Introduction

One aim of this book is to help us rethink prevailing assumptions, about what is and isn't possible in politics and policy and what the big issues are. Already, we’ve seen violence against women treated as peripheral. Even such violence meted out illegally by official keepers of the peace has been given little official priority. During my life, I’ve seen prevailing values move from the belief that only by the state controlling the market will we end poverty to the conventional wisdom becoming that only the market can achieve this and state interference makes things worse. The book began with an individual death, which I argue has much bigger ramifications for us and our politics. However, what happens to us as individuals is clearly on a different scale from what may befall us collectively.

Neoliberalism's big consequences

Neoliberalism and its bedmate globalisation are linked with phenomena that can cause individual suffering on a universal scale. It's such big-ticket ramifications of these economic and political developments that we turn to next. While they may seem more distant, we ignore them at our peril. We began with neoliberalism's relations with poverty and inequality. Now we consider a range of other global concerns associated with prevailing politics and economics which also have massive implications for all our futures.