What Was Neoliberalism?

Neil Davidson (1957-2020) lectured in Sociology at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Glasgow. He authored The Origins of Scottish Nationhood, Discovering the Scottish Revolution, for which he was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize, How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? (2012), Holding Fast to an Image of the Past (2014) and We Cannot Escape History (2015). Davidson was on the editorial boards of rs21 and the Scottish Left Project website, and was a member of the Radical Independence Campaign.

"Davidson insists that the necessary task of identifying distinct eras of capitalism must not lead us into drawing hard borders between them. Inevitably, every new era carries over key features from the last." —Jacobin"It is widely agreed that neoliberalism arose in the wake of the global economic crisis of the 1970s, but there is much debate about how to understand its significance and even how to define it. Neil Davidson, whose untimely death robbed us of an important Marxist thinker, left us this insightful account of what is unique in neoliberalism, and what marks it out as a continuation of capitalism more generally."—Ian Angus, Green Left"I was frankly pole-axed by this magnificent book. Davidson resets the entire debate on the character of revolutions: bourgeois, democratic and socialist. He's sending me, at least, back to the library."—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums (praise for How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions)"This is, quite simply, the finest book of its kind."—Tony McKenna, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books (praise for How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions)“What should our conception of a bourgeois revolution be, if it is to enlighten rather than to mislead ? Neil Davidson’s instructive and provocative answer is given through a history both of a set of concepts and of those social settings in which they found application.His book is an impressive contribution both to the history of ideas and to political philosophy.”—Alasdair MacIntyre, author, After Virtue (praise for How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions)"This is Neil Davidson at his very best. In a sparkling set of essays, Davidson offers a conceptually sophisticated and historically wide-ranging analysis of the work of classical and contemporary political thinkers. From a critical assessment of Tom Nairn on nationalism to his sympathetic reading of the messianic Marxism of Walter Benjamin, Davidson demonstrates the profound intellectual insights to be derived from a careful, open and non-dogmatic deployment of the theoretical resources of historical materialism."—Satnam Virdee at University of Glasgow (praise for Holding Fast to an Image of the Past)"Working from the best grounds of a now-classical materialism, with great interpretive breadth and rich historical learning, Neil Davidson offers astute and measured guidance through some main territories of contemporary Marxist and associated intellectual history.”—Geoff Eley, Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History University of Michigan (praise for How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions)