Zohran Mamdani, Neoliberalism, and democratic socialism |
‘If Western countries, or some of them, were to abandon their habitual capitalist and nationalist postures and adopt a discourse founded on democratic socialism and an exit from neocolonialism, with major steps towards fiscal justice and sharing the tax receipts of the multinationals and billionaires all over the world, that would make it possible… to regain credibility with regard to the global South.’ — An excerpt from a 2022 published book ‘A brief history of equality’ by internationally renowned economist Thomas Piketty
One generally hears that governments, including reportedly recent input received by the PM from ‘business individual/group’ while there is very weak ‘two-way’ traffic of opinion of a large working class – may that be working in financial institutions, public sector, markets, or on farms – with the policy circles, let alone at the highest levels of governments, other than occasional shutter-down strikes, which also reflects, just like the pressure group of big business in general, the showdown of large-trader collusion. In addition, the policy in general, overall globally since the early 1980s – including that in Pakistan a little later in the decade – has been ‘capitalism on steroids’ or Neoliberalism – both in or outside of an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme.
Pointing towards the seriously negative framework of the neoliberal order, renowned intellectual, Noam Chomsky indicated in his 1999 published book ‘Profit over people: Neoliberalism and global order’ the following: ‘The term “neoliberalism” suggests a system of principles that is both new and based on classical liberal ideas…........