It is the most powerful and least understood ideology of our time—a word hurled as an insult by the left and shrugged at by the right, yet quietly shaping nearly every aspect of modern life. A Brief History of Neoliberalism traces the rise of this radical creed from its intellectual birth in the failed predictions of the Great Depression, to its triumphant global conquest in the Reagan-Thatcher years, and its contested reign over the twenty-first century. This concise chronicle follows a small, passionate group of economists—Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and their fellow travelers at the Mont Pèlerin Society—who argued that human freedom could only flourish when markets were liberated from state control, unions crushed, and public services privatized. It charts the movement's patient march from fringe think tanks to the commanding heights of power, seizing upon the crises of the 1970s (stagflation, oil shocks, urban decay) to dismantle the postwar consensus of regulated capitalism and the welfare state. From the deregulation of Wall Street and the looting of the Soviet Union, to the austerity of Greece and the precarious gig economy, this book reveals how neoliberalism became the common sense of an era—invisible, omnipresent, and for its champions, the very definition of common sense.But has neoliberalism delivered on its promises of prosperity and liberty—or merely concentrated wealth, hollowed out democracy, and destabilized the planet? A Brief History of Neoliberalismconfronts the devastating ledger: exploding inequality, financialized predation, the war on labor, the erosion of public goods from education to healthcare, and the rise of a new, planetary class war. It also examines the ideology's contradictions—how its celebration of choice and competition has fueled the populist backlash of Trump, Brexit, and the far right, who weaponize the very insecurities neoliberalism created. Drawing on the searing critiques of David Harvey, Naomi Klein, and Wendy Brown, this book offers an essential, unflinching guide to the doctrine that remade the world in the image of the market. For those who suspect they are living under a system with no name, this is the key to understanding everything from your rent and your paycheck to the hollowing out of your politics—and the flickering possibility of building something else.
