The Neoliberal Era is Ending. What Comes Next?

On 4 April 2020, the British-based Financial Times published an editorial  likely to be quoted by historians for years to come.

The Financial Times is the world’s leading business daily and, let’s be honest, not exactly a progressive publication. It’s read by the richest and most powerful players in global politics and finance. Every month, it puts out a magazine supplement unabashedly titled “How to Spend It” about yachts and mansions and watches and cars. 

But on this memorable Saturday morning in April, that paper published this: 

“Radical reforms – reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades – will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities, and look for ways to make labour markets less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda; the privileges of the elderly and wealthy in question. Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.”

What’s going on here? How could the tribune of capitalism suddenly be advocating for more redistribution, bigger government, and even a basic income?

For decades, this institution stood firmly behind the capitalist model of small government, low taxes, limited social security – or at most with the sharpest edges rounded off. “Throughout the years I’ve worked there,” responded a journalist who has written for the paper since 1986,  “the Financial Times has advocated free market capitalism with a human face. This from the editorial board sends us in a bold new direction.”

The ideas in that editorial didn’t just appear out of blue: they’ve travelled a very long distance, from the margins to the mainstream. From anarchist tent cities to primetime talk shows; from obscure blogs to the   Financial Times. 

And now, in the midst of the biggest crisis since the second world war, those ideas might just change the world.