"The Comic Strip of Neoliberalism" is a series of informational comics which you can read by hitting the links at the bottom of this page. The title (in Spanish, "las historietas del neoliberalismo") is a phrase coined by the beetle Don Durito, himself a character coined by Subcomandante Marcos, spokesperson for the Zapatista movement in southern Mexico.

"Neoliberalism" refers to the constellation of economic policies, including privatization, free trade, and deregulation, which spread from Pinochet's Chile in the 'seventies, via Thatcher's UK and Reagan's USA in the 'eighties, to most of the world in the 'nineties, largely through the offices of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. (See The Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems, a 2016 Guardian article, for a historical survey from Freidrich Hayek to Donald Trump.)

"Neoliberalism" and the more familiar "globalization" refer to the same trend. Neither term is ideal --"neoliberalism" is confusing to Americans who associate liberalism with a strong state promoting social welfare, while "globalization" describes an apparently irreversible process of increasing global interdependence which has been going on for 500 years. But, of the two terms, "neoliberalism" is more precise, and it avoids the reactionary and xenophobic overtones that globalization, or rather anti-globalization, implies.

These comics show attempts in various countries to resist the neoliberal regime. Labor and indigenous organizations in Mexico, environmentalists and farmers in India, "struggle plumbers" in South Africa, nationalists in Iraq, left parties in India and Brazil, and, also in Brazil, movements of the landless, all show us ways that people can stand up for themselves and demand democratic solutions to the problems of poverty and underdevelopment.

The series appeared in Dollars & Sense magazine from 2000 to 2005. I had the indispensable assistance of D&S editor Alejandro Reuss in shaping this project, as well as help from numerous activists and books and websites etc., some of which are acknowledged in the texts accompanying the comics.

Alejandro and I collected the series into a self-published large format booklet in 2010, all copies of which are now long gone. Let me know if you would like there to be a reprint, and if I get enough requests I will see what I can do. Please write nthork@nickthorkelson.com.

The comics in the series are as follows: