NEO-LIBERAL IDEOLOGY AND POLICIES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE/173LIBERAL IDEOLOGY RETURNS WITH A VENGEANCE
Liberal ideology returned with a vengeance in the 19 70s, in response
to the economic crisis in the main industrialised capitalist countries.
The crisis marked the beginning of a long wave of slow growth, or
even of a long depressive wave. The liberal counter-offensive
gathered steam with the Third World debt crisis in the early 1980s
and the implosion of the bureaucratic regimes of Eastern Europe at
the end of the 1980s.
This liberal (or neo-liberal) resurgence underlies and justifies the
massive worldwide offensive waged by capital against labour. This
offensive began in the second half of the 19 70s in the industrialised
capitalist countries. It continued with the progressive restoration of
capitalism resulting from the collapse of the bureaucratic regimes of
the East at the end of the 1980s. It included the crisis of the 'devel-
opmentalist' models in the countries of the South, which was
sharpened by the foreign debt crisis - leading to a new cycle of
heightened dependence for countries that had experienced partly
autonomous industrialisation (such as Mexico, Argentina, Brazil,
India and Algeria). South Korea may soon join the ranks of these
latter countries. As for the most dependent and least industrialised
countries (Central America; the Caribbean - save for Cuba; sub-
Saharan Africa; and South Asia - save for India), they never really
escaped dependence on the North's capitalist powers. They are now
fully under the thumb of the international financial institutions
(including Nicaragua and Vietnam, which had indeed experienced
authentic revolutions). Institutions such as the Economic
Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) and the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) have slowly but
surelyjoined the neo-liberal chorus (true, this process has not always
been a smooth one: witness, for example, the 1995 UNCTAD report
quoted in this book). As for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), it has
not survived the Yugoslav crisis, the Third World debt crisis and the
overall neo-liberal offensive.
NEO-LIBERAL IDEOLOGY IS NOT A PRODUCT OF THE
CRISIS
Liberal (or neo-liberal) ideology is not a product of the crisis. It existed
long before the crisis broke. A variety of economists and political