The Velvet Guillotine: How Clinton, Blair, and the Third Way Sold Us a Market in Human Skin

It’s the mid-1990s. Grunge is dying. The Cold War is over. Everyone’s watching Friends.

And neoliberalism? It’s not just for right-wingers anymore.

Enter Bill Clinton and Tony Blair—two centrist wunderkinds with photogenic charm, working-class affect, and a shared vision called the Third Way.

And what was the Third Way?

Not socialism.
Not Reaganomics.
Something “in between.”
A progressive face on a corporate operating system.

The Pivot

Clinton and Blair came to power after decades of conservative dominance.
They didn’t want to fight neoliberalism. They wanted to domesticate it.

  • Free markets? Yes.

  • Global trade? Absolutely.

  • Deregulation? Let’s make it smarter.

  • Welfare? Let’s “reform” it.

  • Labor? Let’s tell them to learn to code.

And they wrapped it in slogans like:

  • “Opportunity for all.”

  • “A hand up, not a handout.”

  • “The stakeholder society.”

  • “It’s the economy, stupid.”

But beneath it all?
Neoliberal logic was now bipartisan.

Clinton’s Greatest Trick

  • NAFTA: Opened borders for capital, not workers. U.S. jobs evaporated while maquiladoras bloomed across the border.

  • Welfare Reform (1996): Ended welfare as an entitlement. Introduced time limits, work requirements, and punitive surveillance—creating the modern workfare state.

  • Crime Bill (1994): Supercharged mass incarceration under the guise of safety and "community policing"—turning surplus labor into prison labor.

All done with the language of compassion.

It was the domestication of cruelty.

Blair’s Friendly Fire

Across the Atlantic, Blair’s New Labour embraced a similar playbook:

  • Embraced Thatcher’s privatization legacy

  • Introduced PFIs (Private Finance Initiatives) to funnel public money into private contracts

  • Expanded surveillance and counterterrorism powers

  • Marketized universities and public services

  • Still called themselves left—just “modern.”

He called it “what works.”
But what it worked for… was capital.

The Third Way Was a One-Way Street

They told us we could:

  • Grow the economy and reduce poverty

  • Support business and protect workers

  • Globalize and preserve local communities

  • Deregulate and maintain accountability

Turns out... nope.

The economy grew—upward, toward the 1%.
Workers got gigged.
Communities got hollowed out.
Banks got looser, rules got weaker.

And when the crash came in 2008?
It was the Third Way’s soft glove that let the wrecking ball swing so wide.

The Aftermath

Clinton and Blair were loved in their day.
But their legacies paved the runway for:

  • Trumpism

  • Brexit

  • The collapse of working-class trust

  • The rise of strongmen promising to smash the system the center propped up

Because neoliberalism in a blue tie is still neoliberalism.

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