a slogan refering to globalization popularised by Margaret Thatcher; means that the market economy is the only system that works, and that debate about this is over
Hegemonic neoliberalism claims there is no alternative
Ideological struggle gave way to the TINA ('there is no alternative') principle, and the foundations for a technocratisation of politics had been laid.
Workers were financialized, too, forced to take increasing risks in the housing market and with their pensions. A new mantra--'There is no alternative' or TINA--was born
The losers from the neoliberal turn cannot see what they might get from a change of government; the TINA (‘There is no alternative’) politics of ‘globalization’ has long arrived at the bottom of society where voting no longer makes a difference in the eyes of those who would have most to gain from political change
The 80s were the period when capitalist realism was fought for and established, when Margaret Thatcher's doctine that 'there is no alternative'--as succinct a slogan of capitalist realism as you could hope for--became a brutally self-fulfilling prophecy.
Over two decades, globalization as a discourse gave birth to a new pensée unique, a TINA (There Is No Alternative) logic of political economy for which adaptation to the ‘demands’ of ‘international markets’ is both good for everybody and the only possible policy anyway
The novel conjunctural moment of the 1970s was quickly forgotten by the public, and neoliberalism took on the universal and natural qualities that Thatcher’s doctrine of ‘there is no alternative’ had espoused. Neoliberalism had become a new common sense, accepted by every party in power. It mattered little whether the left or right won; neoliberalism had stacked the deck.
Today, one of the most pervasive and subtle aspects of hegemony is the limitations it imposes upon our collective imagination. The mantra ‘there is no alternative’ continues to ring true, even as more and more people strive against it.
Now that neoliberalism has conquered its old enemies and won its world wars, its adherents have transformed from radical pioneers into conservative defenders of the status quo. “There is no alternative” sounds less like the battle cry of uncompromising reformers and more like the plea of an embattled caste.
It’s hard to believe, but the verb to disagree never appears in the Reports; disagreement, twice in seventy years. It’s the formula made famous by Margaret Thatcher: There Is No Alternative.
Yet the feeling that the working class is lucky for the crumbs it gets is ubiquitous; the neoliberal mantra of “there is no alternative” shows no signs of quieting.
The modern Establishment relies on a mantra of 'There Is No Alternative': potential opposition is guarded against by enforcing disbelief in the idea that there is any other viable way of running society.