Book Review: "Invisible Doctrine" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison

Full Title: Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison

‘Profitable components of public services are wrung dry, while essential but unprofitable aspects are dumped. People with complex health conditions are either abandoned or returned to the state for treatment, sewage treatment plants are bypassed and left to deteriorate, bus services to smaller towns and communities are slashed.’

- "Invisible Doctrine" by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison

I have seen this on my Amazon Recommendations list ever since it came out and honestly, I had been avoiding it because of my current trends of doom-reading and wanting to get back to reading some fiction. I feel like I know a lot more about the political stratosphere now than I did at any other time of my life. It's not just about the past though, it's about the present too. When we think of Neoliberalism we think of Margaret Thatcher and that should be enough to kind of put us off it. But this book covers so much more than that - a lot of which we do not even realise happening.

According to this book neoliberalism is not simply an ideology, it is not simply a faction of politics but it is something more pervasive that has woven its way into every single aspect of our lives. It has been created to make sure that those who have riches and more expensive education always and I mean always succeed with the remaining people, no matter their intelligence, remain at the bottom. It uses the constantly disproven idea of trickle-down economics to bolster itself against claims it works only in the favour of the rich.

One thing that I liked about this opening idea in the book is that it talks about how many people do not actually know what neoliberalism is and how that is something that is done by design. It seems that many people not knowing what neoliberalism is exactly is caused by neoliberalism itself. Why? Well, when neoliberalism wants to support the endeavours of the rich and thus, drain the resources from public services and education in order to do so. Again, the whole situation of neoliberalism's wants and requirements are shrouded from the public with the whole thing being put off as an economic issue when in reality it has been created on purpose.

‘What is neoliberalism? It’s an ideology whose central belief is that competition is the defining feature of humankind. It tells us that we are greedy and selfish, but that greed and selfishness light the path to social improvement, generating the wealth that will enrich us all. It casts us as consumers rather than citizens.’

The idea presented in the text as 'boom, bust, quit' is something that is part and parcel of how neoliberals rule their land. The book talks about the sugar plantations by the Portuguese and how, after maximising the resources and leaving little for the native population, the rich colonisers simply left and went somewhere else to do the same thing. This is relative to how the colonisers treated the native population of America and many others. I think this is very much relative to how the neoliberals treated the UK as well, making as much money as possible for those who they viewed as rich and capable and, allowing everything else to suffer until it broke. The neoliberal leader would then simply resign or step down and thus, it would be left for the next person to clean up.

‘Boom, Bust, Quit’ is what capitalism does. The ecological crises it causes, the social crises it causes, the productivity crises it causes are not perverse outcomes of the system. They are the system.’

The competition and ability to get ahead lie is one of the greatest lies ever told to human beings. In fact, neoliberalism is designed to stop people who are not in forms of power from getting ahead in any means. Neoliberalism only works if the population are kept stupidly unaware of any political idea or new policy coming into place. It relies on a population so depressed in thought and distracted by trying to afford basic needs that neoliberalism itself can then do what it feels like whenever it feels like. This came out as pervasive in our modern era in which we saw the rules of the pandemic broken by the very people who set it, including the Prime Minister. A neoliberal nightmare, it is set to keep its population blissfully unaware of the realities of politics by draining educational resources and keeping the adults scrambling for whatever few scraps they can get. It is like a plague.

‘The fairy tale that capitalism tells about itself- that you become rich through hard work and enterprise- is the greatest propaganda coup in human history.’

It was this same neoliberalism that drove the 2008 financial crisis which basically destroyed everything so much that as of 2024, we still haven't recovered from it. Pressures on the NHS driven by neoliberalism seem to almost be done on purpose (with the example of NHS dentistry leaving us believing that the person to privatise the NHS will probably get an award from their neoliberal crew whilst the rest of us are left in limbo). The Brexit vote was probably one of the most malicious though in which people did not know exactly what they were voting for and were instead rung off with mottos and things that may have sounded nice to them in theory. The difference is, this was not the reason for Brexit at all. Instead, it was driven by the ultra-wealthy and their fanciful requirements of Britain. It had basically nothing to do with the things that were promised to each group in the general public. Absolutely nothing at all.

‘As a general rule, privatisation is legalised theft from the public realm. They emphasise that the growth of private power needs to be checked and regulated and that we are still not heeding the warning from almost a century ago.'

From this to the history of neoliberalism and other factions of it in the USA, this book might be small but it covers a wide range of topics on the subject of neoliberalism and the fact that it doesn't just always fail - but it is designed to always fail because the people at the top won't be touched. It will always, regardless of the form of neoliberalism that is being implemented, be the people at the bottom that will suffer. It is a horrific narcissism of the rich but not something that modern day Britain is unaware of entirely. We have had to put up with them for years now.