NEO-LIBERALISM AND THE STATE: IMPLICATIONS FOR ECONOMY, SOCIETY AND HUMAN RELATIONS

Over the past two decades Australia has experienced the privatisation and marketisation of the public sector as well as widespread industrial, economic and welfare reform. This article attempts to 'get into the head' of neo-liberalism by tracing its three key hallmarks: competition, individualisation and authoritarianism. It argues that: competition has replaced security as national motif with profound implications at a personal as well as an institutional level; that individualisation structures current understandings of economy and society with responsibility increasingly coming to bear on isolated subjects; and that authoritarianism resides deep in the heart of neo-liberalism as it presupposes that individuals and organisations need to be reformed to become enterprising, active and self-directing. The article concludes by pessimistically considering the implications of neo-liberalism for the texture of our social relations as human beings.