FOR many years, socialists have been predicting the imminent death of neoliberalism — the system of finance capitalism that has dominated the world since the late 1970s and ’80s.

Today, Donald Trump is promising tariffs across the board against Canada, Mexico, China and Europe. Keir Starmer’s Labour is going to renationalise trains and launch GB Energy, a state-backed energy company. Far-right populism is on the march across Europe.

Have we finally arrived when the era of liberalised global markets, privatisation and anti-union laws can be declared over?

In part, yes. But it is being replaced by something at least as bad. Government by BlackRock, Elon Musk and other giant finance and tech companies. Whether it is a centrist like Keir Starmer or a populist nationalist like Trump, the kind of regime they are building shares common features.

It is authoritarian, with limits on democracy, repression of opposition using counter-terrorism laws, and a wholesale move to direct control of the state by massive private firms.

How is this any different from neoliberalism — the free market ideology that was ushered in with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan? (Tony Blair and Bill Clinton continued the same policies as both centre right and centre left accepted a new market consensus.)

The new social contract of the 2020s no longer pretends that the state is a neutral arbiter of market forces, ensuring competition and regulation of private providers. Instead, the state works directly with mega-businesses to invest in major infrastructure, new energy systems, public services and housing. The state and the market are fused into a new form of corporate rule.

There is one massive flaw in this economic model. All the profits go to a handful of large companies and billionaire shareholders. Workers, consumers, as well as small businesspeople and the middle class are all left out of the gains and must accept the scraps.

The revolving door between the state and business has long been a feature under neoliberal governments. Now, that revolving door is simply removed and ministers and civil servants move seamlessly from government to private sector and back.

Back in July, BlackRock’s Antony Manchester welcomed Jonathan Reynolds as the new business and trade secretary.

“Dear Secretary of State,” he wrote, “on behalf of all of us here at BlackRock, please find attached a formal letter of congratulations from myself and our UK chair, Sandra Boss. And may I add, on a personal note, it is a pleasure after all these years to address you as such!”

Manchester is a former senior civil servant who held roles across various government departments between 2001 and 2015, including the Treasury and Cabinet Office.

Keir Starmer openly welcomes BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment company with a portfolio of $10 trillion (you read it right), into its offices to profit from housing and infrastructure underwritten by the Exchequer. But the bottom line appears to be that the assets ultimately become BlackRock’s — and the public realm is trussed up and handed over to the trillionaire money managers.

Starmer’s chilling tweet at a Downing Street summit with BlackRock boss Fink said: “I’m determined to deliver growth, create wealth and put more money in people’s pockets. This can only be achieved by working in partnership with leading businesses, like BlackRock, to capitalise on Britain’s position as a world-leading hub for investment.”

Economist Brett Christophers told Novara Media recently that as an asset manager, BlackRock did not typically build anything. It simply looked for high returns on existing assets.

“If you look at the history of investment by asset managers, it’s a pretty depressing history. On the one hand, it’s been a pretty negative experience for those who are the buyers of that infrastructure or the tenants of its housing, and on the other side, it’s been a pretty dismal experience in terms of the amount of investment and upkeep of those assets.

“The classic case in the British context would be Thames Water: almost all of its really severe problems arose in the period from 2006 and 2015 when its majority owner was an asset manager, Macquarie. It was then that the problem really emerged of rapidly increasing [water] rates but rapidly declining amounts of investment in the infrastructure.”

Christopher explained that this is hardly news. “That is what you should expect from asset managers: they are almost always short-term investors, they are not doing it with a view of the long term, as their goal is to sell out within a certain amount of time.”

They have an “inherent preference for short-term, sticking plaster-type solutions. They have no inherent incentives to invest in repairs that will accrue in 10 or 15 years.”

Which makes it all the more peculiar that Labour is turning to these behemoths as the saviours of Britain.

One of the classes of assets that asset managers have become very invested in in recent years is land and farmland, especially in Australia, the US and South America. Christopher explained this is where the notorious Macquarie and Brookfield Asset Management (run by former Bank of England boss Mark Carney) have been buying up land like 21st century robber barons.

In the US, Elon Musk and other big business partners of Trump will likewise move freely through the halls of power. Unlike the global corporations that backed Joe Biden, the majority backing Trump are privately owned US-based businesses.

“Of the former president’s 26 biggest billionaire donors, 16 derive their fortunes from private, often family-held corporations based in the US,” Forbes reported.

These include Johnson and Johnson heir Woody Johnson and Miriam Adelson, the widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — the biggest Israel donor in Washington.

“The majority of the donors — 22 out of 26 — built their own billion-dollar empires. The top industries among Trump’s top billionaire backers are casinos (4), finance (3) and oil and gas (3).” Trump’s top donor was Timothy Mellon, the heir to a century-old railway dynasty. Not exactly new money.

Does this distinction between the private billionaires who have supported the new conservative nationalists like Trump and Nigel Farage and the global corporations that have backed Biden and Starmer really matter? Does it signify a split within the capitalist class that could be leveraged by the labour movement and left?

The populist right hates BlackRock, with its ties to the Biden administration and its leading role in the reconstruction of Ukraine, following multibillion public-private partnership deals with US bank JP Morgan. BlackRock is also a lead player in the Climate Finance Partnership with the governments of France, Germany and Japan.

If neoliberalism and centrism are dying — and this is a reasonable observation of what is happening on both sides of the Atlantic — a new corporatism is emerging, which has some features of fascism (the fusion of state and capital) without being the overtly militaristic version seen in the 20th century.

This, in turn, relates to the absence of the main enemy of fascism in the past: a revolutionary working-class movement, which gave rise to its violent totalitarian character in the 1920s and ’30s.

The left should expose this cosy partnership of state and capital designed to cannibalise every aspect of our lives and fight for a return to democratic common ownership and the radical reduction of the billionaire class through taxation and an end to the corporate gravy train.

The divisions between the centrist corporatists led by Starmer and Macron and the populists like Trump are largely cosmetic. They are two branches of the same capitalist class.

For now, the latter is managing to hoodwink millions into thinking it is on their side by invoking anti-LGBT and anti-migrant rhetoric and phoney anti-war positions (populists strongly favour Israel’s wars, for example).

Centrist parties and leaders have nothing to offer in response other than mimicry of the new right. They are the political facade of corporate power, and the voters know it. Macron, Biden, Scholz, and no doubt soon Starmer are destined for the political dustbin.

The left and labour movement must get its act together and mount a political challenge to the new corporatist capitalism.