Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order: Summary & Key Insights

After the devastation of World War II, the global economy was reordered under what is often called the Bretton Woods system—a framework designed to balance national sovereignty with international cooperation. For several decades, general economic policy was guided by Keynesian principles: governments played an active role in regulating markets, ensuring social security, and promoting full employment. Wealthy nations accepted the idea that stability and shared prosperity required constraints on corporate power.

But beginning in the 1970s, this consensus began to unravel. The oil shocks, economic stagnation, and rising inflation provided an opening for a different doctrine—a counterrevolution in economic thought that claimed markets should govern every sphere of life. Its proponents called it 'liberalization'; I call it a restoration of class power. Neoliberalism was not born from spontaneous intellectual discovery. It was a calculated response by economic elites to reclaim control over wealth and policy. Institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, initially designed to promote reconstruction and development, were repurposed to impose austerity and privatization on the Global South, and eventually on working populations in advanced economies.

This shift was symbolized by the rise of leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who spoke the language of freedom but implemented policies that transferred power upward—deregulating finance, crushing unions, and selling off public assets. Under this new order, the state was not weakened but retooled: it became an agent serving private interests rather than the public good. By the 1990s, neoliberalism had become the dominant orthodoxy, enforced through international agreements, corporate globalization, and a new moral vocabulary that made greed appear virtuous and inequality inevitable.

Neoliberalism presents itself as a philosophy of freedom—the idea that individuals should be liberated from the interference of the state. Yet in practice, it defines freedom in a way that is profoundly one-dimensional: the freedom of property, the freedom of corporations, the freedom to invest and extract without social responsibility. What disappears in this discourse is the freedom that actually matters to most people—the freedom from poverty, exploitation, and domination.

Behind its rhetoric lies a subtle but powerful form of ideological control. The doctrine cloaks power relations behind economic jargon: the 'market' becomes a natural law, while political decisions that shape it are hidden from view. By defining market outcomes as expressions of freedom, neoliberal ideology discourages collective action and delegitimizes any form of public intervention. Education becomes a commodity, healthcare a privilege, labor a flexible cost. This reframing of values reshapes society itself, creating a moral universe where inequality is not only tolerated but justified as the reward for merit.

In *Profit Over People*, I argue that this is not accidental. Neoliberal thought is a continuation of centuries of elite strategies to suppress democracy. From Adam Smith’s time to the Cold War era, economic theory has often been mobilized to protect class privilege under the guise of natural order. The modern neoliberal project has perfected this tradition through the use of media, academia, and bureaucratic systems that frame corporate control as the essence of progress. The result is a society where genuine democracy—rule by the people in their collective interest—is systematically undermined.