Question:medium
A spectre is haunting the world, just as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. This time, however, it is not the spectre of communism but that of neoliberalism. Just as Marx and Engels reported of 'a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre,' there is once again an alliance, whether holy or unholy, that has formed to chase the ghost of neoliberalism from the world stage. In any case, it is a curious alliance that has committed to fighting neoliberalism: Religious leaders and artists, environmental activists and globalisation critics, politicians of the left and the right as well as trade unionists, commentators and academics. They all share a passion to unmask neoliberalism as an inhuman, anti-social, and potentially misanthropic ideology or as a cynical exercise by strangely anonymous forces that wish to exploit the world to their own advantage.
The members of this colourful alliance against neoliberalism are as united in their opposition to neoliberalism as they are diverse. This suggests that neoliberalism cannot be too clearly defined as a concept. Rather, it is a broad umbrella under which very different groups with various points of view can meet. In the church of anti-neoliberalism, there is a place for anyone who believes that neoliberalism stands in the way of reaching his or her political goals. This may also explain the lack of any clear and coherent definition of neoliberalism among its dissenters.
Yet the most curious characteristic of neoliberalism is the fact that these days hardly anyone self-identifies as a neoliberal. In former times, ideological debates were fought between, say, conservatives and socialists, collectivists and individualists. While there may not have been any other agreement between these opposing groups, at least they would have agreed about their respective identities. A socialist would not have felt offended by a conservative calling him a socialist and vice-versa. In present-day debates around neoliberalism, on the other hand, most accused of holding 'neoliberal' views would not accept being called 'neoliberal.' Either they would insist on being something else (whether it is 'liberal,' 'classical liberal,' or 'libertarian'), or they would simply claim to be misunderstood by their opponents. In any case, scarcely anybody wants to be a 'neoliberal' any more. For example, in an online survey of the readers of Andrew Norton's blog, out of more than 1,200 participants not a single person self-identified with the term, while 'classical liberal,' 'conservative,' and 'libertarian' were strong responses. These are strange debates indeed when the enemy you are fighting claims he does not exist.
Q75. Why, according to the passage, is there an association against the phenomenon of neoliberalism?
A spectre is haunting the world, just as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto of 1848. This time, however, it is not the spectre of communism but that of neoliberalism. Just as Marx and Engels reported of 'a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre,' there is once again an alliance, whether holy or unholy, that has formed to chase the ghost of neoliberalism from the world stage. In any case, it is a curious alliance that has committed to fighting neoliberalism: Religious leaders and artists, environmental activists and globalisation critics, politicians of the left and the right as well as trade unionists, commentators and academics. They all share a passion to unmask neoliberalism as an inhuman, anti-social, and potentially misanthropic ideology or as a cynical exercise by strangely anonymous forces that wish to exploit the world to their own advantage.
The members of this colourful alliance against neoliberalism are as united in their opposition to neoliberalism as they are diverse. This suggests that neoliberalism cannot be too clearly defined as a concept. Rather, it is a broad umbrella under which very different groups with various points of view can meet. In the church of anti-neoliberalism, there is a place for anyone who believes that neoliberalism stands in the way of reaching his or her political goals. This may also explain the lack of any clear and coherent definition of neoliberalism among its dissenters.
Yet the most curious characteristic of neoliberalism is the fact that these days hardly anyone self-identifies as a neoliberal. In former times, ideological debates were fought between, say, conservatives and socialists, collectivists and individualists. While there may not have been any other agreement between these opposing groups, at least they would have agreed about their respective identities. A socialist would not have felt offended by a conservative calling him a socialist and vice-versa. In present-day debates around neoliberalism, on the other hand, most accused of holding 'neoliberal' views would not accept being called 'neoliberal.' Either they would insist on being something else (whether it is 'liberal,' 'classical liberal,' or 'libertarian'), or they would simply claim to be misunderstood by their opponents. In any case, scarcely anybody wants to be a 'neoliberal' any more. For example, in an online survey of the readers of Andrew Norton's blog, out of more than 1,200 participants not a single person self-identified with the term, while 'classical liberal,' 'conservative,' and 'libertarian' were strong responses. These are strange debates indeed when the enemy you are fighting claims he does not exist.
Q75. Why, according to the passage, is there an association against the phenomenon of neoliberalism?
The members of this colourful alliance against neoliberalism are as united in their opposition to neoliberalism as they are diverse. This suggests that neoliberalism cannot be too clearly defined as a concept. Rather, it is a broad umbrella under which very different groups with various points of view can meet. In the church of anti-neoliberalism, there is a place for anyone who believes that neoliberalism stands in the way of reaching his or her political goals. This may also explain the lack of any clear and coherent definition of neoliberalism among its dissenters.
Yet the most curious characteristic of neoliberalism is the fact that these days hardly anyone self-identifies as a neoliberal. In former times, ideological debates were fought between, say, conservatives and socialists, collectivists and individualists. While there may not have been any other agreement between these opposing groups, at least they would have agreed about their respective identities. A socialist would not have felt offended by a conservative calling him a socialist and vice-versa. In present-day debates around neoliberalism, on the other hand, most accused of holding 'neoliberal' views would not accept being called 'neoliberal.' Either they would insist on being something else (whether it is 'liberal,' 'classical liberal,' or 'libertarian'), or they would simply claim to be misunderstood by their opponents. In any case, scarcely anybody wants to be a 'neoliberal' any more. For example, in an online survey of the readers of Andrew Norton's blog, out of more than 1,200 participants not a single person self-identified with the term, while 'classical liberal,' 'conservative,' and 'libertarian' were strong responses. These are strange debates indeed when the enemy you are fighting claims he does not exist.
Q75. Why, according to the passage, is there an association against the phenomenon of neoliberalism?
Show Hint
Find the sentence that states the alliance's motive directly.
Updated On: Jul 16, 2026
- Because they cannot face it alone
- Because it is easy to collaborate against it
- Because they resent its spread
- Because they fear the misuse of the world
Show Solution
The Correct Option is D
Solution and Explanation
Look specifically at the closing clause of paragraph one, since that is where the author explains what unites this otherwise mismatched alliance.
The passage says the alliance unmasks neoliberalism as an inhuman, anti-social, and potentially misanthropic ideology or as a cynical exercise by strangely anonymous forces that wish to exploit the world to their own advantage. Strip away the academic language and the plain meaning is that these groups believe neoliberalism is being used by unnamed powerful interests to exploit, or misuse, the world for their own benefit. That is a fear about how the world is being treated or misused under neoliberalism.
None of the other options, facing it alone, ease of collaboration, or resentment of its spread, are stated anywhere in the passage. They sound plausible in isolation but have no textual support, while the fear of exploitation and misuse is stated almost word for word.
The correct answer is option D, because they fear the misuse of the world.
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Top Questions on Reading Comprehension
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For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting - land-focused and inward looking.
My new book "Writing Ocean Worlds" explores another kind of world of the novel: not the village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the majority of their novels. . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking full of movement, border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different - from colonially inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the effect of remapping the world in the reader's mind, as centred in the interconnected global south. ... The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia.
These connections were made possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book. For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi, Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors and travellers are not all European. . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.- CAT - 2023
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Many human phenomena and characteristics - such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things - are influenced both by geographic factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people.... [T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea ... cannot be attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] ... They are instead due entirely to the different [government] policies ... At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic, rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . Aboriginal Australia remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming or herding ... [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all nonnative (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism," or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism" ... Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today. Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason. A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of geography and other fields of scholarship ... Most historians and economists don't acquire that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.- CAT - 2023
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Moreover, foragers had other options. The contemporary Hadza of Tanzania, who had long been surrounded by farmers, knew they had alternatives and rejected them. To Sahlins, this showed that foragers are not simply examples of human diversity or victimhood but something more profound: they demonstrated that societies make real choices. Culture, a way of living oriented around a distinctive set of values, manifests a fundamental principle of collective self-determination. . .
But the point [of the essay] is not so much the empirical validity of the data-the real interest for most readers, after all, is not in foragers either today or in the Paleolithic-but rather its conceptual challenge to contemporary economic life and bourgeois individualism. The empirical served a philosophical and political project, a thought experiment and stimulus to the imagination of possibilities.
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