no. 51 | january 2009

Postneoliberalism and Post-Fordism– Is there a new period in thecapitalist mode of production?Alex DemirovicFor the last two decades materialist theory has been trying to answerthe question of whether, after the long period of Fordism, thereis now a new period of capitalist social formation (cf. the contributionsin Brand and Raza 2003). This new phase has been tentativelycharacterised as post-Fordism (Hirsch 1995) or as high-tech capitalism(Candeias 2008). In the 1980s, the political programme accompanyingit was characterised as neoconservative; since the mid-1990s ithas been called neoliberal. This period had its prelude in 1973 withthe military coup in Chile. In the 1980s it was characterised by thegovernments of Reagan, Thatcher and Kohl; the rise of rightwingpopulist and racist movements; the dissolution of socialist states andRussia’s loss of position as a hegemonic country; the rise of the Infocomindustry and the new economy; the transformation of social democracyinto new parties of the electoral centre, which re-organisedtheir classical connection with the unions in a looser way; and therise of the economies of South East Asia, China, India and Brazil (cf.Rilling 2008). There are indications that this period is now drawingto a close. In Latin and Central America, resistance has been formingsince the mid-1990s. There have been social movements against theneoliberal-dominated mode of globalisation, social resistance movementsforming in China, unremitting protests against the West in Islamiccountries, and numerous attacks; along with increasing migrations;all these could be taken as evidence that the neoliberal strategyof capitalist reshaping of social relations has encountered rejectionworldwide.When the question comes up of whether or not the period of neoliberalismis coming to its end or is already at an end, it is sensiblefirst to get a sense of the characteristics of this phase in the OECDstates themselves. In my view, the period was marked by a tendencytowards destruction of the well-rehearsed organisation of relationsbetween the social classes, thus the dissolution of the compromisewith the waged working class and the dissolution of alliances withthe middle classes. I understand neoliberalism as a practical ideology,as a strategy that allows the ruling classes to govern the state through