How Neoliberalism destroyed collectivism

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister of the United Kingdom. Thatcher’s neoliberal ideas helped her win the election, and she promptly decimated the welfare state and changed British culture from collectivism to individualism in the years that followed. Thatcher’s acceptance speech after her election provided clear evidence of this:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand, ‘I have a problem; it is the government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem; I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ or “I am homeless, the government must house me!’ And so they are casting their problems on society, but who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families, and no government can do anything except through people, and people look to themselves first.

Thatcher basically told us to fend for ourselves with those comments. We are now mostly on our own as the government has withdrawn its assistance. Substance users and those with mental health problems were disproportionately affected. Prior to Thatcher’s speech, mental illness and substance use were understood to be diseases of the brain caused by a chemical imbalance, and therefore, facilities were established to aid those struggling with these conditions. Former inmates of British psychiatric hospitals are being released into the community with the help of care workers.

Still, Thatcher had already established that they were the ones who needed to take responsibility. A half-century of cultural isolation didn’t seem to matter at all. Ideology is central to neoliberalism Collective virtues like equality and solidarity have been supplanted by the individual and connected ideals of competitiveness and consumption due to the rise of neoliberal economic policies. This change was made possible by the development of welfare capitalism in the past. Reducing poverty paved the way for a mass consumer society by encouraging greater equality, weakening social class links, downplaying the importance of gender roles and the nuclear family, and upping the importance of individuality.

The potential for mass consumption ironically encouraged individuals and households to differentiate themselves from each other, undermining the commitment to equality that had strengthened the creation of consumer society in the first place. The core belief of consumerist ideology is that material goods should be acquired regardless of need. Advertising, which helps to “universalize the ideals of the market place,” spreads this ideology subtly but effectively, so much so that it is widely accepted even if it is rarely explicitly proclaimed. Constant emphasis on variety’s benefits and the increasing commercialization of once-innocuous pursuits both contribute to the delusion that an excess of possessions is usual and even desirable. Its widespread nature is demonstrated by the fact that consumers are increasingly categorised and labelled according to the items they buy rather than the activities they engage in.

A cultural manifestation of consumerism is the rise of shopping from a purely practical activity to the most popular leisure pursuit of the last several decades. Consumption is intrinsically tied to the idea of rivalry for the same reasons that aspirational and competitive consumer cultures work against social justice. Advertisers and manufacturers capitalise on consumers’ desire to look more successful than their contemporaries through the use of social comparisons and prestige branding. It’s common for neoliberals to tout the benefits of competition when defending their policies. As increased output and decreased prices for consumers are the results of a competitive market, liberalising trade and investment and privatising state-owned enterprises are justified.

A necessary and inevitable consequence of free market capitalism is the depressing effect of competition on wages and working conditions. A healthy dose of healthy competition is good for everyone, both in and out of the office. Those who are willing to put in the work to succeed are lauded, while those who are not are looked down upon. As Western nations have become more consumer-driven, they have also become more authoritarian in their social policies and regulatory frameworks.

People are becoming more and more inclined towards spiteful behaviour, and they are also becoming more receptive to the idea of public surveillance as a method of maintaining law and order.

For those struggling with substance abuse and/or mental illness, what does this entail? There are various ways in which the chemical imbalance theory of human misery aids the neoliberal cause. Aspiration is deeply rooted in consumer culture, yet in order to strive for something better, one must first feel dissatisfied. Traditional advertising strategies aim to “create a dissatisfaction in the market environment” to persuade consumers that the brand’s products are necessary. The pseudoscientific concept of a “perfect chemical balance” suggests that there is a universal norm of neurochemical equilibrium by which all humans can be judged. Thus, it plants the seeds of doubt in the minds of its audience. Do the different neurotransmitters in our brains coordinate with one another? Surely we need a little fine-tuning before we can reach our maximum intellectual capacity, right? It’s possible that we’re missing out if we never take an antidepressant and reap its benefits.

The widespread propagation of the chemical imbalance notion has resulted in widespread discontent with one’s own mental health, similar to how pervasive product promotion can make people unhappy with their material possessions. People are pressured to create an identity that is at odds with their true selves, despite the fact that doing so might be beneficial to their mental and financial well-being. Acceptance of issues, weaknesses, or habits is not encouraged. Everyone deserves a life that is never boring, always rewarding, never feels unbalanced, and is always filled with joy. If we don’t, we’re told that we’ve given in and that our lives will never be what we want them to be. It is suggested that the person achieve this goal through the application of conventional medical treatments, therapies, or psychotherapy. In contrast, engaging in material consumption does not alleviate unhappiness but rather provides psychological justification for more shopping.

Neoliberalism’s true victims are the people for whom the medicalisation of discontent is the most consequential and pervasive. Expectations are raised during a time when opportunities for attaining relative social progress are set diminishing due to rising inequality, declining social mobility, and the public parade of wealth offered by the media’s infatuation with celebrities. A growing gap opens up between the poor’s hopes and the reality they face as a result of this. The impoverished bear the brunt of the modern Western world’s epidemic of psychiatric problems in children and adults.

The desire to manage the victims of neoliberal policies and reassure the rich and middle classes may explain the paradoxical relationship between liberalising economic policies and authoritarian social policies. Welfare political discourse frames poverty as a social problem requiring a political solution in the form of welfare, while neoliberal capitalism’s coercive function in prisons is a direct reflection of this. The Mental Health Act was amended in the 1990s to provide more monitoring and control of hospital-discharged patients. Proposed changes to the Act have focused on expanding access to involuntary community treatment and increasing the criminalisation of those with diagnosable but untreatable personality disorders. The government has also considered eliminating the exclusion provision for those with substance abuse issues.

The societal calamity that neoliberal policies have wrought has been ignored in favour of the more intimate and discreet language of individual pain. By redirecting people’s efforts away from direct resistance, biopsychiatry ultimately helps the neoliberal cause as a whole. Since then, the interplay between psychology and economics has grown increasingly nuanced. Because of this, the decline of neoliberal hegemony may provide an opportunity for a fresh strategy in the treatment of mental illness. To care for society’s most vulnerable members, we need to abandon individualism and return to collectivism, I would suggest.