I had a short conversation on X (former Twitter) with some libertarians who are staunch supporters of the ideology of the Chicago School of Economics, a while back. They claimed that Nigeria is not a capitalist state. Some of them even went as far as saying the country is socialist. This, according to them, is because any involvement of government in the economy is.
To be fair to them, their position largely reflects mainstream economic and political thought around a capitalist consensus that the free market is a self-correcting entity that could fix any problem in the economy if the government would just get out of the way, and then they will be prosperity for all.
To bring about this utopia of the free market, its proponents in government deregulate the industrial and financial sectors of the economy, cut taxes on those sectors and essentially erase barriers to free trade and a free market, as they see it. These are all supposed to bring prosperity somehow.
During the online conversation I mentioned earlier, someone pointed out the Nigeria cannot be said to be a free market economy. And this is despite decades of neoliberal programmes with the support of the IMF and World Ban, including the series of policies of the APC government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu government, over the last two years. He then further added that this means neoliberalism is yet to take root in Nigeria.
This line of argument underscores a major flaw in the free market ideology of neoliberalism. The argument that a free market and the state are antithetical is false. The so-called free market is created and sustained by the state/governments. We must evaluate capitalism, including its neoliberal variant, based on what it does as a system does, and not what it claims it is doing or will do. “Getting the government of your back” is just for you.
Neoliberalism is an ideology of capitalism that has basically been an economic gospel all around the world since the 1980s. It is a project of capitalists to pass off the failure of Keynesian economics that was mainstream from World War II to the 1970s as being because of state intervention and not something inherent to capitalism as such. But it has not resolved the internal contradictions of capitalism which drives increasing wealth for a few and poverty for the vast majority of the people.
Neoliberalism has only led to increasing social inequality, the suppression of the power of organised labour and anti-government dissent, and the manufacturing of consent with the carrot of upward mobility and “making it to the middle class” for a few working-class people, which is used to weaken class solidarity.
When a man like Elon Musk goes to a Trump rally where he espouses the ideals of neoliberalism and says “we’re going to get the government of your back” the “we” he is talking about comprises his fellow billionaire and millionaire friends, not the working class. And how this is going to happen is by cutting the taxes they pay, thus increasing the tax burden of poor working people.
The government in Nigeria says it needs to remove fuel subsidy as it is not sustainable. It keeps drumming it into our ears that there is a pressing need to curtail government spending on things like subsidies to reduce its indebtedness, but then goes and takes on more debt, has a very large cabinet and administrative staff. It also goes ahead, subsidising the cost of transport of legislators in the National Assembly by giving them new cars. Also, It hasn’t stopped subsidising the capitalists in the oil sector, like Aliko Dangote.
Neoliberal governments all around the world, and most definitely here at home, have always been faced with the tasks of crushing trade unions and all forms of popular dissent to its ruling class policies. In places like Britain and the United States in the 1980s, crushing major strikes by unions laid the basis for the neoliberal dictatorships of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. And in Nigeria today, we see rise of police repression, harassing of protesters and protest organisers and the rise of police brutality, including against trade unionists. While the government reduces spending on social services, its expenditure on security agencies to oppress the people the government keeps expanding.
Last thing is the cultural hegemony of neoliberalism, as a capitalist ideological, political and economic project. With its rhetoric of “freedom” and “growth”, it creates a culture that tempts people to abandon class solidarity in favour of some form of upward social mobility. It creates a culture in which, based on false consciousness, people identify with their oppressors and accept the beliefs of hustle culture in hopes they’ll be rich someday, or die trying. It normalises the culture of capitalist exploitation and celebration of the most vicious exploiters.
Neoliberalism enables the bosses’ social control of working people, increases the government’s clampdown on expressions of dissent, and creates a mentality of social consensus in the interest of our exploiters. We must reject this ideology. There is no such thing as a self-correcting free market. And there is no such thing as capitalism for working-class people. We must stand up and fight to overthrow this evil system which makes life worse for us, as neoliberalism or any of its other variants that have all failed us.
by Emmanuel IRO-OKORO
