Liu Hui: A Review of Research on the Critique of Neoliberalism in Foreign Marxism
Neoliberalism is a set of institutional designs, policy systems, and ideologies based on liberalism. Its core is the "rational man" hypothesis proposed by mainstream Western economics. This hypothesis holds that as long as every individual freely pursues the maximization of their own interests, the interests of the entire society can be maximized. The roots of this concept originate from a system of private exchange built upon contractual relationships. For Adam Smith, the progenitor of liberalism, this contract-based freedom of exchange was most conducive to social development and therefore possessed the highest value. Consequently, freedom of contract and freedom of exchange became the most fundamental and important rights within the system of liberal rights. These rights simultaneously became the starting point for the construction of the entire society and state. Within the liberal system of rights, the state can only be a "passive state"; it is merely a defender of individual rights and a night-watchman for contractual relations and market competition. Its existence is instrumental and possesses no independent value in itself. The autonomy of private power and the limitation of public power are the essential characteristics of the liberal conception.
What neoliberalism has revived is precisely this set of core liberal values; the only difference between neoliberalism and traditional liberalism lies in the fact that neoliberalism exists in the era of economic globalization. Therefore, the series of policies and concepts it proposes based on the "rational man" hypothesis—such as privatization, liberalization, and marketization—possess a global character and are thus termed "universal values." However, these so-called "universal values" were struck a frontal blow by the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent long-term Great Depression, encountering a severe crisis. In their analysis and critique of the neoliberal crisis, many Western left-wing scholars have adhered to the Marxist critical tradition, conducting deep analyses of the new changes in contemporary capitalist relations of production, social relations, political relations, and international relations. On this basis, they have elucidated the entire process of neoliberalism's rise, development, and descent into crisis. This article attempts to systematically sort through foreign Marxist critiques of neoliberalism and, proceeding from Marxist theories of finance capital, conduct a critical examination of the problems inherent within them.
There are numerous schools of foreign Marxist critique of neoliberalism with varying perspectives, but generally speaking, they can be summarized into four major research perspectives: the production perspective, the institutional perspective, the class and race perspective, and the geopolitical perspective.
I. The Production Perspective
The production perspective primarily analyzes the rise and fall of neoliberalism by proceeding from the internal contradictions of the capitalist production process. Its main representatives are the "American Marxist School," including Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, Harry Magdoff, and John Bellamy Foster.
Baran and Sweezy conducted a systematic analysis of monopoly capitalism based on the experience of Western monopoly capitalist societies after World War II. They argued that in the stage of monopoly capitalism, surplus capital has replaced overproduction as the primary contradiction facing capitalist society. In this stage, because capitalists form monopoly alliances, they are able to maintain high monopoly prices, thereby alleviating the problems of overproduction and the falling rate of profit. However, this simultaneously produces a new problem: surplus capital. It becomes increasingly difficult for monopoly profits to be "capitalized" [1]; consequently, this surplus capital turns toward speculative activities, leading the capitalist economy increasingly toward financialization. The primary manifestations of this are the extreme expansion of the financial sector of the capitalist economy, the growing proportion of financial profits within total profits, and the continuous rise of debt as a percentage of GDP. Simultaneously, a power shift occurs within the capitalist group: the power of financial capitalists increasingly overrides that of industrial capitalists. Regarding this, Sweezy vividly pointed out: "With the rise of finance capital, the center of economic power has also shifted. For a long time, people turned a blind eye to this issue; radicals in particular believed that power in capitalist society resided in the boardrooms of a few hundred giant multinational corporations." But the situation differed in the late 1990s: "Real power lies not so much in corporate boardrooms as in the financial markets." Given the rapid rise of finance capital, Baran and Sweezy referred to monopoly capitalism—particularly since the 1970s—as the era of the "financial explosion," while Foster called it the era of "monopoly-finance capitalism." Under this research paradigm, neoliberalism is explained by the Monopoly Capital School as a political-economic strategy reflecting the specific interests of financial monopoly capital. Under this strategy, the free flow of money into the financial sector and the preservation and enhancement of financial assets are in many ways more important than production or employment; it also requires the state to become increasingly subservient to the demands of financial capitalists. Thus, it can be said that neoliberalism is a set of policy systems and ideologies created by financial monopoly capital.
In addition to the Monopoly Capital School, other Western left-wing scholars such as Giovanni Arrighi and David Harvey also interpret the development of neoliberalism primarily from the perspective of capitalist production, though their respective emphases differ. Addressing the crisis tendencies of the internal contradictions of capital accumulation, Harvey proposed the theory of "spatio-temporal fix." This theory originates from a re-interpretation of Marx’s thesis on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, leading to crises of over-accumulation. He argues that the capitalist logic of imperialism lies in finding "spatio-temporal fix" channels for the problem of surplus capital, resolving capitalist crises through time-delays and geographical expansion. If surplus capital and surplus labor exist within a specific region and cannot be absorbed internally, they must be exported elsewhere to find new spaces for profit. Harvey believes that the expansionary space of capitalism relies on "less economically developed" regions, which lie "outside" the mode of production of the dominant world powers. Capitalist activity produces uneven geographical development, even without considering geographical differences in resource endowments and physical possibilities, as these endowments and possibilities further enhance regional and spatial differentiation. Proceeding from this theory, Harvey argues that the emergence of neoliberalism is an internal requirement for finance capital to seek a "spatio-temporal fix." It is precisely to resolve the surplus capital problem within a given geographical space through time and space that a certain demand for "freedom" arises. For instance, under the Washington Consensus, developed countries demand that the economies of developing nations implement comprehensive liberalization and open-door policies, prohibiting excessive restrictions on financial investments from developed countries. The state-owned assets of developing countries themselves must be fully privatized to guarantee "free buying and selling" in financial markets. This freedom is entirely the freedom demanded by capital; it is capital’s freedom through and through.
Arrighi largely followed the long-cycle research methodology of the French historical school’s Fernand Braudel. Arrighi argues that due to intensified competition and falling profit rates, the production and expansion of capital will inevitably fall into stagnation. To resolve this stagnation, capital instinctively stops flowing into commodity production and trade and turns instead to financial expansion. Thus, material expansion and financial expansion constitute a complete systemic cycle of accumulation within the capitalist system, with financial expansion appearing as an inevitable phenomenon in the late stage of every systemic cycle of accumulation. Arrighi believes that the systemic cycle of accumulation is not only a cycle of capital accumulation but also inherently contains the cycle of the rise and fall of hegemonic states. When a hegemonic state transitions from material expansion to financial expansion, that state begins a latent decline; therefore, financial expansion generally signals the "autumn" of a hegemonic state. The present age is precisely an era in which a cycle of financial expansion has arrived, which means the "autumn of US hegemony" has arrived. Its primary manifestations are the hollowing out of the US real economy, the excessive expansion of the fictitious economy, long-term economic depression, and frequent financial crises. These crises have greatly weakened the hard power of US hegemony. Simultaneously, the enormous economic and financial crises brought about by financial expansion have dealt a heavy blow to the US-led neoliberal international political and economic order, proving with irrefutable facts that what neoliberalism seeks is not individual freedom, but the rule of financial capital. Therefore, Arrighi reflects that if the material expansion of capital promoted the formation and rise of neoliberalism, then the financial expansion of capital will ultimately announce neoliberalism’s decline and crisis.
II. The Institutional Perspective
While the production perspective emphasizes explaining neoliberalism through the contradictions encountered in the capitalist production process—such as falling profit rates and surplus capital—another school of thought understands neoliberalism directly as a synthesis of state policies and institutional systems. That is, it understands neoliberalism as an emerging institution adapted to a new stage of capitalist development. This is the institutional perspective of neoliberalism research. The main representatives of this perspective are the French Regulation School and the American "Social Structure of Accumulation" (SSA) school.
The main representatives of the French Regulation School include Michel Aglietta, Robert Boyer, and Alain Lipietz. They argue that capitalism in every historical period forms various institutions in areas such as labor-capital relations, capital competition, monetary operation, state policy, and international relations. These institutions effectively regulate labor-capital relations, competition among capitalists, and power competition among states, thereby providing a stable institutional environment for capital accumulation. Neoliberalism is a new regulatory regime formed after capitalism encountered the stagflation crisis of the 1970s. It dismantled the "Fordist" accumulation regime formed after the war—which was characterized by labor-capital compromise—and turned instead to support the suppression of workers' rights by capitalists, the profit requirements of finance capital, and so-called "shareholder primacy." It vigorously promoted right-wing policies such as financial deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, the excessive issuance of national debt, and the slashing of social welfare, thereby causing the Keynesian policies that had persisted for nearly thirty years after the war to exit the stage of history. Therefore, in the view of the French Regulation School, neoliberalism is a new policy and a new stage that succeeded Keynesianism.
The main representatives of the American Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) school include figures such as David Gordon and David Kotz. They argue that a specific stage of capital accumulation always corresponds to a particular structure composed of economic, political, and cultural relations, as well as international relations; this structure is a unity of institutions formed by the aforementioned relations. To explain the new stage of the financialization of capitalism since the 1980s, they categorize the social structure of accumulation into two types—"regulated" and "liberal"—based on whether the state intervenes in the market, viewing the history of capitalist development as a periodic transition between these two structures. For instance, regarding the stages of post-war capitalist development, the period from 1945 to 1970 was characterized by a "regulated" model of economic development. Its features included cooperation between labor and capital (the so-called post-war combination of mass production and mass consumption), cooperation prevailing over competition among capitalists, and strict state regulation of financial capital (such as the strict prohibition of mixing commercial and investment banking). The international monetary system adhered to the "gold" discipline prescribed by the Bretton Woods system, and state credit money (paper currency) could not be printed at will. However, after the 1970s, the capitalist economic development model shifted from regulated to liberal—that is, from the post-war "regulated SSA" to a "neoliberal SSA." This period is characterized by intensified labor-capital antagonism, with capitalists beginning to suppress labor resistance through layoffs, wage cuts, and outsourcing; intensified competition between capitals; and the capture of state public power by financial capital. The state began implementing a "policy toolkit" conducive to capital accumulation, including cutting wages and welfare, deregulating finance, and implementing tax cuts and concessions. The international monetary system detached from the constraints of gold, shifting from a relatively fixed exchange rate system to a comprehensive floating rate system to facilitate financial capital’s extraction of massive profits through currency issuance and exchange rate speculation. In short, in the view of the SSA school, neoliberalism is a set of "policy combinations" favoring capital over labor, universally implemented by developed capitalist countries since the 1970s under the pressure of the stagflation crisis.
Distinct from the comprehensive institutional analysis of the French Regulation School [2] and the American SSA school, Peter Gowan focuses on the operational mechanism of dollar hegemony after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, emphasizing how neoliberalism is manifested at the level of the international monetary system. He argues that since the 1970s, the United States no longer possessed the economic strength of the 1940s and 50s due to the relative advantages in capital accumulation gained by Japan and Europe. Consequently, the pegging of the dollar to gold under the gold-exchange standard became an increasing obstacle to the accumulation of wealth by US financial monopoly capital both domestically and internationally. Removing this obstacle became an imperative task. Gowan contends that, to some extent, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system was a deliberate move by the Nixon administration. Thus, while announcing the decoupling of the dollar from gold, the US government conducted a series of diplomatic maneuvers in the Gulf region to find a new anchor for the dollar—oil. However, as oil does not possess the international monetary status of gold, the decoupling of the dollar from gold effectively meant the release of dollar currency and credit, placing the entire global political-economic system under dollar hegemony. Gowan calls this new international system the "Dollar-Wall Street Regime." Under this regime, the United States obtained the privilege of printing dollar bills without limit, allowing it to collect enormous seigniorage from the rest of the world. The US relies on these printed dollars to acquire high-quality assets and high-end industries globally. Simultaneously, the US can exploit the strong position of the dollar to launch financial attacks on developing countries with weak financial systems, plundering the wealth of other nations by orchestrating and manufacturing financial crises (such as the Southeast Asian financial crisis), thereby deepening the financial dependence of developing countries on the United States. All of this operates under the name of "freedom." But this freedom, clearly, is merely the freedom of a single nation-state's credit money—the US dollar.
III. Class and Racial Perspectives
In addition to the productive and institutional perspectives, some left-wing scholars focus on class relations and racial relations to explain the entire process of the rise and fall of neoliberalism.
The primary representatives of the class perspective are the French economists Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy. They argue that since the 1970s, the class structure of developed capitalist countries like the US and UK has undergone tremendous changes. Beyond the industrial bourgeoisie and industrial proletariat (whom they call the "popular classes") defined in traditional Marxism, a class of financial parasites has rapidly risen above the former two, a phenomenon they call "finance's revenge" [3]. This class sets the maximization of shareholder value as its management goal, advocating that only by releasing the "free cash flow" of industrial companies to shareholders can economic resources be allocated most effectively and rationally. However, Duménil and Lévy argue this is not the case. The shareholder value maximization model has greatly weakened the operational autonomy of corporate management (i.e., industrial capitalists), because shareholders rarely make long-term investments based on the value-creation capacity of industrial firms; instead, their investments generally follow a "short-termist" strategy. The essence of such investment is speculative arbitrage in the stocks of industrial enterprises. Based on an analysis of the opposition between the financial capitalist class and the industrial capitalist class, Duménil and Lévy explain the fundamental reason for the rise of neoliberalism. They believe that since the 1970s, classes in developed capitalist countries have manifested as a three-tier structure: "financial capitalist class—managerial class (industrial capitalist class)—popular classes," with the financial capitalist class at the top. The neoliberal policy system and ideology primarily reflect the interests and demands of the financial capitalist class. Under this order, the power and interests of both the managerial class and the popular classes have been suppressed to varying degrees by the financial capitalist class. The class power structure established after World War II, centered on the compromise between labor and capital and between industrial and financial capital, has been thoroughly restructured.
If the class perspective focuses on analyzing the rise of neoliberalism, the national and racial perspectives represented by Daniel Faber, Neil Davidson, Richard Saull, and others focus on its decline. They argue that politics in the US and Europe currently exhibit a sharp right-ward trend, with neoliberalism taking a new form—right-wing populism. Right-wing populism is concentrated in two major events: the inauguration of President Trump in the US and Brexit in the UK. Daniel Faber points out that as a right-wing populist, Trump positioned himself as a representative of the people's voice, attributing the failure of American capitalism to "bad" trade deals negotiated by "unreasonable" politicians. This form of neoliberalism has replaced the cosmopolitan orientation of the Clinton and Obama administrations with nationalism and racism; it focuses on immigrants rather than inequality and on racial segregation rather than racial inclusion, thus constituting a "Reactionary Neoliberalism." Similar to the US, a racist and nationalist turn in neoliberalism has occurred across European countries. In some nations, right-wing nationalism and neo-fascism have gained increasing political support, such as the National Rally in France and the Five Star Movement in Italy. Brexit was the result of right-wing British politicians successfully manipulating nationalism and racism to oppose EU integration (a core tenet of EU neoliberalism). In analyzing the reasons for the rise of this reactionary neoliberalism, Davidson points out that nationalism and racism are new forms developed by traditional neoliberalism after encountering crisis. To fundamentally sustain neoliberalism, it serves three functions: first, it provides the working class with a form of psychic compensation that cannot be obtained from commodity consumption alone; second, it ensures the working class's loyalty—even if only a modicum—to the capitalist state, or prevents the formation of revolutionary class consciousness; third, by using the concepts of nation or race, it reintegrates fragmented grassroots social forces and enhances social cohesion, thereby mobilizing the entire citizenry behind national capital to confront international competitors. All of this is done to save the fate of capital itself amidst the crisis.
IV. Geopolitical Perspective
Besides the aforementioned perspectives, some left-wing scholars combine neoliberalism with geopolitics, forming the geopolitical perspective within neoliberal critique.
Regarding the status and role of geopolitics in neoliberal globalization, Western left-wing academia holds diverse views. Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and William I. Robinson believe that global capitalism has integrated economically and politically, and that the inter-state system based on geopolitical competition is neither inherent nor necessary for the normal functioning of capitalist relations of production. Geopolitical conflict between major capitalist states is, in their view, obsolete. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin also argue that although capitalism requires a state system, since World War II, the US has successfully established an "informal empire" that effectively subordinates other major capitalist countries to US hegemony. This view aligns fundamentally with the conclusions of Hardt, Negri, and Robinson: that geopolitical competition is outdated. However, other left-wing scholars such as Harvey, Alex Callinicos, and Neil Davidson hold different views. They argue that geopolitics is a neglected link in traditional Marxist theory, and the process of neoliberal globalization initiated by capitalism since the 1970s has not eliminated the influence of geopolitics. They contend that Marxist analysis of capitalist globalization should incorporate the concept of geopolitics.
Callinicos and Harvey emphasize the concept of "geopolitics" in their analysis of contemporary capitalism. They argue that "capitalist imperialism should be understood as a combination of economic and geopolitical competition." In their view, geopolitical competition and economic competition follow two distinct logics: the former manifests as the pursuit of relative advantages in power, the pursuit of collective interests, and is fixed within specific territories; the latter pursues profit and individual interest and is unconstrained by time or space. Therefore, one cannot—as Hardt, Negri, and Robinson have done—use the globalization of capital to negate geopolitics, thereby regarding geopolitical competition as a mere appendage of economic competition (the competition of capital). On the contrary, geopolitics consistently possesses independent value. They closely integrate the existence of geopolitics with the inherent uneven development of nations, arguing that throughout the history of modern imperialism, uneven development has existed among core nations, as well as between core and peripheral nations—particularly emerging nations. This uneven development obstructs the process of the world-unification of capital while simultaneously providing vast space for the existence of geopolitics. Capitalist states, especially great powers, utilize geopolitics to seek advantages for themselves within this uneven development of national strength. Particularly since the rise of the wave of neoliberal globalization in the 1970s, the hegemonic power of the United States has actually declined and its status has been shaken; meanwhile, other centers of power, such as emerging nations, have increasingly acquired the capacity to challenge U.S. hegemony. These factors have further stimulated the development of geopolitics. Even the end of the Cold War failed to terminate geopolitical competition; on the contrary, such competition has shown a trend of intensifying since the financial crisis. These facts all indicate that geopolitical competition is an indispensable dimension for analyzing neoliberal globalization. Within this theoretical dimension, states fight for power and capital fights for profit. The free movement of capital requires the assistance of coercion via certain political and military means; subsequently, state power becomes the provider of such coercive means, and neoliberalism opportunistically becomes the shared ideology for both, because the so-called "freedom" of neoliberalism is not a true or absolute "freedom," but inherently contains a form of "coercion" based on power. Based on the above considerations, Callinicos advocates that a Marxist theory of imperialism in the New Era should organically fuse geopolitics and economic competition.
Davidson holds views similar to those of Harvey and Callinicos. He points out that capitalism cannot be reduced to a dependency on or obsession with capital and markets; geopolitics is a field independent of capital competition. In geopolitics, the operation of state power clearly displays its own "irrational" logic—that is, it cannot immediately satisfy the demands of any specific bourgeois group. Davidson gives an example: "Oil companies headquartered in the U.S. were not entirely enthusiastic about the Iraq War. However, the capitalist state must act for the interests of national/state capital as a whole, rather than for the interests of specific sectors of capital. This is the ultimate significance of the Iraq War: the U.S. used it to signal to its allies and enemies what would happen if they went too far. It showed allies that the U.S. remains the only nation capable of using force to make rogue states comply, and can also control China's oil supply, and so on—none of which is related to market competition." But this does not mean the war was inconsistent with the rationality of U.S. capitalism; in Davidson's view, the rationality of U.S. capitalism is precisely embodied in regional military interventions carried out in the name of neoliberalism.
V. Brief Evaluation
The research on neoliberalism by foreign Marxists [4] is characterized by diverse schools and rich content, achieving important results and providing a unique perspective for our understanding of new changes in contemporary capitalism. However, some of these views conflict with the Marxist theory of finance capital, requiring us to conduct a critical examination.
The greatest feature of the production perspective lies in its firm grasp of the essential transition of capitalism from free competition to the monopoly stage. It argues that the form of capital dominating capitalist development has evolved from industrial capital to a new stage of finance monopoly capital. Therefore, its analysis of contemporary capitalism is no longer centered on the free competition of industrial capital but on the monopoly of finance capital. Starting from this premise, it interprets neoliberalism as a "political form for dealing with the dilemma of stagnation-financialization," arguing that the financialization of the economy inevitably leads to the "financialization of the state"—that is, state policy inevitably transitions from Keynesian policies that restricted finance capital to neoliberal policies of financial deregulation. Thus, neoliberalism is essentially the ideology used by finance monopoly capital to exercise global rule.
However, most subsequent foreign Marxists abandoned this logical thread; that is to say, they did not grant sufficient importance to monopoly capital. Instead, the analytical paradigm they employ remains focused on the free competition of industrial capital, except that this free competition has become increasingly globalized compared to the 19th century. As Foster has criticized, most foreign Marxists have not profoundly grasped the theoretical value and significance of the Marxist transition from the critique of industrial capital to the critique of finance capital. This has led them, intentionally or otherwise, to believe that "monopoly is no longer a big deal," which is precisely to discard the essence of the Marxist critique of capital. In Foster's view, without taking monopoly capital—especially monopoly finance capital—as a premise, it is impossible to truly understand the essence of contemporary capitalism, nor is it possible to truly understand the relationship between neoliberalism as an ideology and its economic base. Because finance monopoly capital has already become the dominant form of capital in contemporary capitalist society, it has replaced industrial capital as the "universal illumination" [5] of the new era. The so-called "universal values" of neoliberalism are precisely a realistic reflection and expression of this "universal illumination" of finance monopoly capital. In this sense, the production perspective continues the true spirit of historical materialism within the study of neoliberalism by foreign Marxists.
Compared with the production perspective, the institutional perspective no longer focuses its emphasis on the internal contradictions of capitalist relations of production and the resulting change from industrial capital to the form of finance monopoly capital. Consequently, it shows little interest in economic laws proposed by Marx, such as the falling rate of profit or surplus capital. Instead, it turns to study a series of institutions formed during the process of economic development, such as the labor-management negotiation system, the state's policy and regulatory systems, and the operational system of the international monetary framework, particularly highlighting the role state power plays in capital accumulation. For example, the Social Structure of Accumulation (SSA) school in the United States understands the history of capitalist development as an alternation between two structures—"state-regulated" and "liberal"—based on whether the state strictly regulates capital accumulation. On this basis, it understands neoliberalism as a set of management systems characterized by laissez-faire implemented by capitalist states since the 1970s to deal with the crisis of stagflation, standing in opposition to the previous Keynesian system of "strict state regulation." Although the institutional perspective also observes the rise of finance monopoly capital and the financialization of the capitalist economy—conducting extensive empirical investigations into the actual performance of financialization across various production sectors, and even suggesting that the defining characteristic of the capitalist economy in the neoliberal era is "finance-led"—it argues that finance capital dominates the capitalist economy because the state relaxed financial regulations and promoted reform policies of privatization, liberalization, and marketization. Internationally, this was due to the United States dismantling the Bretton Woods system and moving the international monetary system toward liberalization. In short, scholars of the institutional perspective believe that neoliberalism led to the expansion of finance capital's power, rather than the rise of finance capital's power creating the policy system and ideology of neoliberalism, as maintained by the production perspective. Based on this inverted understanding, when scholars of the institutional perspective propose schemes for transforming capitalism, they place their focus on state regulation of finance capital. The problem, however, is that the public power of the state has long been manipulated and captured by finance monopoly capital; to expect the state to represent the public interest and "discipline" capital will inevitably end as a utopia.
If the keyword of the production perspective is "economic laws" and the keyword of the institutional perspective is "state policy," then the keyword of the class perspective is "class division." To clarify the essence of neoliberalism, Duménil and Lévy employ the Marxist method of class analysis, advancing with the times to distinguish the finance capitalist class—the upper stratum of the capitalist group—from the middle and lower strata of industrial and commercial capitalists. They keenly grasp the law of transition from industrial capital to finance monopoly capital, thereby deeply inheriting Marx's theory of interest-bearing capital and Lenin's theory of finance capital within the field of political economy. Precisely based on this class subdivision, they understand neoliberalism as the ideology of finance capitalists (the upper stratum of the capitalist group) and view the finance capitalist class as the behind-the-scenes driver of the state's promotion of the neoliberal policy system. It must be said that this analysis is penetrating and hits the mark; it also constitutes a natural extension and supplement to the production perspective. However, Duménil and Lévy's method of class analysis also has "major flaws." This is prominently reflected in the unrealistic hopes they place on the managerial class. In their view, the finance capitalist class is a reactionary and parasitic class, while the managerial class, representing small and medium industrial capitalists, belongs to the leading force of social progress. Therefore, the social transformation plan they proposed after the 2008 global financial crisis was to counter the finance capitalist class by promoting an alliance between the managerial class and the popular classes (with the managerial class holding the dominant position in the alliance). Their vision is to return to the era of the 1933 Roosevelt New Deal, placing hope in a strong president to represent the interests of the managerial and popular classes, suppressing the finance capitalist class, and thereby "setting things right" [6] against the current "neoliberal counter-revolution." In the eyes of Duménil and Lévy, this path is also a key step toward socialism. But can the managerial class really shoulder such a sacred historical mission? In fact, it cannot. Under the rule of finance monopoly capital, although contradictions between finance capitalists and industrial capitalists have indeed occurred within the capitalist group, when facing the working class as a whole—as Marx pointed out long ago—the various groups of capitalists will inevitably "form a real Freemasonry." Therefore, the hope placed by Duménil and Lévy in the managerial class will ultimately result in disappointment.
Among the various perspectives in the study of neoliberalism, the racial perspective is somewhat unique because it focuses directly on the rapid rise of nationalist and racist trends in American and European politics in recent years. Although it has not, like the production, institutional, and class perspectives, conducted a multi-faceted historical investigation of capitalist economy, politics, and ideology, it correctly points out that right-wing populism is merely a variant form of neoliberalism that has developed after the financial crisis. It remains essentially neoliberal, merely donning the mask of nationalism and racism. Its purpose is to shift domestic crises, enhance the legitimacy of capitalist political rule, and prevent the awakening of class consciousness among the lower classes. This judgment is shrewd rather than profound, because it does not analyze the transformation of neoliberalism into right-wing populism from the vantage point of finance monopoly capital as the highest stage of capital development. In reality, whether it be the neoliberalism before the financial crisis or the current right-wing populism, the dictatorial rule of finance capital and the financial oligarchy lies behind them; this has never changed. What has truly changed are the methods and strategies of finance capital's rule. Originally, finance capital promoted neoliberalism to extract profits "freely and without hindrance" on a global scale through financial globalization. However, this accumulation by dispossession eventually led to crisis. Therefore, finance capital had to use the "country first" principle of right-wing populism to shed various "universal value" obligations it had undertaken due to "excessive liberalization," thereby shifting the crises accumulated within its own country onto other nations. Brexit in the UK, the U.S. "withdrawing from groups" [7], and the increasingly aligned "country-first" policies and "xenophobia" across European and American countries are all manifestations of this. Only by standing at this height can we profoundly understand that right-wing populism is merely a "variant" of neoliberalism—a more reactionary form developed by neoliberalism.
Finally, let us consider the geopolitical perspective. A major contribution of this perspective is the injection of interstate power struggles based on geopolitical relations into the theoretical system of traditional Marxism. From this viewpoint, imperialism is the intersection of economic competition and geopolitical competition; however, geopolitical theory was not originally included in the Marxist critique of political economy. Therefore, the analysis of capitalism cannot remain solely at the economic level of capital accumulation but must be advanced to the level of a political critique of the state system. It should be said that this analysis is quite creative because, compared to the discourse that uses capitalist globalization to disparage geopolitics, it recognizes that the uneven development of capitalism inevitably brings about conflicts of interest between states. It sees the necessary combination of the free flow of capital with the political and military coercion of state power, and identifies a certain hypocrisy in the neoliberal discourse on liberty. In short, it recognizes that the globalization of capital has not "made the world flat," thereby opening a broad horizon for the integration of geopolitical research with Marxism.
VI. Theoretical Insights from Foreign Marxist Critiques of Neoliberalism
As stated above, although the foreign Marxist critiques of neoliberalism are more or less inadequate in their understanding and application of Marxist theory and method, the explorations of each perspective possess specific theoretical and epochal value. They hold significant theoretical importance for our deep understanding of the essential characteristics and development trends of contemporary capitalism, and for the development of Marxism as it advances with the times.
First, the foreign Marxist critique of neoliberalism helps us profoundly understand the essential characteristics of contemporary capitalism. By critically synthesizing the four perspectives of foreign Marxist critiques of neoliberalism, we can discover that the essence of contemporary capitalism is a capitalism in which financial monopoly capital occupies the dominant position. Neoliberalism is merely a set of social institutions, policy systems, and ideologies through which financial monopoly capital exercises its rule; it is the concrete expression of the interests and will of financial monopoly capital within the superstructure. The accumulation of financial monopoly capital is the bedrock of neoliberalism, serving as its productive and class basis. The connection between financial monopoly capital and neoliberalism is not accidental but essential. As Marx said: "Every form of production creates its own specific legal relations, forms of government, etc." [8]
Neoliberalism is precisely the specific form of rule generated by financial monopoly capital. The accumulation of financial monopoly capital possesses inherent, insurmountable limits. These limits manifest in the fact that its dispositive, parasitic, and speculative accumulation will, sooner or later, lead the entire society into crisis. The accumulation of financial monopoly capital has its own ascending and descending phases. When it is in the ascending phase of accumulation, neoliberalism forges ahead triumphantly, becoming a "universal value" promoting financial globalization. When it enters a descending phase, especially when encountering a global crisis, neoliberalism inevitably runs into walls everywhere and declines from prosperity to exhaustion. Consequently, following financial and economic crises, an ideological crisis erupts. To escape this series of crises without harming its own fundamental interests, financial monopoly capital can only manipulate nationalism and racism (i.e., right-wing populism) to conceal the deepening of class contradictions and to export the crisis abroad. This inevitably exacerbates crises in geopolitics and international relations, which in turn jeopardizes the global accumulation system dominated by financial capital and erodes the foundations of its global rule. As a result, financial crises, social crises, ideological crises, and crises in geopolitics and international relations begin to overlap sequentially, leaving the contemporary capitalist system dominated by financial monopoly capital deeply mired and unable to extricate itself. Under the weight of multiple crises and with no immediate hope for resolution, the trend of neoliberalism's right-wing populization is bound to continue developing for some time to come, thereby adding more uncertainty to the development of the world situation.
Second, the foreign Marxist critique of neoliberalism is of certain significance for promoting the development of Marxist theory as it advances with the times. We know that Marxism and liberalism were the two major opposing social trends of the 19th century. Marx's critique of liberalism was primarily established on the basis of free competition of industrial capital; for instance, he pointed out with piercing insight that "in free competition, it is not the individuals who are set free, but capital." From Marx's perspective, so-called freedoms such as freedom of competition, freedom of contract, and individual freedom cannot prevent the rule of capital; the dominant position of capital develops naturally precisely from this kind of freedom. The "capital" Marx discussed here referred mainly to industrial capital, because in Marx's era, capital monopoly had not yet truly developed. By Lenin's era, free-competition capitalism had developed into monopoly capitalism. Therefore, Lenin no longer took industrial capital but rather financial (monopoly) capital as the core of his critique of capitalism, arguing that "financial capital does not want liberty, it wants domination," thereby further stripping away the hypocritical veil of the liberal discourse on individual freedom. Today, however, the era of colonial imperialism in which Lenin lived has also become history, replaced by an era of economic globalization dominated by financial capital and characterized by neoliberalism as its ideology. It is precisely against this new historical background that foreign Marxist scholars have launched their critique of contemporary capitalism.
These critiques largely inherit the tradition of Lenin's critique centered on financial monopoly capital. For example, the Monthly Review School [9] in the United States takes financial monopoly capital as the starting point for analyzing contemporary capitalism, and scholars of the class perspective distinguish financial monopoly capital from small and medium industrial and commercial capital. On this basis, they have all revealed the essential link between neoliberalism and financial monopoly capital in the context of economic globalization. At the same time, the foreign Marxist critique of contemporary capitalism inherits the analytical tradition of Lenin’s theory of imperialism—which organically combines financial capital with state power and international relations—extending it to specific research on the era of financial globalization. Examples include Arrighi’s analysis of the material and financial expansion of capital and systemic cycles of hegemony [10] within the production perspective; Harvey’s analysis of the "spatial-fix" of financial capital on a global scale; the institutional perspective’s analysis of the international monetary system; the ethnic and racial perspective’s analysis of financial monopoly capital exporting crises abroad; and the geopolitical perspective’s analysis of the uneven development of capitalist states. All these are manifestations of Lenin’s aforementioned analytical methods in the new era. In summary, the foreign Marxist critique of contemporary capitalism embodies the Marxist tradition of criticizing capitalism in many aspects and possesses certain theoretical reference value for the development of Marxism in the New Era.