Elements for a Marxist Characterization of Neoliberalism

Abstract

Various characterizations of neoliberalism have described it as an economic ideology that materializes in a government program, whose objective is the free market. The problem of these notions lies in its ambiguity and in thinking about neoliberalism starting from what it upholds of itself. The central thesis of this article is that neoliberalism is an eminently political phenomenon, which refers specifically to the state. sing concepts from Poulantzas' Marxist theory, it is possible to account for the function and relationships that the state maintains with a social formation. This allows us to interpret the social changes that have taken place since the irruption f neoliberal governments and their reforms, establishing a basis on which the particularities of the neoliberal state and its differences with other forms of state are escribed. At this point the notion of accumulation by dispossession provides key elements to understand how neoliberalism operates.