George Monbiot

Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labor, and money into commodities that can be accumulated

Capitalism is an economic system founded on colonial looting. It operates on a constantly shifting and self-consuming frontier, on which both state and powerful private interests use their laws, backed by the threat of violence, to turn shared resources into exclusive property, and to transform natural wealth, labor, and money into commodities that can be accumulated

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we no longer even recognize it as an ideology. We see it as a kind of “natural law,” like Darwinian selection, thermodynamics, or even gravity—an immutable fact, a nonnegotiable reality. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

Over the years, we have internalized and reproduced neoliberalism’s creeds. The rich have allowed themselves to believe they’ve secured their wealth through their own enterprise and virtue—conveniently overlooking their advantages of birth, education, inheritance, race, and class. The poor likewise have internalized this doctrine and begun to blame themselves for their situation. They become defined, from within as well as without, as losers.

So never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job, it’s because you’re unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of rent: if your credit card is maxed out, it’s because you’re incompetent and irresponsible.
Never mind that your school has lost its playing field or you are living in a food desert: if your kid is fat, it’s because you’re a bad parent

The blame for systemic failure is individuated

Neoliberalism is often described as “capitalism on steroids.”

This seizure, exhaustion, and abandonment of new geographical frontiers is central to the model we call capitalism.

“Boom, Bust, Quit”

One estimate suggests that, across two hundred years, Britain extracted from India alone an amount of wealth equivalent to $45 trillion in today’s money.[5]

These institutions, many of which still operate today, tended to disguise their purposes with grand and respectable names, such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Center for Policy Studies, and the Adam Smith Institute.