It's Manifesto Time

I’ve sent a pdf version of this post with added references to the organisers of the Beyond Neoliberalism conference, which will take place in May and looks excellent (I’m on the waitlist).

Calls for a new narrative to supersede the neoliberal/free market paradigm have multiplied since the 2008/9 Great Financial Crisis. 

Potential alternate paradigms have been researched, analysed, outlined, discussed, and critiqued across a range of articles, papers, videos, and symposia. Philanthropic organisations have committed tens of millions to narrative initiatives. 

Which leads to this question about the new narrative: is it going to take much longer?

Because now, in early 2025, would be a really good time. 

From Germany to Argentina, the free market + culture war narrative combo has continued to win elections and displace green and social policies. In the U.S., the free market myths about government inefficiency and business supremacy are still serving their purpose, albeit in cartoonish DOGE form, acting as the thinnest of cover stories for a naked power grab. 

Meanwhile, ongoing new narrative efforts have not generated an overarching narrative so far. On closer inspection, its propositional outputs tend to resemble lists of criteria or desired values, or to apply to relatively narrow policy areas like worker power, monopolies, and industrial policy. 

Useful components, but not yet a cohesive story that can be relied on to beat the neoliberals and their openly authoritarian offspring. 

Admittedly, in a complex world looking for a single simple story to drive political support for a wide range of policies is objectively ridiculous. Absent the enduring power and impact of the free market narrative, an alternative or counterweight would likely not be necessary. 

There are other good reasons there isn’t an overarching alternative narrative yet. Including, from the perspective of each individual organisation working towards it, questions of resources, risk and mandate. 

But the free market narrative is showing no sign of melting away by itself. Its latest crop of followers and promoters have little regard for risk, treating mandate and legitimacy as enabling formalities for their own ambitions.

Did DOGE or the Brexit campaign run risk or impact assessments? Were their leaders honest with voters? Would they have won elections and referendums without dubious funding and a largely incompetent opposition? 

Given what’s at stake with the rise of authoritarian governments, the climate crisis, and threats on multiple fronts from international security to minority rights, the least bad option is to push through the objections and come up with a draft new narrative as fast as possible. 

Because producing the new narrative is in itself just a first step. Then comes the organising, fundraising and campaigning needed to gain the political power to implement it. 

Some observers seem to assume history is a giant pendulum that at some point must swing back. A sample quote: “History suggests that the vacuum left as neoliberalism wanes will soon be filled by a new paradigm that eventually will need support across the political spectrum.” 

Contrary to this inevitability illusion, neither of the two major paradigm-type narratives in the last 200 years emerged spontaneously. 

Positioning the free market as “common sense” took a decades-long academic, fundraising, PR and lobbying effort starting in the mid-20th century, as Mirowski, Slobodian and others have extensively documented.^, The other major narrative was mainly written by Karl Marx. 

Historical context always plays a role, but without these human actors driving them neither paradigm would have emerged as it did. 

In the 21st century, new narrative initiatives have learned from the neoliberals, even though their political and policy aims are diametrically different. 

For example, in its funding strategy the Hewlett foundation is taking a page from the neoliberal playbook when it supports journalists and popular authors as well as theorists and academics to create “a picture of the kind of future society” they are aiming for.

It’s the second paradigm today’s narrative builders now need to draw inspiration from. In early 1848, following months of procrastination and seven weeks away from deadline, Marx rushed to produce the work he had been commissioned to deliver: the Communist Manifesto, just 23 pages long in its first version.

The point here is not about the product, but about the process. 

With the amount of material and research that has already been produced, it’s hard to imagine a new narrative coming from anywhere but a concerted Manifesto type effort. If that picture of a future society is ever going to come into focus, somebody is going to have to put the camera in the right place, adjust it and press the button. 

It’s possible there’s a withdrawn academic quietly working on a new narrative who is about to unveil it any day now. Or that an Occupy or Fridays for Future style grassroots initiative will emerge to lead a collective online drafting process. 

But in the meantime, the shortest route available seems to be to gather the available analytical, policy and narrative resources, however imperfect, and produce a summary by a self-imposed deadline. This will likely have to be a group effort, as there seems to be no obvious candidate to become the Karl Marx (or Mario Draghi?) of post-neoliberalism.

The result doesn’t have to be called a Manifesto, but it does have to meet two criteria, in addition to being simple: It has to be complete and it has to be prescriptive. 

The free market story claims to be valid at every possible human scale, supplying an answer and a role for everyone. It is also unashamedly prescriptive. Individuals should maximise their income and consumption; corporations should maximise profits; governments should deregulate, privatise and cut taxes; global institutions should promote free trade and capital flows. 

Beyond the funding, PR and alignment with corporate interests, this is what lends the narrative the aura of being “common sense”. With short messages drawing on a single comprehensive framework, speakers and politicians can easily be trained, soundbites inserted into 30-second segments and campaign slogans fitted on to billboards. 

A new narrative has to aim to do the same. The Annex below has a short template for what a one-page narrative summary could look like, and how it applies to the free market narrative as an example. 

Annex 1: New Narrative Template and example of free market story 

Individuals are _____________________ and should _________________

Businesses are _____________________ and should _________________

Governments are ____________________ and should ________________

International institutions are___________ and should_________________

The overall goals are______________________

The core values are_______________________

Template applied to free market narrative as example: 

• Individuals are selfish, rational decision-makers who should maximise their own satisfaction through income and consumption

• Businesses are profit-maximising and should be efficient as possible or they will lose out to more efficient market competitors

• Governments are inherently inefficient and should leave the provision of goods and services to private markets as much as possible. This means that the government's main job should be to cut taxes and regulations while reducing public spending 

• Global institutions are there to provide a stable framework for private markets. They should minimise conflict while promoting international capital flows and free trade

• The overall goal is economic growth

• The core value is freedom.