Tom Sparks

From: The Origins of European Neo-liberalism by Nicholas Mulder

The real source of neoliberalism in Europe is neither technocracy nor hegemony but a problem specific to the continent: intergovernmentalism........

While the name Lisbon connotes the triumph of the neoliberal model in Europe, it may also foreshadow a possible way out of that model’s clutches. Since November 2015, Portugal has been the only Eurozone and EU member state which has been able to combine left-wing economic and social policies with material recovery while remaining committed to European institutions. The Portuguese progressive experiment under Lisbon’s former mayor, the Socialist prime minister António Costa, illustrates one possible path for the European left: capturing power in national elections and rolling back budget cuts and privatizations, thereby boosting growth and reducing debt.

“As workers, most men in our culture (like working women) are controlled, dominated. Unlike working women, working men are fed daily a fantasy diet of male supremacy and power. In actuality, they have very little power, and they know it. Yet they do not rebel against the economic order or make revolution. They are socialized by ruling powers to accept their dehumanization and exploitation in the public world of work, and they are taught to expect that the private world, the world of home and intimate relationships, will restore to them their sense of power, which they equate with masculinity. They are taught that they will be able to rule in the home, to control and dominate, that this is the big payoff for their acceptance of an exploitative economic social order. By condoning and perpetuating male domination of women to prevent rebellion on the job, ruling male capitalists ensure that male violence will be expressed in the home and not in the work force.”

— bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (via heavyweightheart)