Conclusion of Part I

Abstract

This first part offered an analysis of the central processes involved in the emergence of the neoliberal condition. This was undertaken in the light of a range of critical‑theoretical accounts of contemporary Western societies, in the hope of identifying the place held by these processes in bringing about what have become defining features of our age: the inflation of culture, the precarization of life, individualization and social and cultural fragmentation. Each of these features were in fact analysed in direct relation to neoliberal processes: financialization, flexibilization, personal responsibilization and privatization. Each process contributes to the creation of economic and cultural conditions appropriate for the entrenchment of the logic of competition in society. Financialization creates new outlets for capital accumulation, while exposing an increasing number of domains of social life to pressures of market forces. As such, it is responsible for extending the reach of ways of life aligned with competitive and self-interested utility-maximization. With production and employment practices articulated around a principle of flexibility symbolically cultivated as a source of freedom, one witnesses an increasing precarization of life. With fewer labour rights and social protections, and an increasingly uncertain, unstable, de-regulated and globalized labour market, individuals are evermore compelled to compete. Their freedom is, above all, a freedom to compete. Furthermore, by extending the reach of entrepreneurialism beyond the economic sphere, all in the name of freedom, neoliberal policies have compelled individuals to accept personal responsibility for their choices. By explaining and justifying their actions in such terms, individuals not only come to regard self-realization as a solitary exercise, they also adopt a conduct upon which competition is most likely to thrive, namely the individualization of success. Similar developments can be observed as a result of the conversion of public goods into private assets. The culture of ownership privatization induces does cause individuals to treat their own successes and failures as a matter of individual responsibility. It, too, compels them to innovate and celebrate difference. But in the case of privatization, competition is elicited in the name of efficiency.