"Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world" by Stephen Metcalf

As regular readers of this blog know I have long thought that, alongside fundamentalist religion, neoliberalism is one of the chief threats to the possible future well-being of our world. It's an ideology that needs to be called out for the pernicious evils it makes possible and encourages and then it should be consciously consigned to a museum to be studied by all as a social, political and economic project that must never be repeated.

In the church setting I have sometimes been challenged about using the word, primarily because (or so it is claimed) its meaning is too contested and slippery to be useful. However, I have always disagreed with this challenge and the following article from today's Guardian newspaper is, to my mind, an excellent and highly informative piece supportive of my own position.

Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world by Stephen Metcalf

The word has become a rhetorical weapon, but it properly names the reigning ideology of our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human.