BUZZ words that inspire political activists may be obscure jargon to rest of the population.

Britain isn’t simply run by Tories, it is governed by neoliberals.

The media has a largely neoliberal agenda.

Neoliberalism dominates the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Ukip parties, and it is strong too in Labour.

It is no easy task but we must challenge and reverse neoliberalism if we are to promote democracy, equality and environmental protection.

The most subtle and profound exercise of power, as noted by political theorist Steven Lukes in his three faces of power model, is when alternatives to the existing order cannot even be imagined.

Winning an argument is one aspect of power but, for Lukes, setting the terms of debate is a more profound exercise of power and making alternatives unthinkable is deeper still.

Neoliberalism is increasingly the common sense. It often can’t be named because it is seen simply as “the way things are.”

Margaret Thatcher, a politician who pioneered neoliberal policies, famously stated the “Tina” thesis, claiming: “There is no alternative.”

So what is neoliberalism? In summary, it is a process where life is increasingly run by and for large corporations.

Neoliberals prefer to call themselves liberals. While the term in the US is a label for the slightly pinkish left, it is used to denote a belief in free markets and an inspiration rooted in the thought of Adam Smith, David Hume and Friedrich Hayek.

In 1945 the left was gaining power, free-market economics had been discredited by the cruel Depression of the 1930s, the Soviet Union had defeated Hitler and William Beveridge’s plans for a welfare state proved popular.

The Labour Party gained power under Clement Attlee, building hundreds of thousands of homes, creating the NHS and expanding education.

This was never quite the socialist utopia. The consensus was influenced indeed by John Maynard Keynes and Beveridge who were progressives in the Liberal Party who wanted to reform rather than replace capitalism.

However Hayek and his associates worked tirelessly to reverse these gains for the working class and inspired Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.

During the 1980s and 1990s the post-war consensus crumbled, and with the election of Tony Blair in Britain and Bill Clinton in the US both the Labour Party and the US Democrats accepted much of the market-based counter-revolution.

Both Thatcher and Blair argued that planning doesn’t work and that the market provides necessary economic incentives.

While Thatcher indulged in a showy assault on trade unions and council housing, promoted privatisation and challenged the left, Blair’s more subtle approach really cemented neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism isn’t a purely free-market ideology. The classical liberals from Smith in the 18th century through to Hayek argued that markets worked well when there was intense competition between firms.

As academic commentators such as William Davies and Philip Mirowski note, this emphasis on competition is quietly dropped.

Milton Friedman, perhaps the most influential neoliberal economist, rejected the need to break up monopolies and promote competition.

He argued that large firms, despite facing little effective competition, might be efficient.

Mirowski notes that neoliberalism, instead of rolling back the state and replacing it with free markets, uses the state to write rules that favour corporations.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a good example.

Currently being negotiated by the European Union and the US, TTIP would allow corporations to sue governments that introduced regulations that might reduce their profits, perhaps by protecting workers or the environment.

This will see states introducing legal frameworks which guarantee that threats to profits will become illegal.
The “centaur state” is one metaphor that has been used to describe neoliberalism — a liberal head mounted upon an authoritarian body — meaning that corporations are freed from regulation and the rest of us are increasingly controlled and policed.

Part horse and part human, the neoliberal centaur fuses corporate control and the state.

Neoliberalism rejects competition for monopoly. It uses the state to fund and nurture corporations and its forms of legislation, from EU rules to TTIP, and the operations of the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation and similar bodies are invisible to most of us. 

Elections change governments, but governments serve not people but corporations.

Hayek challenged planning in socialist systems, but central planning is fine for his neoliberal successors as long as it is done by or in co-operation with corporations and works to help the rich and powerful.

Of course as the media is largely controlled by billionaires like Rupert Murdoch and is dependent on advertising from corporations, the neoliberal reality is rarely challenged or debated.

Rail is a good example. How can you run a rail system with lots of different companies?
We are fed notions of efficiency, competition and good business practices, but you can’t run different trains on the same railway line.

East Coast rail was a publicly owned franchise that controlled the line from London to north-east England and on to Scotland.

Its customer ratings were high and its profits contributed to government finances. Yet a publicly run railway doesn’t fit in with neoliberal dogma, so it was sold off to Virgin, which has less support from the public.

If you want to travel by rail from London to Edinburgh you haven’t got many other options.
Education is another example which is increasingly seen, not as about learning, but instead as a source of profit.

While the NHS is a national icon and US healthcare is mired in waste, the present government is busy selling off healthcare to US corporations.

Prisons are increasingly a capitalist venture with high prison populations providing healthy dividends for shareholders in the US.

War, with the involvement, for example, of Blackwater, which received contracts worth around $500 million from the US government for “security” in Afghanistan and Iraq, is another frontier for the neoliberals.

Hardly any area of life is immune from neoliberalism. There is a rush to privatise everything, to see human beings as human capital and to question anything that does not make corporate profit.

We humans are increasingly tools to make profit, and every aspect of life is a target for commodification.

Austerity is used to drive for more privatisation but, as Mirowski and other critics note, private enterprise is more expensive because profits have to be created for shareholders.

Neoliberalism increases government debt, which is used as a justification for more neoliberalism.

Politics is a show behind which the real action occurs and politicians are increasingly part of the borg — a system of monopoly or crony capitalism.

The hyper-rich have their way but increasingly neoliberal institutions make it harder for anyone to challenge the system.

However, despite the power of neoliberalism it is far from invincible.

First, it simply doesn’t work. Trains become more expensive and less efficient, banking systems fall apart because of corrupt practices and resistance is fuelled.

Discontent with the political and economic system is rising. Rightwingers attempt to channel this into a blame game that scapegoats minorities, but as we have seen with the rise of the left vote in Greece and Spain, it is possible to provide alternatives.

More fundamentally, while socialist planning has been criticised, the very neoliberal emphasis on corporate control suggests that planning can work.

We need, as several 19th and 20th-century thinkers noted, to socialise planning and run economic structures democratically.

The coming general election provides an opportunity for all of us on the left to make neoliberalism visible, to expose its contradictions and to challenge its advocates.

Thatcher claimed that there was no alternative, but there are always different and potentially better ways of doing things.

Simply acknowledging that politics and economics should be about helping all of society, not just corporations and the powerful, would be a radical and necessary step.

• Derek Wall is international co-ordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales.