Session 8 - Finding Ways to Overcome the Neoliberal Socioeconomic System
Going back to development after the COVID-19 emergency and its containment measures can pose the danger of falling into the trap of merely restoring a neoliberal economic model, with little improvement in the health system, insufficient to tackle the next pandemic.
There is an urgent need to understand that a pandemic is not a black swan, nor is it an unexpected or unpredictable event. Nor is it an exogenous shock.
Unfortunately, this is one of the inevitable consequences of the Anthropocene, the modern geological epoch during which the Earth has been experiencing heavy impact, globally and regionally, by human activities. The consequences have been amplified greatly by the neoliberal system which has shaped economic and political life in the vast majority of the world for over 50 years, producing inhuman megacities and growing endemic social inequality.
There is now widespread demand for an alternative model to neoliberalism, which is considered to be trumped even by the world’s biggest multinational corporations and the organizers of the World Economic Forum in Davos, including Klaus Schwab, its Founder and President. In his latest book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, he proposes overcoming shareholder capitalism in favor of new capitalism focused on private corporations as trustees of society, instead of shareholders. Corporations should become custodians of society, protect human and workers’ rights, promote sustainable economic development, and create value for all their shareholders: employees, customers, suppliers, local communities. Even multinational corporations must not only follow the interests of their immediate stakeholders but behave as shareholders of our global future — in cooperation with governments and society.
How convincing is the alternative to neoliberalism proposed by Klaus Schwab? Is there an actual deep connection between the collective good and responsibility and the ability of the system of major companies to achieve this? How reasonable is it to entrust the management of post-neoliberalism to the players responsible for the collapse of the neoliberal economic order? What role does the state play in this process?
Since such a perspective remains embedded in a unipolar concept of international governance, what chances does it have for worldwide success, with recent demands for multipolar governance being heard?
