The End of Neoliberalism?

• Author: John Comaroff
• Published date: 01 September 2011
• Date: 01 September 2011
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0002716211406846

In the wake of the economic “meltdown” of 2008, there
arose considerable public debate across the planet over
the fates and futures of neoliberalism. Had it reached
its “natural” end? What, historically, was likely to
become of “it”? How might the crisis in the Euro-
American economies of the period transform the rela-
tionship between economy and the state? This article
addresses these questions. It argues against treating
neoliberalism as a common noun, a fully formed, self-
sustaining ideological project and makes the case that
its adjectival and adverbial capillaries alive, well, and,
The End of if in complicated ways, central to the unfolding history
of contemporary capitalism. Finally, the article offers a
Neoliberalism? reflection on the ways in which twenty-first-century
states have become integral to the workings of finance
capital, with important consequences for the concep-
What Is Left tion of political economy.
of the Left
Keywords: neoliberalism; capitalism; state
By
Recall Marx. Groucho, that is. Playing Doctor
Hackenbush in A Day at the Races (1937),
Groucho Marx finds a patient lying supine on
JOHN COMAROFF
the floor. Taking the unconscious man’s wrist in
his hand, he puts his timepiece to his ear, listens
briefly, and says, “Either he is dead or my watch
has stopped.”
The analogy is rich. Is neoliberalism dead?
Or have our watches stopped? More to the
point, are we watching for the right symptoms
as homo economicus capitalis lies prostrate?
Or are our fingers pressed to the wrong pulse,
John Comaroff is the Harold H. Swift Distinguished
Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago,
honorary professor of anthropology at the University
of Cape Town, and research professor at the American
Bar Foundation. His recent books, with Jean Comaroff,
include Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (University
of Chicago Press 2006), Ethnicity, Inc. (University of
Chicago Press 2009), and Theory from the South: Or,
How Euro-America Is Evolving toward Africa (Paradigm
Publishers forthcoming).
NOTE: This piece was written in July 2009 as an
opening comment for a roundtable discussion at the
Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism on
“The End of Neoliberalism? What Is Left of the Left.”
DOI: 10.1177/0002716211406846
ANNALS, AAPSS, 637, September 2011 141

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
drawing our attention to an entirely false unconsciousness, thus mistaking it for
mortality? The play on words here is intended to underscore the deadly serious-
ness of the question.
That question has been posed in a number of ways. Here I reflect on whether,
as some would have it, neoliberalism has reached its “ultimate limits”—and, if
so, with what implications for the future of politics, economics, culture, and the
Left. Are we really witnessing the “demise of capitalism” as we currently know
it? Interestingly, this latter phrase appeared three times in the opinion pages of
The Guardian in England on one day in late June 2009—in each instance as a
provocation, a call to make sense, more broadly, of the current moment in the
unfolding history of capital.
For all that Jean Comaroff and I have written about neoliberalism, I am
uncomfortable discussing the term in its noun form. Why? Because, thus reified,
it takes on the denotation of a concrete abstraction, an accomplished object, a
totalizing ideological formation; even, in its temporal dimension, an epoch, one
that may be deemed present or past. For me, the adjective neoliberal is much
easier to grasp discursively and politically, since it may be taken to describe a
tendency, a more-or-less realized, more-or-less articulated, unevenly distributed
ensemble of attributes discernible in the world. In the active voice, as adverb, it
connotes an aspiration, a species of practice, a process of becoming, however
unbecoming that process may be to our eyes. It is on the basis of this understand-
ing of “the neoliberal,” at once adjectival and adverbial, that I seek to parse the
history of the present: In what measure have recent tendencies in that history run
their course? Are they still with us? If so, in what proportions and in what guises?
Or are we seeing unfold before us a tectonic shift of the long run?
...