From the Neoliberal crisis to a new path of development

In our view, the causes of the crisis are tied to the political change towards a Neoliberal phase from the 1970s on: a wide process of “deregulation” – from the labour market to the globalisation of production, from the national to the international finance – has allowed a partial recovery in the profitability of the capitalist system, contrasting the post-war decline of the profit rate which led to the 1970s “stagflation”. The same key elements of the Neoliberal model – deregulation, financialisation, globalisation – have eventually led to a large crisis as a result of the huge increase of inequality, financial instability, and trade imbalances. In this perspective, the “financial crisis” is the signal of underlying problems concerning the global process of capital accumulation. It is now necessary to support a recovery of the public intervention (“top down”) in order to create the conditions for an economic restart that, in turn, would strengthen the construction of a radical alternative (from the “bottom up”) to the Neoliberal course. A wider access to education should be the key to this progressive strategy aimed at supporting a more egalitarian and green path of development. A radical rethinking of bequest taxation and, in general, of the taxation on wealth would have a clear symbolic value in this perspective, providing, at the same time, the material basis for extending the right to a “universal education”.