Social cohesion and neoliberalism

"At the popular level, the drive towards market freedoms and the commodification of everything can all to easily run amok and produce social incoherence. The destruction of forms of social solidarity and even, as Thatcher suggested, of the very idea of society itself, leaves a gaping hole in the social order. It then becomes peculiarly difficult to combat anomie and control the resultant anti-social behaviours such as criminality, pornography, or the virtual enslavement of others. The reduction of

‘freedom’ to ‘freedom of enterprise’ unleashes all those ‘negative freedoms’ that Polanyi saw as inextricably tied in with the positive freedoms. The inevitable response is to reconstruct social solidarities, albeit along different lines––hence the revival

of interest in religion and morality, in new forms of associationism (around questions of rights and citizenship, for example)

and even the revival of older political forms (fascism, nationalism, localism, and the like). Neoliberalism in its pure form has

always threatened to conjure up its own nemesis in varieties of authoritarian populism and nationalism."

Harvey, David. Chapt 7. The Neoliberal State. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, USA, 2007.