Ebook: An Orgy of Thieves

Neoliberalism, that catch-phrase of our time, is one of those squishy words that resists a simple definition, but everyone feels its meaning as they struggle to pay the rent, put off going to the doctor, gasp for breath in rotten air or see their sons and daughters shipped off to fight distant wars for oil or lithium. Neoliberalism is nothing less than capitalism’s latest and perhaps cruelest manifestation. It arrived stealthily in America under the seemingly benign grin of Jimmy Carter, kicked into gear under Reagan, and reached maximum speed during the Clinton era, when the legacy of FDR was dismantled and its government pastures were sown with deregulationist salt so it would never take root again. Cockburn and St. Clair were there to cover this economic warfare from the frontlines—from NAFTA to the gutting of welfare, the drug war to the Wall Street bailouts. These dispatches from the wreckage document how a generation of political do-gooders cut the cords of the social safety net, letting millions fall into destitution “for their own good,” as the wealthiest among us fattened their bank accounts in a frenzy of accumulation, an orgy of thieves.

Published by CounterPunch Books, 2022. Paperback – 223 pages.

Reviews

“Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair chronicle the assault on the United States by the Wall Street Hoyer, their chronicle pickled in hatred but written in beauty.

— Vijay Prashad, author Washington Bullets: a History of the CIA, Coups and Assassinations

“For astute and informed analysis, brilliantly presented, Alex Cockburn was incomparable. These essays with Jeffrey St. Clair are as fresh and timely as the day they were written, and as indispensable for understanding this sad world.”

— Noam Chomsky, author of Notes on Resistance

About the authors

Alexander Cockburn was the author of Corruptions of Empire, The Golden Age is In Us and A Colossal Wreck.
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me, Born Under a Bad Sky and Bernie and the Sandernistas. He was the recipient of the Anti-Censorship prize at the 2022 American Book Awards.
Together they edited CounterPunch, wrote the weekly Nature & Politics syndicated column and the books Whiteout: the CIA Drugs and the Press, Al Gore: a User’s Manual and Imperial Crusades.