As we prepare this book for publication the UK, and much of Europe, is riven by the spectre of the UK's withdrawal from the European Union. Donald Trump's impending presidency may have wider implications for the conduct of neoliberal governance. However, these two expressions of popular discontent are unlikely to change substantially neoliberalism's unequal relations of power and resources, which are detailed below. In some respects they may even intensify them. Eminent economists such as Stiglitz and Krugman have produced devastating diagnoses of the economic flaws of neoliberal capitalism which led to the 2008 financial crash.

Yet these critiques, as well as more recent depictions of wider, catastrophic social consequences, like Alain Touraine's After the Crisis (2014), have barely influenced political and business leaders. These are apparently accepting of continuing financial and economic instability, uncertainty and repressive austerity. Waves of protest and a rising tide of social movement disillusion with global capitalism continue, captured in a litany of outrage in George Monbiot's 2016 denunciation of the UK's version of the neoliberal regime (How Did We Get into This Mess?). Monbiot rightly blames the political and economic stasis and manifold social distress on the regime's unshaken commitment to the ideas and policies of ‘neoliberalism’. Moreover, as he shrewdly observes, this is an ideology which is all the more effective by being largely unnamed in public discourse, yet all-pervasive in society.

Amongst academics, campaigners and radical, fringe journalism there is no shortage of critiques and calls for resistance. Our own account of neoliberalism, given in the Introduction, summarises some of these critical aspects. However, the main thrust of this book is to provide potential alternatives, both as synoptic, coherent perspectives and also as specific policy recommendations and suggestions. These would both break with neoliberalism and provide reference points for politicians and activists to promote a more equal, more secure and genuinely freer society. Such developments would depend on collective efforts far beyond what is possible in a single volume such as this. However, we hope this collection will assist the wider movement for change to pursue, adapt and advance these or related ideas.

The Introduction to this book emphasised that the adoption of a few disparate policy alternatives will not shift the dominant neoliberal paradigm. Nor can displacement be achieved by a Damascene conversion of a handful of senior politicians and policy makers. Nor, we must concede, solely by illuminating ideas and prescriptions from academics and commentators. Historically, shifts of the sociopolitical consensus ‘at the top’ have involved the intermeshing of all of these actors with the aims and beliefs of broader social movements. Social movement can be defined as groups of people pursuing a shared cause or grievance requiring some social change and/or material or other gain. Activists may be closely or loosely organised – typically these days via the Web.

The rise of classical liberalism in the 19th century was propelled by the ideas and manifestos of campaigns by movements such as Chartism, Free Trade and anti-slavery. More recently, principles of the Keynesian‒social democratic paradigm, which defined the policies and institutions making up the welfare state, were seeded, debated and promoted through the labour movement. Even the political acceptability of some of today's progressive causes, such as environmental responsibility, women's rights and anti-discriminatory practice can be tracked back to the so-called ‘new social movements’ stemming from the cultural ferment of the 1960s.

So what, if anything can the social movements of the early 21st century contribute towards alternative politics and economics to replace neoliberalism? To answer this question we briefly survey the tenor and aims of the most potent or influential, contemporary social movements. This account, in turn, presupposes a short history of their development. After these assessments we evaluate the transformative potential of relevant social movements with particular reference to their interactions with the political sphere. Some social movements have, for decades, been combining a critique of neoliberalism's globalisation dimension, with concrete proposals and attempts to develop alternatives. After 2008, and with the partial collapse of the globalisation hubris, some of these ideas and the activists promoting them have been devolving towards national issues and problems.

Distinctiveness and origins

The Occupy and Indignados activities of 2011 in the Western world were not simply expressions of protest. They also rechannelled ideas and practices from earlier anti and ‘alter’ globalisation campaigns back to formerly affluent metropolitan economies.

Building on the Introduction's historical and critical review of neoliberalism and of existing proposals to change it, Part One specifies alternative, more radical perspectives to this still dominant, if elusive ideology. Following our proposal in the Preface, of a spectrum of ‘regime’ and ‘system’ changes, contributors’ political and policy perspectives in this part of the book assume democratic and non-violent, rather than ‘revolutionary’ change – some modest but strategic, others with broader, societal scope.

Jeremy Gilbert contextualises his recommendations for a renewal of socialist challenges to neoliberalism by distinguishing between critiques and counternarratives as moralistic, pathologising (‘neoliberalism makes you ill’), eco-Marxist and Marxist, and his preferred approach of radical democracy. Gilbert describes ‘moralistic’ approaches as limited to moral stances and exhortations to act differently and ‘better’, rather than providing specific strategies and programmes of change. Thus the moralism of the left can be as conservative as that of the right and is unlikely to appeal to those voters preoccupied with material hardship. Though impressed by the evidence that neoliberalism can damage people – make them ill – physically and psychologically, Gilbert argues that these perspectives lack a crucial identification of power and material interests in the present system. In an analysis that complements that of Benton in Chapter Three, he finds a lack of convincing solutions in the otherwise devastating demonstrations by Marxists, and particularly eco-Marxists, of the enormous material damage neoliberalism causes. Again Gilbert offers a radical democratic path allied to a modernisation ethos. This would utilise the radical potential inherent in media technologies and new organisational techniques: sophisticated tools to bring the individuals isolated by corporate neoliberalism into ‘potent collectives’. The organisational forms to promote these changes would be self-governing alternatives to the corporate model, developed through democratic decision making, rather than top-down, state imposition.

Anna Coote's recommendations cover three overlapping areas: social justice; environmental sustainability and a more equal distribution of power. A key unifying theme is that the distribution and control of resources should be directed towards the needs and potential of all members of society and not, as is currently the case, disproportionately to the few. Accordingly people should ‘be able to influence and control decisions that affect their everyday lives’.

In Part One our contributors have set out some broad themes that would break with neoliberal discourse and provide broad perspectives for movements and policies for change. To recap, these were: a platform of democratisation by O’Donnell; new or updated modes of collectivism by Gilbert; integration of lifeworld relations and environmental priorities by Coote and Benton; articulated, according to Coote in a new social settlement. Some of these perspectives were related to current fluctuations in structures of power and social context in the Part Two chapters by Farnsworth and Irving, and the Jones and O’Donnell chapter on the European Union. Thompson showed that there are some, though limited, shifts in the economic policy making within which progressive reforms may have to work. Both Jones and Johal, Moran and Williams identified specific changes that could make businesses and local economic institutions more accountable to civil society and local government criteria for socioeconomic amelioration. This final part of the book links the Part One perspectives to the Part Two institutional analyses by examining a number of fields of favourable political action.

Crouch begins these analyses by setting out the case for a revitalised form of social democracy in which the needs and interests of women are the ‘motors’ of change in a way that is analogous to that of trade unions and labour organisations in classical social democracy. Citing lifeworld aspects, such as the work‒life balance and the gendered division of domestic labour, Crouch argues that a revamped and revitalised social democratic state could be the best mechanism for improving these popular concerns. The trends and projections which Crouch identifies, complement and ‘materialise’ the principles of ‘natural’ wellbeing for which Coote and Benton argued in Part One. Jones and Mike O’Donnell pursue this focus on social justice and change agents by identifying the analogous concerns in the evolution of social movements. They argue that, as well as often making explicit criticisms of neoliberalism, many of these campaigners and their organisations could play similar roles to those previously taken by labour movement organisations as advocates and facilitators of classical social democracy ‒ a role for which their emphasis on more direct democracy in socioeconomic governance would render them especially relevant.