Laissez-Faire: a Critique of Neoliberalism

Laissez-faire is a documentary by Ruggero Arenella dedicated to the critical analysis of neoliberalism: genesis, decline and revenge of the ideology that is impoverishing the world. The film briefly exposes the main economic theories of the contemporary age, from Adam Smith onwards, alternating interviews with historical reconstructions. 

The author's strong criticism of this doctrine is clear, made even more evident by the almost Manichean contrast between the figure of Milton Friedman and that of John Maynard Keynes, whose ideas influenced Roosevelt's New Deal and the immediate reconstruction of Europe postwar period. 

In the last 250 years, free-market ideology has played a central role in the development of the logic and rhetoric that have influenced the daily life of populations throughout the world. It was cornered for a few decades during the twentieth century in favor of a social economy for the public interest, and then returned to the limelight in the last thirty years of the century to dominate the logics that drive world economies, doing the favor of the elites at the expense of 99%. Through the testimony of six people informed about the facts, Laissez-faire offers a historical and ideological perspective through which to identify the fundamental problems of the economic mechanism on which societies are based.

Watch the full documentary for free on Films For Action.

Main Bibliography of "Laissez-faire" (2015)

• Man's Worldly Goods: Rise of Western Capitalism by Leo Huberman
• We, the People: A History of Labour & the Labour Movement in the USA by Leo Huberman
• History of ideas of the social movement of the 19th and 20th centuries by Werner Hofmann
• A History of Economics: The Past as the Present by John Kenneth Galbraith
• A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey
• The greatest crime by Paolo Barnard
• Euro and (or?) Constitutional democracy by Luciano Barra Caracciolo
• The Constitution in the swamp: Investigation of treaties below any suspicion by Luciano Barra Caracciolo