http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2015/images/ak_capitalismo.jpgBy reducing neo-liberalism only to a set of economic measures, a misleading impression is often conveyed that this set of measures are a matter of choice on the part of the ruling bourgeois political formation, ie, that a "non-neo-liberal" set of measures could also be followed, even in conditions of contemporary capitalism, if only the bourgeois political formation ensconced in government had decided to do so. . . . In fact, however, neo-liberalism is a mere description (and a bad one at that) of a whole set of measures that are associated necessarily with the hegemony of globalised finance. These measures are not a matter of choice by some particular bourgeois political formation; they would have to be adopted in the contemporary epoch by any bourgeois political formation, ie, as long as the country remains within the capitalist orbit, whence it also follows that any political formation that wishes seriously to overturn these measures would necessarily have to be prepared to transcend capitalism. It may have to do so, no doubt, through all kinds of complex tactical steps, but it cannot lull itself into overlooking the necessity for doing so, a point that acquires particular significance in the context of Greece today and of other European countries that may throw up anti-"austerity" Left-wing governments in the coming days. The point being made here is analogous to the one that Lenin had made against Karl Kautsky on the question of imperialism. He had accused Kautsky of thinking of imperialism as a policy and thereby suggesting that a non-imperialist policy was also possible at that time, either on the basis of monopoly capitalism itself, or through a reversion from monopoly back to "free competition", from which monopoly itself had already emerged. Both these possibilities, he had argued, were utterly unreal, and represented sheer wishful thinking, or a "petty bourgeois" pipe-dream. . . . Exactly analogously neo-liberalism is not a separate detachable thing from contemporary capitalism. It is contemporary capitalism, a manifestation of this contemporary capitalism, characterised as it is by the hegemony of globalised, ie, international, finance capital. One often comes across a mirror image of this argument of "separability", which is prevalent in Left-wing circles, especially in Europe, regarding "globalisation". This holds that the "globalisation" occurring today is a "good" thing, even though contemporary capitalism is "bad", so that we should somehow retain this "globalisation" even while trying to transcend contemporary capitalism. What this argument does is to detach contemporary "globalisation" from contemporary capitalism, and suggesting that we should retain the one but not the other. But the "globalisation" that is occurring today is no less a manifestation of contemporary capitalism than the economic measures covered under the term neo-liberalism. Just as one cannot get rid of neo-liberalism while retaining contemporary capitalism, likewise one cannot get rid of contemporary capitalism while retaining contemporary globalisation. They together constitute an integral unity that has to be transcended. Through what particular tactical steps this is done is a separate issue, but to imagine that one component of it can be retained while the other is discarded is to ignore this unity. It amounts to wishful thinking.

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