Neoliberalism is in retreat. Viktor Shvets blames the boomers – but it’s not that simple

The title of global strategist Viktor Shvets’ book, The Twilight Before the Storm, aptly describes our current situation. On the one hand, Western societies are in the twilight of the long era of neoliberalism, dating back to the 1970s and characterised by financial deregulation, privatisation and faith in markets. On the other hand, far from finding a new way forward, we are faced with multiple threats of social and economic collapse. The interaction of economic disruption, climate disaster, pandemics, and the breakdown of the old geopolitical order has been aptly described as a “polycrisis”. Influential economist Charles Goodhart recently warned, “the next 30 to 40 years are going to be very difficult.” Review: The Twilight Before the Storm: From the Fractured 1930s to Today’s Crisis Culture by Viktor Shvets The book opens at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, amid gathering clouds of war. Wikipedia I approached the book with excitement. It opens well, setting the scene with a discussion of the New York World’s Fair of 1939. The optimistic vision of the future that characterised the fair belied the gathering clouds of war. As a metaphor for our current situation, it is compelling. The seemingly endless economic prosperity of the 1990s and early 2000s is a distant memory. Wars and rumours of war abound. But how did we get from 1939 to the current crisis? The question of why the economies of the developed world performed so well in the decades from 1945 to the early 1970s, and so poorly thereafter, is one of the most important – and under-researched – issues of modern history. Shvets’ employment record includes stints at Citibank, Baring Securities, Deutsche Bank, DLJ and Lehman Brothers. He should have been in an ideal position to view both the successes and disasters of the economic system commonly known as neoliberalism. Sadly, the book does not deliver what I was hoping for in this respect. The institutions listed above get at most a single passing mention each. The same is true of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, which established the rules for commercial relations among 44 countries, from 1944 to the mid-1970s. The system’s breakdown signalled the end of the post-1945 boom. Shvets correctly identifies the global financial crisis as the point after which neoliberalism went into retreat – but he discusses neither the many, complex causes of the crisis, nor the immediate policy response. Sloppy generationalism Instead, Shvets relies on the discredited notion of generational analysis, popularised in the 1990s. The central idea is that people born in a given period, of 10-15 years, share evident characteristics, despite differences in class, gender, race and religion. With the exception of the boomers, defined by a real demographic event (the period of high birth rates from 1946 to the early 1960s), the divisions are arbitrary, and the subject of much fiddling. The absurdity of this framework ought to be obvious. How much does Donald Trump share with a 70-year old black woman, cleaning one of his hotels at minimum wage to pay the rent? Almost nothing, though both are “boomers”. Generational categories remain a staple of sloppy journalism, but have been almost unanimously rejected by serious researchers. The last bastion of generational analysis as a serious tool of study was the Pew Research Institute, which finally conceded the validity of these criticisms in 2025. It stated: Our audiences should not expect to see a lot of new research coming out of Pew Research Center that uses the generational lens. We’ll only talk about generations when it adds value, advances important national debates and highlights meaningful societal trends. Even on its own terms, Shvets’ generational analysis fails. Blaming boomers Shvets blames the boomers for the collapse of postwar prosperity. But stagflation (the combination of high inflation and low or zero growth) was well under way by the late 1960s, when the last of the boomers were still graduating from kindergarten. An unrepresentative subset of the oldest baby boomers had attracted plenty of attention with anti-war protests, and events like Woodstock. But this group had essentially no economic impact. By the time of the OPEC oil crisis of 1973 (which Shvets doesn’t mention), the Vietnam War was winding down and the main concern was finding work in a depressed economy. The neoliberal counterrevolution of the 1980s was not led by boomers, but by much older figures. Politically, the most notable were Margaret Thatcher (born 1925) and Ronald Reagan (born 1911). The intellectual leaders were Milton Friedman (born 1912), FA von Hayek (born 1899) and Alan Greenspan (born 1926). The neoliberal counterrevolution of the 1980s was not led by boomers, but by much older figures, like Margaret Thatcher (born 1925) and Ronald Reagan (born 1911). J. Scott Applewhite/AAP Members of the baby boom generation did not attain significant political power until the 1990s, with the election of Bill Clinton in the US and Tony Blair in the UK. And, far from pushing neoliberalism further, these Third Way centrists tried (admittedly ineffectually) to soften it. Shvets can’t avoid mentioning the role of leaders like Thatcher and Reagan. But he claims their success arose because their ideas resonated with boomers in their 20s and early 30s. (The last of the boomers were still too young to vote at this time.) Thanks to the marvels of the internet, this claim can be refuted in a matter of seconds. Thatcher and Reagan received only minority support from voters under 30. It was older voters who brought them to power. It’s only relatively recently that the majority of boomers, like previous generations as they aged, have become reliable supporters of the political right. The end of neoliberalism Whoever was responsible for the rise of neoliberalism, there is no doubt about the timing of its end. Shvets correctly identifies the global financial crisis of 2008 as the point at which the neoliberal consensus broke down. The third part of the book, linking the post-2008 period back to the 1930s, is the strongest. As Shvets shows, not only are authoritarians gaining power nearly everywhere, but their ideas are gaining adherents. The failure of neoliberalism has served to discredit liberal democracy in general. In its place, we are seeing various forms of ethno-nationalism and reactionary populism. The book, recently featured on ABC Radio National, was published in 2024, before the re-election of Donald Trump. So, the gloomy picture Shvets paints now seems optimistic. Instead of being the strongest part of an alliance against the authoritarianism of India’s Narendra Modi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and others, the US now appears as an enabler. Recently, Trump confirmed, soon after announcing the US will scale back its military drills with South Korea, that he will meet with North Korea’s leader Kim Jung Un later this year. If Trump succeeds in suppressing US democracy altogether, the prospect of a rerun of the 1930s will loom large. Nevertheless, we cannot give up hope – and we need new ideas. There’s also a useful discussion of new directions for economic policy, including the universal basic income and Central Bank Digital Currency – an electronic version of cash – now being considered by the European Union. Shvets is an entertaining writer, and his work is highly readable. My advice would be to skip straight from the introduction to Part 3, and leave the generational clichés to pop journalism.