 Hi, welcome to the fourth video lecture. This is the second lecture of the second module named Economic Backwardness Neoliberalism and Radical Development Critique. This video lecture will deal with the question of neoliberalism and present some radical development critiques. Now first, what what do people think about neoliberalism? Norm Chomsky, who is one of the most prolific writers against neoliberalism says, the very design of neoliberal policies is a direct attack on democracy. So the first thing you need to know about neoliberalism according to Chomsky is how it is non-compatible with democracy. And what does he mean here? He means that neoliberalism is a system where power, economic and political, mainly economic, is concentrated in the hands of a few and since democracy is a system where power is shared by all members of society, the system of neoliberalism may not be very compatible to democracy. So with this sort of basic introduction, let's talk about what neoliberalism is. It's an economic ideology or belief that the private sector, the markets, are superior to the state in every aspect and therefore resources should be transferred to the markets to ensure higher economic growth. It's been it's been the reigning paradigm and economics for the last 20 to 30 years and also, you know, although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can see the effects of neoliberalism as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer. Now this sort of this basic belief that anything that the market does, any allocation of resources that the market does, is superior to that of the state is kind of the notion, the sort of basic bedrock on which neoliberalism stands and the experience of the last 20, 25, 30 years as this presentation will show sort of tells you that, well, that is not the case. And what actually ends up happening is that under neoliberalism, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. As you go through this presentation, you will see a lot of empirical evidence to support this claim. So, like I said, how it's practiced is it leads to greater liberty given to the markets to operate, a reduction in the regulatory mechanism, greater emphasis on international trade and investment, greater incentives to liberalize flows of finance across countries, financial flows across countries and to reduce the power of unions, reduce the power of the state and increase the movement of capital, goods, finance and services. So what are the main components? Of course, rule of the markets is something we've talked about. Reducing public sector spending, now this is critical. What neoliberalism assumes, as I told you, is that markets are supreme. Markets can do things better than the state or any other system. And therefore, anything the state does is inefficient, is corrupt and is substandard in comparison to how the market would do. And one of the recommendations is to remove the state also from the social sector. Now, what do I mean by the social sector? The social sector is your health sector, your education sector, your basic needs sector to ensure that everyone has enough to eat, to ensure that nobody, everyone has adequate housing, nobody sleeps on the street. Now, these are some basic requirements of the state. But under neoliberalism, these are undermined. And finally, the issue of privatization, which is a direct outcome of the state being inferior to the private allocation. Therefore, one should transfer control from the state to the markets. And finally, Milton Friedman, one of the founding champions of neoliberalism, talks about how neoliberalism, you know, is a system to improve people's lives and, you know, to court. He says, it never occurred to me at the time that I was helping to develop machinery that would make possible a government that I would come to criticize severely as too large, too intrusive, too destructive of freedom. Yet, that is precisely what I'm doing. So he talks about, so Milton Friedman was involved in a policy whereby the state was criticized as being inefficient, as being intrusive, as being too large and to create space for the markets to take over from the state. And obviously, there is no consensus on whether neoliberalism actually works or not, particularly in sectors like education and health. Are the markets the best to create jobs? You know, neoliberalism has led to unprecedented wealth and income inequality. And how do some of these processes interact with the development of countries, economic development of countries? And neoliberalism, per se, proceeds through accumulation by dispossession, which we discussed in the last PowerPoint. And how accumulation by dispossession by itself a process by which a lot of people are denied access to resources which could have improved their quality of life. But under neoliberalism, those resources are transferred from, say, poor people to, or say, a large group of people to a small minority of people who are then expected to use those resources to create jobs and employment. Whether this process actually happens or not, the data tells you that it doesn't. So, this is the basic part of neoliberalism. The rest of this lecture is going to focus on the critique of neoliberalism. What does the data say? How has neoliberalism fared in the last three decades? And what can we learn from the experience of neoliberalism? So, I will end this video lecture here, but as always, make sure you carefully study the entire PowerPoint of the main lecture. And if you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you so much.