Has Neoliberalism Ended?

Dear Young Comrades,

The limit of a concept, a new form of an assault, a two-sided lie, a programme in Turkey — and an invitation to issue 73 of Teori ve Eylem.

Look closely at this calendar.

2003: Lula in Brazil, Chávez in Venezuela; "Latin America is burying neoliberalism." 2008: Lehman Brothers fails, states rescue the banks; "neoliberalism is dead, the state is back." 2020: the pandemic, public hospitals, wage supports; "the market collapsed, the public won." 2025: Trump raises tariff walls; "free trade is over, neoliberalism is over."

An end announced four times. An order that has died four times. And between the four announcements, every time, the same thing happened: real wages fell, public services became paid-for, unions shrank, capital grew.

If a thing dies four times, either it is not dying or we are taking the pulse of the wrong thing.

The occasion of this piece is the Autumn 2026 issue of the journal Teori ve Eylem and that issue's opening essay, Mustafa Yalçıner's "Is It the End of Neoliberalism?". In this piece we will do three things. First we will set out our own answer, with its grounds. Then we will introduce the journal and the issue and say briefly what Yalçıner's essay gets right and what it leaves incomplete. Then we will invite you to something: to read and to argue.

Let us ask three questions:

What is this thing we call neoliberalism; is it monopoly capitalism itself, or a phase of it?
Are tariff walls, industrial policy and rearmament the end of neoliberalism, or the same assault in a new uniform?
Who is saying "neoliberalism is over" today, to whom, and for what?

And a fourth, our question: in Turkey, today, on whose pay-slip is this argument read?

Part One: Our Answer

Our answer is short: No, it has not ended. Because the only indicator by which to measure whether it has ended is whether labour-power continues to cheapen, and that indicator points the same way everywhere. Short answers need long grounds under them; here are the grounds.

1. The Limit of the Concept: Neoliberalism Is Not Monopoly Capitalism; It Is a Form of Its Assault

First let us set the concept in its place, because the whole tangle of the argument comes from here.

Lenin, in 1916, in Imperialism, told how capitalism passed from the phase of free competition into the monopoly phase: production concentrates in monopolies, bank capital and industrial capital fuse into finance capital, the export of capital overtakes the export of commodities, the world is partitioned and re-partitioned among monopolies and states. This phase did not begin in 1980; we have been inside it for more than a hundred years. Monopoly capitalism is not a "policy" of capitalism; it is an "epoch."

Neoliberalism, by contrast, is an answer that comes into play inside this epoch, at a particular historical moment, against a particular problem. The problem was this: in the 1970s profit rates were falling, the post-war "welfare state" compromise was coming dear to capital, the workers' movement had been on the rise since 1968, and the colonial peoples were on their feet. Monopoly bourgeoisie put an assault programme into play to get out of this squeeze: cheapen labour-power, break the union, take back rights already won, turn the public sphere into a new field of valorisation for capital, lift every barrier in the way of capital movements. After 1989 the huge market and labour reserve opened by the collapse of the Eastern Bloc became fuel for this programme.

Neoliberalism is not monopoly capitalism itself; it is the class answer monopoly capitalism gave to the crisis of the 1970s. If you confuse epoch with phase, you will think either that everything has changed or that nothing has. Both are wrong.

There are two dangers, and both are born of the same confusion. The first is to take neoliberalism for an "idea" or a "policy package": look at it that way and when one piece of the package (free trade, the small state, privatisation) changes you can say "it is over." Yet the package was not the assault itself; it was the ideological wrapping of the assault in that period. The second is the reverse: to identify neoliberalism with monopoly capitalism. Then you are forced to say "neoliberalism ends only with revolution," and this, as true as it is, is useless; because then there is no need for the concept, the concept of imperialism already does that work. The value of the concept is that it can distinguish phases inside the monopoly epoch: the Keynesian-compromise phase, the neoliberal-assault phase, and the phase we are now entering, whose name we have not yet fully set.

A class reading: Drawing the limit of the concept correctly is not academic fastidiousness; it is a practical need. Monopoly capitalism is surpassed only by the working class organising as the ruling class; that is the strategic horizon. The neoliberal form of assault, by contrast, can be pushed back, forced into concessions, driven to change form, according to the balance of forces in the class struggle; that is the tactical field. In 1981 Reagan sacked PATCO's 11,345 air-traffic controllers in two days (source); in 1984–85 Thatcher defeated the British miners who had held out for a year (source); in Turkey, 12 September was needed to apply the 24 January 1980 decisions (see 12 September: The History, Balance Sheet, and Present of a Class Coup). Neoliberalism opened with defeats. So its closing is possible only with victories. Do not let this measure go; everything below will be read by this measure.

2. The New Uniform: Tariff Wall, Industrial Policy, Rearmament

Since 2025 the world's largest imperialist power has been building tariff walls, transferring hundreds of billions of dollars to monopolies in the name of "industrial policy," and Europe has been rearming. The evangelists of the "free market" are speaking of the "national interest." Is this the end of neoliberalism?

Let us look at the figures. According to the Yale Budget Lab's calculation of 24 August 2026, the United States' average statutory tariff rate has risen to 11 percent; the tariffs are expected to bring in about 1.9 trillion dollars over ten years, and the source of this revenue is an average of 1,100 dollars a year per household. That is, the tariff wall is a bill cut not on the rival abroad but on the consumer at home. A consumption tax, by definition, falls heaviest on the class that spends the whole of its income, that is, on workers.

Look at Germany. Military spending rose 24 percent in a year to 97 billion euros; the target is 5 percent of national income, that is, over 200 billion euros a year. The same government is planning 20 billion euros of cuts from statutory health insurance, 8.6 billion euros a year from social assistance, and has replaced Bürgergeld with a "New Basic Security" that makes placement in work compulsory whatever the wage level (source). The bill of rearmament is paid with the health contribution, with unemployment benefit. You can say of this table "the state is back"; but without asking which state, for whom it is back.

In the United States, 52.7 billion dollars to the chip monopolies under the CHIPS Act; a transfer from the state treasury to Intel, TSMC, Samsung in the name of "domestic production." This looks like the abandonment of the "small state" principle. Yet the state had never shrunk; only its face turned toward the worker had shrunk, its face turned toward the monopoly had grown. What is happening today is that the face turned toward the monopoly is growing still further, and this is no longer being hidden.

The tariff wall, industrial policy and rearmament are not the ending of the neoliberal assault; they are the new form of the same assault under conditions in which competition among imperialists has sharpened. The bill is still cut to the same address; only the logo on the envelope has changed.

A class reading: Capitalism has always had two tendencies: capital wants both to protect the home market and to seize the world market. Which comes to the front is decided not by ideology but by the balance of forces among imperialists. In the 1990s, when US hegemony was undisputed, "free trade" came to the front; because free trade is the trade of the strongest. Today US hegemony is receding before China; protectionism comes to the front. This is not a change of ideology; it is a change in the balance of forces. And because the largest US monopolies (Apple, Nvidia, Tesla) have long since internationalised their production, protectionism too has a limit; that is why Trump's tariffs are constantly riddled with exceptions, postponements and bargains. Capital is split even inside itself; but both sides of the split are united against the worker.

Comrade, grasp the movement here well: a war economy is not the opposite of neoliberalism; it is the only place neoliberalism can go without a workers' movement. If the rate of profit is falling and the working class is not strong enough to refuse to pay this in wages, capital either cuts the bill directly onto the wage (classical neoliberalism) or transfers it through the state's borrowing into arms and the monopoly, then collects that debt from the wage by tax and cuts (today's form). The difference between the two is the length of the road the money takes out of the worker's pocket.

3. A Two-Sided Lie: Who Is Saying "Neoliberalism Is Over"?

This question is the most important, because it is aimed directly at our consciousness. The sentence "neoliberalism is over" comes today from two different mouths, for two different purposes, and both of them target the working class's mind.

The first mouth: social democracy and the "post-neoliberal" academy. Biden's industrial policy, Europe's discourse of "strategic autonomy," even IMF reports of a "return to industrial policy," are presented as "a new period has begun." The function of this narrative is to market state transfers to monopolies as a "pro-labour turn." The 52 billion dollars given to a chip plant is presented as "good jobs"; but whether there will be a union in that plant, what the wage will be, whether the worker will have a say, is never discussed. The ideological function of the concept "post-neoliberalism" is to produce the illusion that a period can close without class struggle, by a change of government alone. This is the academic form of telling the worker "you wait, we are handling it."

The second mouth: the far right. Trump, Meloni, the AfD, Le Pen: all of them speak against "globalists," "Davos elites," "free-traders." They use an anti-neoliberal language, and this language finds an answer among workers who have truly been hurt by neoliberalism. But look at the practice: one of Trump's first moves was to take away federal unions' right of collective bargaining; Meloni refused a minimum-wage law in Italy; in the AfD's programme there is not a union right but the tearing of the migrant worker from the working class and setting them against the "national" worker (see AfD's 43.8 Percent Is Not a Deviation: It Is the Bill of a Two-Hundred-Year Line and Thirty-Five Years of Dispossession). The far right's "anti-neoliberalism" is an operation that directs the anger against neoliberalism's results not at neoliberalism's owners but at the migrant, the woman, the "elite." Opposition to globalisation is not opposition to monopoly; it is monopolies calling the worker under their own flag in the war among themselves.

The argument offered to us	The argument we open
Has neoliberalism ended?	Is labour-power still cheapening?
Has the state come back?	For whom has the state come back?
Free trade or protectionism?	Which class is paying the bill?
Globalists or nationalists?	Monopolies or workers?
Which government, which programme?	Which strike, which union, which balance of forces?
Has the period closed?	Who closed it, by which struggle?

A class reading: Both mouths hide the same thing: that neoliberalism is an assault carried out by a subject, monopoly bourgeoisie, and that it can be stopped only by another subject, the organised working class. In the social-democratic narrative the subject is "good government"; in the far-right narrative the subject is "the nation." In both, the working class is the spectator. That is why the most correct answer to the question "has neoliberalism ended" is not a date but a counter-question: Who ended it? By which strike? By which contract? By which gain? If there is no answer to these questions, nothing has ended.

4. Turkey: Whose Programme Is the Programme?

The fourth question is our question, and the answer is written on a pay-slip.

While the "has neoliberalism ended" argument is being had in Turkey, the 2027–2029 Medium-Term Programme published in the Official Gazette on 10 September 2026 should be read. The programme says three things: flexible employment models will be spread; "working life will be extended" through retirement age and contribution days; the privatisation-revenue target was raised from 70 billion lira to 183 billion for 2027, from 30 billion lira to 163.5 billion for 2028. The ratio of the tax burden to national income will rise from 24.3 percent to 25.1 percent, and everyone who knows VAT and SCT's share of the budget knows from where this burden will be collected.

Now look at the pay-slip. The 2026 net minimum wage is 28,075.50 lira and as of August 2026 there is no official step toward an interim rise (source). According to TÜRK-İŞ's August 2026 calculation, the hunger line for a family of four is 37,388.30 lira, the poverty line 121,786 lira, the living cost of a single worker 48,305.38 lira. That is, the minimum wage is 75 percent of the hunger line; 58 percent of a single worker's own living cost. Kitchen inflation has risen 37.9 percent in the last twelve months; the minimum wage has been fixed since January. SSK and Bağ-Kur pensioners were given a 17.75 percent rise in July, civil-service pensioners 13.51 percent; in the same period annual CPI was 32.11 percent (source). We calculated these ratios; the sources are in the links.

What is the name of this programme? Interest is held high and domestic demand is suppressed; while domestic demand is suppressed the wage is set "according to the inflation target"; the target is missed every year but because the wage is given according to the target the worker pays the gap every year. Public assets are privatised, payment is made to the contractor in foreign currency through public–private partnership guarantees, and the cut is taken from the pensioner and the minimum-wage earner. The name of this in the textbook is the "structural adjustment programme" the IMF has applied everywhere since the 1980s, from Chile to Argentina, from Egypt to Turkey. And structural adjustment is neoliberalism in its purest form.

While whether neoliberalism has ended is being argued in Turkey, Turkey is applying neoliberalism's most orthodox programme. This is not a contradiction; it is the proof of the argument's class emptiness.

A class reading: In Turkey neoliberalism was written with the 24 January 1980 decisions, applied with 12 September, institutionalised with Özal, fortified under the name "transition to a strong economy" with the 2001 crisis, and since 2023 it has been back in play under the name "return to a rational ground." Each period's name is different, its content the same: cheapen labour-power, sell the public, collect the debt from the wage. Neither a change of government nor a "post-neoliberal" discourse ends this programme. The only measure by which one can say neoliberalism has ended in Turkey is the existence of a workers' movement that forces the minimum wage to be set twice a year and above inflation. If that movement is not there, the programme runs. Read the other items of the same week — the fund liquidations on the exchange, Circuit Breaker: The Bourgeoisie's Exchange Does Not Even Trust Itself, the hundred lira that came onto diesel in The Class of a Litre of Diesel — as parts of this programme; separately they are news, together they are a programme.

5. What Is Being Covered Over?

In all this argument one thing is not being discussed: where the only force that could historically bring neoliberalism's end, the working class, stands today. In the OECD the unionisation rate was above 35 percent in 1980; today it is around 15 percent; in Turkey 15 percent of registered workers are in a union, the share of workers under a collective agreement is below 10 percent. Neoliberalism may have fallen from favour as an "idea"; but the balance of forces that made neoliberalism possible, that is, the unorganised working class, is still in place. Those who say "it is over" are looking not at the result but at the wrapping.

The second thing covered over is the technological leg of the new form. The platform economy, algorithmic management, the cheapening of white-collar labour by artificial intelligence: none of these is "post-neoliberal"; on the contrary, they are the most developed instruments of flexible work and of cheapening labour-power. The same logic that makes the courier an owner-operator and the software worker the overseer of an "agent"; we discussed this line in the Gig Economy Dossier and The Computing Worker's Handbook. Neoliberalism has not ended; it has digitised.

The third thing covered over is that neoliberalism's beginning was a coup. Chile 1973, Argentina 1976, Turkey 1980. The free market, in these countries, was founded by torture. No liberal text arguing "the end of neoliberalism" recalls that its beginning was by force; because if it recalled it, it would have to accept that its end too will come by organised force.

Part Two: A Journal, an Essay, an Invitation

6. Teori ve Eylem, Issue 73, Autumn 2026

Teori ve Eylem defines itself as a "Quarterly Journal of Socialist Theory and Politics"; a publication that has taken as its aim the examination of the theoretical-political problems of working-class struggle, the criticism of bourgeois ideology and the building of class consciousness. It has come out regularly for years; some of the essays can be read free on the site, there is an audio-reading option, print subscriptions run through Ginko Kitap. In Turkey it is hard to find a Marxist-Leninist theory journal that comes out without a break, consistent inside its own line; this journal is of that minority.

Issue 73 consists of fourteen essays and is important for us for two reasons.

First, at the centre of the issue is exactly our question. Mustafa Yalçıner's "Is It the End of Neoliberalism?" is the issue's opening essay and at present the only essay that can be read online. Nuray Sancar's "Neoliberalism and the Transformation of the State in Turkey" carries the same question on through the form of the state in Turkey. Ekin Bal's "Koç's Hundredth Year and a New Photograph of the Capital–Power Alliance" and the third part of Sinan Araman's series "Rent and Turkey as a Construction Site" give the concrete addresses of that abstract question in Turkey: which monopoly, which alliance, which rent.

Second, the other half of the issue speaks directly with this blog's own line. Ahmet Cengiz's "Post-Capitalism as Modern Utopianism," Fulya Alikoç's "Paul Mason and His Post-Capitalism," Arif Koşar's "A Post-Capitalist Assumption: The End of Work" take up another version of the claim that "capitalism is transforming itself," the dream of technological post-capitalism. A translation of Evgeny Morozov's "Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason" is in this issue; on this blog we have rejected the concept "techno-feudalism" and insisted on the frame of monopoly capitalism (see From Futurism to Techno-Fascism, Saving Acemoğlu Does Not Save the Class); Morozov's critique is one of the soundest texts of this argument at the international level. Engin H. Deniz's "The Leisure Debate and Fuchs's Digital Labour Theory" discusses where the concept of digital labour agrees with Marxist value theory and where it breaks; the theoretical background of our gig-economy and computing-labour dossiers is exactly this. And in the middle of the issue there is a new translation of Lenin's "Marxism and Revisionism"; written in 1908, but a reading key for every new fashion of the kind "neoliberalism is over, post-capitalism has arrived, technology will solve everything."

In the issue there are also Hüseyin Sinan Güler's "The Political Economy of the US–Israel Alliance after 1985," Ali Yaşar's "The NATO Summit, NATO 3.0 and Turkey," the second part of Fulya Alikoç's series "Jineology: A Critical Analysis," and Yusuf Akdağ's "Notes on an Undated Argument." We had met the journal before on artificial intelligence: An Epistemological and Militant Intervention in Teori ve Eylem's Dossier on the Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence.

A journal issue is the same question asked through fourteen doors. This issue's question is this: Does capitalism transform itself? All fourteen essays say "no," and each gives another ground for the no.

7. Yalçıner's Essay: What It Gets Right, What It Leaves Incomplete

The issue's opening essay needs to be taken up separately, because that is where one will enter the argument.

What it gets right is that it changes the ground of the argument. The essay ties the reason the claims of "the end of neoliberalism" do not hold together to a single cause: everyone defines neoliberalism differently; some look at the tariff wall, some at industrial policy, some at intellectual history, and like the fable of the elephant some hold the tail, some the trunk. Yalçıner's definition is clear: neoliberalism is the imperialist bourgeoisie's assault on labour and on labour's rights; the free market is a lie in the age of monopolies; the "small state" is the shrinking of the face turned toward the worker while the army and the police grow. The essay's most valuable proposition is that it binds neoliberalism's beginning and its possible end to the same measure: without PATCO, the British miners and 12 September this period could not have opened; so its closing too is possible only by the working class pushing finance capital back. The measure it brings to proposals of "nationalisation" inside the system is of the same consistency: if it makes health and education unpaid public services again it is to be supported; if it loads the monopoly's loss onto the state and leaves its profit in private hands it is the endorsement of monopoly capitalism. Our thesis above rests in large part on this ground; let us say that plainly.

What it leaves incomplete is that this right ground is not brought down far enough into today's concrete. Let us say three points plainly. First, at one place the essay almost identifies neoliberalism with "the present shaping of monopoly capitalism"; this, for the reasons we told above, weakens the concept's power of periodisation. Second, tying Trump protectionism to capitalism's contradictory national–international tendencies is right but not enough; what is happening today is that competition among imperialists has sharpened and the assault has taken a new form with the passage to a war economy, and the essay does not work through enough the far right's claiming neoliberal results in "anti-globalist" rhetoric, or social democracy's marketing of industrial policy as a "pro-labour turn." Third, the Turkey examples are historical: Evren–Özal, the EBK and SEK privatisations, municipal tenders. Yet the strongest current proof for the thesis is to hand: the programme applied since 2023 and the new Medium-Term Programme published on 10 September. Nuray Sancar's essay on the transformation of the state is probably filling this gap; because it is not online we cannot yet say, we will come back when we have read the print issue.

A class reading: These incompletenesses do not change the essay's direction; the direction is right. What is incomplete is the concreteness that would bind that direction to today's fields of struggle. And that is exactly why the essay deserves to be argued: the places left incomplete on a sound ground are places a young reader can contribute. A finished text is not argued, it is read; this text is argued.

8. The Official Narrative, the Journal and Us

Official narrative	Teori ve Eylem's answer	What we add
Neoliberalism was an ideology; it has fallen from favour.	Neoliberalism is a class assault; the assault continues.	The present form of the assault is the war economy and industrial subsidy.
The state is back.	The state had never gone; the class state always intervened.	Read the budget of the state that is back: in Germany 97 billion for arms, 20 billion cut from health.
Protectionism is the end of free trade.	The national and international tendencies are two faces of capitalism.	Which comes to the front is decided by the balance of forces among imperialists; a tariff is a consumption tax.
Post-capitalism, techno-feudalism, the end of work.	Modern utopianism; capitalism does not transform itself.	The concept techno-feudalism hides the monopoly; algorithmic management is the software version of neoliberalism.
The far right is against globalisation.	(The issue's NATO and US–Israel essays)	The far right is against the migrant, not the monopoly; it directs anger away from the owner.
Turkey has returned to a rational ground.	(Sancar, Bal and Araman's essays; in print)	The 2027–2029 Medium-Term Programme is a structural-adjustment programme; the minimum wage is 75 percent of the hunger line.
Neoliberalism is over.	Only a workers' movement can end it.	Who ended it, by which strike, by which gain? If there is no answer, nothing has ended.

9. Invitation: Read, Argue, Write

Young comrade, if you have read this piece this far, the next step is not our piece; it is the journal itself.

Short theses are of use but not enough. To be able to defend the sentence "neoliberalism has not ended" not with a slogan but with a ground, you need to have read every layer of that ground, the history of the concept, the transformation of the state, where the dream of post-capitalism breaks, the relation of digital labour to value theory. This reading is not done with a ten-minute video or a social-media feed; it is done with a quarterly journal, with a pen, with a notebook. Teori ve Eylem's autumn issue was written exactly for this work.

We propose a concrete path.

Start with Yalçıner's essay. Online, free, an hour's reading. Take three questions beside you as you read: How does the writer define neoliberalism? By this definition, what does "end" mean? What figure from today would you add to the essay's Turkey section?
Then read this piece again and set the two texts side by side. Where do we say the same thing, where different? Finding the difference is where the argument begins.
Get the print issue. Through Ginko Kitap or from a bookshop. Read the Sancar, Cengiz, Koşar and Morozov essays in order; note in a sentence through which door each of them enters the neoliberalism question.
Leave Lenin's "Marxism and Revisionism" for last. Written in 1908; after you have read it you will see for yourself which of the headings "post-capitalism," "techno-feudalism," "the end of neoliberalism" is today's name for revisionism.
When you read an "it is over" story, apply the measure. Who ended it, by which strike, by which gain? If there is no answer, close the story.
In a tariff-wall story look for the bill, in an "industrial policy" story look for the union. A tariff is a consumption tax; subsidy does not make the job, organisation does.
Read the Medium-Term Programme. A thirty-page document; underline the flexible-employment, retirement-age and privatisation targets. This is the programme of your next three years. Every month divide the minimum wage by the hunger line; if the ratio is falling, neoliberalism is continuing, you need no other indicator.
Form a reading group. Three people are enough. One essay a week, one question at every meeting: "How does this essay's thesis appear in our workplace?" Theory that is not brought down to the workplace is not theory, it is rote.
Write. Summarise what you have read in a page, ground the place you do not agree in a paragraph, send it to us or publish it on your own channel. Argument is not the name of the thing that is not written.
Reach the journal. If there is something you do not agree with, write to the author; Teori ve Eylem is a journal open to readers' letters and to argument. We too will pass on to them the three points we called incomplete in this piece.
Organise at the workplace. Winning a collective-agreement clause in your own workplace, instead of arguing the end of neoliberalism, brings that end a millimetre closer. Argument alone does not bring it closer; but there is no clause won without argument either.
Do not forget the measure. At the end of all these readings you must return to a single question: Who ends neoliberalism? If the answer is not "we," the reading is not finished.

Dear Young Comrades,

Neoliberalism has died four times and will die four times more; under every death notice a new wage cut will come out. Because those who make the announcement want not a period to end but a class to wait.

Monopoly bourgeoisie carried out this assault in 1980 by coup, in 1990 by "globalisation," in 2010 by "austerity," in 2025 by "national interest." Every time the name changed, the address did not.

What will bring the end is not a date but a force. That force organises from among those who have first understood. Issue 73 of Teori ve Eylem proposes a thesis, we also propose a thesis; the two look in large part the same way, and we have written our differences plainly. Now it is your turn: read, find the difference, make your own sentence.

Even when neoliberalism dies as an ideology it lives as a class practice; what will kill it is not another idea but another class. And that class is organised by those who read first.

Comradely.

Knowledge belongs to everyone.