SEPTEMBER 10 — In a 2011 article titled “The Neo-Liberal Revolution,” the British cultural theorist, Stuart Hall demonstrates how political regimes that may seem opposed to one another contribute to the expansion of what he calls the Neo-Liberal Revolution.
Among other things, neo-liberalism, which came to prominence with rise of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US in the 1980s, is an ideology which calls for the reduction of the power of the state in public life.
This includes in spheres which have traditionally fallen under the care of the state, such as healthcare, education, and vital resources including land and water.
Although it is a global phenomenon, according to Hall neo-liberalism is not one thing. It adapts to and combines with other techniques of governance. Nonetheless, its basic logics underlie the governing operations of the states where it is based.
In Malaysia, the neo-liberal experiment began with the first premiership of Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. In this instance, neo-liberalism found itself in a marriage with Mahathir’s authoritarian rule. The latter is a tendency which is far from unusual for neo-liberalism to be in union with, as have been shown by recent developments in places like Turkey, Honduras and Brazil.
As a historical analysis, Hall’s take on how neo-liberalism rose in Britain with Thatcher’s government resonates well with the Malaysian context. Mahathir’s regime pursued a state-led privatisation agenda, coupled with the rapid expansion of manufacturing as the main driver of industrialisation and economic growth.
During this period, Malaysians witnessed the privatisation of public services under the pretext of lessening the state’s financial burden and encouraging efficiency. Many Malaysians took on non and semi-skilled jobs in plants and factories which were mushrooming, leaving behind their lives in the rural areas to become proletariats in cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
At the same time, a discourse which constructed and reinforced the view that the civil service was slow and inefficient was allowed to fester, not least also by Mahathir’s episodic lamentations of the lazy and near-sighted attitude of his fellow Malays, who formed the bulk of the civil service.
After a somewhat lull period during Abdullah Badawi’s rule, came the next stage of Malaysia’s version of the neo-liberal revolution. In Hall’s analysis, it was the stage when the state decided to embrace the idea of “managerial marketisation” as the means to reform society.
In Britain, this reform was led by the New Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. In Malaysia, one of the first things that Datuk Seri Najib Razak did was to embark on a programme to address the inefficiency of the civil service and to change the old way in which it worked.
Once again, the discourse surrounding the inefficiency of the civil service continued, only without Najib whining over the bad behaviour of the Malays as Mahathir did. To do this, Najib resorted to managerial marketization, putting his trust in extra-bureaucratic bodies such as PEMANDU to drive change.
This trust in the “consultant class” over the civil service was wide ranging, with blueprints and roadmaps such as the 1Malaysia project, Government Transformation Programme (GTP) and Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), and Malaysian Education Blueprints (MEBs) being produced as a result of this partnership.
Here the neo-liberal mantra of public-private partnership became key to change. Future developments were to be driven by the private sector, and public services provided through partnerships between it and the government. Even sovereign revenue can be generated through the neo-liberal logic.
At least that was what Najib probably thought what he was doing with 1MDB. Also, public institutions were introduced to the logic of the market and managerial culture, where “targets” needed to be met as defined by key performance indicators (KPIs).
It is interesting how much can be done when you capitalise on a general distrust towards the state and its institutions. However, as critics like David Harvey would remind us, this distrust would ultimately affect the working people the most.
Along the way in the brief story that I have narrated above, has been the creation of a vulnerable class of working Malaysians, whom to many of us are mere abstract constructions that can be praised and criticised whenever we feel convenient.
Neo-liberal policies have progressively nurtured a precarious condition within which they function. Today we hear of the plan to transform the civil service into one that is employed under a contract scheme.
New civil servants may soon share the experience of their private sector counterparts, many of whom are already working in a state of impermanence and a lack of “existential security,” as put by Guy Standing. Here we have the next stage of the neo-liberal revolution as discussed by Hall, one that is to be defined by cuts in public services and spending and further outsourcing of vital services to the private sector.
The government will duly remind us that we all need to make sacrifices. Paying pensions to retired civil servants and their families is a burden to the government, we have been told by Dr Mahathir.
We have already witnessed the shocking decision to allow the Pakatan Harapan government’s hallmark healthcare service for B40 Malaysians to be administered by a multinational insurance corporation. We have recently heard of the termination of thousands of contract cleaning staff in public schools due to budget cut.
At the same time, a few days ago we saw Dr Mahathir, in a true to form moment, complaining yet again about the lazy Malays.
In Malaysia Baru, neo-liberalism may come full circle. They may be opposed to one another, but successive governments from Mahathir to Abdullah to Najib to Mahathir again have prolonged the neo-liberal agenda, at the expense of the poor and the working people.
Meanwhile, big corporations, banks and crony companies will endure as strategic partners of the government, profiteering through their entanglement in the evermore sophisticated web of the neo-liberal machine.
* Dr Khairil Izamin Ahmad is Assistant Professor, School of Politics, History and International Relations, University of Nottingham Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
