Beyond the Free Market: Rebuilding a Just Society in New Zealand

Beyond Neoliberalism in New Zealand: An Extended Book Review Cook, D. , Hill, C. , Baskett, P., and Irwin, R. (eds.) (2014) Beyond the Free Market: Rebuilding a Just Society in New Zealand. Auckland: Dunmore Publishing: 184 pages. ISBN: 978-1-927212-18-9This book offers a revealing insight into the state of the ideological struggle against the neoliberal project in New Zealand. Written in the form of twenty five short and accessibly written chapters, the book includes a broad though somewhat idiosyncratic collection of contributions from activists, academics, politicians, trade unionists, journalists, civil servants, and a cartoonist. The contributions are united by strong social democratic values and an enduring opposition to New Zealand's three-decades-long free market path. Ideologically to the Left of the mainstream of the Labour Party but Right of the Marxist Left, the authors represent the dominant perspective of the movement against the neoliberal project in New Zealand. As bearers of the social democratic sensibility, the chapters leave the reader with the impression that social progress can be achieved here in New Zealand as a direct effect of winning the ideological struggle; i.e. winning the hearts and minds of citizens back to social democratic values. Such a view is also premised on the social democratic sensibility of the politically autonomous capacity of the nation state to implement the will of the people; but implying the neglect of the now global constraint of capitalism.From this standpoint of nation-centric political and ideological autonomy; the neoliberal project is equated with the free market ideology that hijacked the minds of the agents of the state in New Zealand in the 1980s. In the present, we are thus seen to be living not in a neoliberal era but in the shadow of its "enduring legacy" that "lingers" in citizens' values and in the various institutional reforms that this ideology has provoked. From this perspective, the movement beyond (the legacy of) neoliberalism in New Zealand is to be solved by drawing the nation's citizens away from the unsound "baggage" of neoliberal discourse and back towards fundamental social democratic values. Implicitly, it would seem as if this transformation of values would result directly in the progressive reform of neoliberalised institutions leading once again to the establishment of a "fair, inclusive and secure" (Stanford, 170) society. As retired Judge Sir Edmund Thomas puts it in one of the opening chapters:This country will not rebuild a just society unless and until the lingering legacy of neoliberalism, with all its baggage of mantras and myths, is recognised for what it is, rejected as unsound and unfair, and vanquished from our political, economic and social discourse (33). Ideology is indeed an integral and enduring element of what defines the neoliberal project, and the book's key strength is its accent on active ideological struggle, linked with the related need to redefine the institutions of communication and education. Nicky Hagar's opening chapter for example outlines how "corporate political activism" manipulates public discourse towards free-market values and how this has undermined "voices promoting the public interest" (23). NZCTU economist Bill Rosenberg reinforces this line of argument with a well-grounded account of how to reverse the present placing of profit before news. These chapters argue that we need to redefine the institutions of public discourse, which have been hijacked by private corporate pro-market interests, back towards the public interest (Hagar, 24; Rosenberg, 89-90; also Cooke). Other chapters make related arguments against neoliberalisation, particularly of education both in schools and Universities in New Zealand, and the need to "reclaim an educati on system for the public good" (119) (see O'Neill, J; Grey and Sedgewick; O'Neill, A-M; Peters). Sandra Grey's chapter follows this theme more generally as she decries the hollowing out of democracy that has followed from New Zealand's free market direction and in contrast argues that "the only way forward is for citizens to reclaim a strong civil society" (134). …