Turbulence of neoliberalism

The world underwent regressive transformations in the last decades of the past century, one consequence of which was the transition to the neoliberal era of global capitalism.      

 From a bipolar world, marked by the presence of two blocs that divided the world into spheres of influence, we have moved to a unipolar world under North American imperial hegemony. A radical change in the world's political and ideological landscape. The end of the socialist bloc generated, with it, the ideology of the Washington Consensus and of a single way of thinking, promoting the idea of ​​the end of socialism, the division between right and left, the predominance of liberal democracy and the market economy.

On the other hand, what followed was a long, expansive cycle – from the end of the Second World War until the 1970s – the period of greatest economic expansion in the history of capitalism, and has now entered a long, recessive cycle, in which capitalism still finds itself, with no end in sight.
In turn, the predominance of governments that implemented social welfare policies was superseded by governments that promote competition among all in the market, stripping the population of its rights. These were three regressive phenomena that concentrated income further, increased armed conflicts, and exacerbated poverty, hunger, and social exclusion.

In the neoliberal period, hegemony shifted from large monopolistic industrial conglomerates to financial capital. This financial capital is speculative in nature, fluctuating according to market disturbances, and using liquidity to circulate from one stock exchange to another, from one country to another, promoting uncertainty and turbulence.
The neoliberal era is an era of turbulence because economies react to the fluctuations of stock markets, rapid capital transfers, and herd mentality, which destabilize economies. Since its inception, there have been crises in Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa, with prolonged effects and setbacks as their consequences.

The era of production and job creation is over, replaced by the era of interest rates, financial speculation, precarious work, and income concentration. The Brazilian economy grew from the 1930s until the neoliberal debt crisis in the late 1970s. It resumed growth, bucking the neoliberal trend, between 2003 and 2012, with policies promoting the expansion of productive sectors of the economy and income distribution, through the creation of millions of formal jobs and social policies. 

The breakdown of democracy in 2016 reintroduced the neoliberal model and the privileged promotion of the interests of private banks. Economic instability returned with force, as did social exclusion and poverty. This is similar to what happened in other regions of the world that have consistently maintained the neoliberal model.

On a global scale, there has been a shift from a cycle of relative economic stability to one marked by continuous economic turbulence, caused by the instabilities typical of financial mechanisms. Crises have recurred in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, and Russia, and have become widespread since 2008, plunging the global economy into recession. 

Neoliberal policies, by opening domestic markets to the impacts of the global economy, deindustrializing national economies, promoting the centrality of financial capital, and weakening the capacity for state regulation and the strength of public companies, create enormous vulnerabilities in each country's economy in the face of international instability.

This is what is happening at the present moment. Faced with the imminence of a new international recession, instead of seeking to protect our economy, the government is trying to take advantage of the situation to further boost its projects, which further undermine the State, intensifying privatizations and weakening its capacity for action. The effects of the international situation on Brazil were resisted in 2008 because the credit lines of public banks were strengthened, and external clashes were resisted, instead of multiplying them, as is being done now, by further opening up our economy.

The neoliberal era is an era of turbulence because it is marked by the hegemony of financial capital in its speculative form. Only by restoring the State's investment capacity, rescuing democracy, and resuming income distribution policies that allow the economy to grow domestically, will we be able to defend ourselves against external instabilities and strengthen the Brazilian economy and the rights of all.