbalance the reach of corporations.
Crouch provides a convincing and original explanation of why we live during an age when undead institutions stumble across the economic landscape. But this explanation raises some outstanding questions. Crouch claims that the corporation is the dominant institution of our time. However, recent work by economic sociologists such as Jerry Davis (2009) suggests that we live in a post-corporate age. By this he means that corporations have become little more than vehicles for financial power. For sure, some of the merchants of financial power are large financial corporations such as Goldman Sachs. But power seems to be distributed across a network of financial institutions that are private, public and international non-governmental organizations. Another outstanding question is the (minor) hope which Crouch invests in civil society. He seems to see civil society as a possible counterbalance to corporate power. Although this may sound appealing, civil society groupings have relatively limited power. Social movements are able to question the legitimacy of large corporations, create new identities and propagate new social assumptions. However, they often lack the resources and capabilities to make many of these new practices stick. And when they do stick, it is often because state power has played a role in institutionalizing these demands. In this sense, social movements may be part of the puzzle in counterbalancing corporate power. However, they cannot be the entire solution. In some cases, a strong focus on civil society may prove to be a fatal distraction. The final question in this book is the role which ideology plays in our current corporate-dominated landscape. Crouch makes a crucial conceptual advance by showing that neoliberalism continues to dominate not because of ideas but because of institutions. But this focus on institutions sidesteps the fact that much of what makes neoliberalism keep on ticking is a whole technical and practical apparatus ranging from pricing models to corporate law. We are never asked to believe in these techniques (just as we are rarely asked to believe in the corporation). Rather, we are only asked to think that they work. Perhaps the really astounding question is why we continue to believe that these tools will not only help to solve the financial crisis but can be applied to new issues (allowing charities to operate more effectively, provide better distribution of fresh water, and so on). So understanding the strange non-death of neoliberalism might not just involve explaining the animation of dead ideas and institutions, it could actually involve thinking about what happens when our financial models take on a life of their own.