Has Neoliberalism infiltrated both the right and the left?
It seems to me that today both the right-wing and the left-wing pretty much peddle a neoliberal set of values, including political correctness, identity politics, what's good for the market is good for the people, consumerism, globalisation, sexual promiscuity, etc. Of course, there are exceptions on both sides, but despite the anti-neoliberal events of Trump's election, Brexit, etc. it seems that the neoliberal agenda is still going strong. Most of the Republican party is still neoliberal, and only allied with Trump for convenience. And the UK Conservatives pretty much remain as neoliberal as ever, except in a more underhanded fashion.
I also see this especially in older people. Those on the liberal side "miss" their young days of openness, free trade, globalisation, etc. etc. It seems that this is their world, and they cannot conceive of it ever being taken away.
Thoughts?
I also see this especially in older people. Those on the liberal side "miss" their young days of openness, free trade, globalisation, etc. etc. It seems that this is their world, and they cannot conceive of it ever being taken away.
Thoughts?
Comments (98)
How has that not been the case since Thatcher and Reagan. Can you think of any leader of either country winding back the neoliberal project in any meaningful fashion since then?
The wheel seems ready to turn though. Growth is stagnant. Financialisation - speculative money - has been allowed to corrupt all markets. The environmental costs of the basic industrial-era economy are coming home to roost.
Trump feels like society nervously making the first preparations to turn fascist and statist when the current economic illusion actually collapses. The winners and losers are being lined up in readiness, the social lines drawn, for when it all turns inward and nasty.
So yes. Neoliberalism remains in great health as an ideology. But the degree to which the actual global economy is then just a speculative illusion is the big question.
As well as the question of how best politically to manage the puncturing of the illusion. What system of control should best kick in there?
What about the proposed energy cap which they stole from Miliband's Labour?
Quoting Agustino
Here in the UK, I think that with regards to the left, largely represented by the Labour Party, the opposite is true. The move towards neoliberalism peaked with Blair, then declined, and Corbyn's Labour is pretty far from neoliberalism, at least economically, which is a big defining feature of neoliberalism. Corbyn wants to raise corporation tax and renationalise key industries.
The SNP has also swung to the left, and away from neoliberalism, since the late seventies.
"...what's good for the market is good for the people, consumerism, and globalization" seem like the core issues. "...political correctness, identity politics, and sexual promiscuity are epiphenomenal and peripheral--which does not mean they are without significance. Political correctness and identity politics are just new tools to shut down the speech of people somebody doesn't like. Either they are fascists, racists, communists, neocolonialists, capitalists, gay, straight, black, rich, poor, white and male (the worst), or something else. The logical conclusion of identity politics is the group of 1, and maybe even less.
Sexual promiscuity is a personal choice exercised across the political spectrum. I don't think it is part of any particular ideology. Most people actually aren't all that promiscuous.
Consumerism presents a special problem. Were a few hundred million people to commence living in an economically and environmentally sustainable way, the world economy would probably dive into a recession. Consumerism drives the growth of the world economy. I don't know what the solution to this problem is.
Answer: no.
Quoting apokrisis
Yes, but I don't think the neoliberal elites will allow that to happen that easily. Fascism and statism, among other things, means their destruction.
Quoting Thorongil
Neoliberal - I identify those people very clearly. They love the fall of the Berlin wall, the opening of the markets, pro-globalisation, hate Trump, are entirely for religious unitarianism (Allah = Christian God, etc.), some of them made quite a bit of money, have loose moral values, etc. etc.
Clear examples: unenlightened, Banno, Hanover (quite possibly though I'm not so sure about him). And again, not on all issues, but they broadly have a view that I identify with this neoliberal class of people. I still remember the story of Banno going to women's rally against Trump's election after Trump got elected, incapable to understand how such a thing happened >:O .
Nope, that doesn't follow. Just because they're not aware of a series of presuppositions, ways of thinking, and ways of living that they share does not mean that they don't have this in common. In fact, quite the contrary - given that neoliberalism has infiltrated both the right and the left, it will be what forms the common framework of shared assumptions under which both parties operate. The Republicans hate Trump, and the Democrats also hate Trump. I'm talking about the parties now. That's why McCain so easily shakes hands with Joe Biden, or Bob Corker wants Trump out as much as Sanders.
I agree with thorongil, I think you would take all the political and moral attitudes which you dislike and class them under the heading of neo-liberalism.
Yes and no with regards to PC, IP and SP. They are more peripheral in the sense that they are not the causes of the others. But they are intimately related with what you call the core issues. For example, PC is something that is used to promote globalisation and what it entails - cultural diversity, religious tolerance, pro-immigration, pro-global trade, anti-protectionism. And IP is much the same. With regards to sexual mores, it's also not difficult to see how sexual promiscuity becomes the sine qua non condition of flourishing for consumerism. So it's not a mystery at all that we noticed this decrease in the values of sexual mores (despite the increase in relationship instability) that is correlated with consumerism, the two go hand in hand. Consumerism inherently destroys moral structures and breeds instability.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I'm not talking about that, just the cultural attitude vis-a-vis promiscuity.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, exactly.
So the word is a strawman because some people use it in a way that you don't like? That's why it carries a danger of being a strawman? :s
Bought his book, ‘What Went Wrong’, or something like that. Now one of the pile of partially-read books on nightstand, due to realising, after I bought it, that it consisted entirely of re-printed Guardian OP’s, although I’m basically in agreement with it.
Sometimes I wonder why anti-corporatism and green-left activism can’t seem to produce someone better than Naomi Klein.
Why not?
Funnily enough, you too are a neoliberal. In fact, it is exactly your type that I define as neoliberal, including your approach to religion, capitalism, etc.
The only part where that characterisation fails to a certain extent is your opposition to corporatism, although you don't have a worked out vision of how to "abolish" it. Not like the owners of those corporations are going to willingly surrender their power. And you will certainly not abolish it by electing "the most qualified" person to be President, Crooked Hillary.
The only real option is the system of control run by the military. I mean what other alternative is there? There have only ever been two sources of power in this world, capital and military. So if capital implodes on itself, it is only sensible that the military will be the one to step in and prevent everything from falling apart - they will also have the justification to step in, since well, otherwise everything falls apart.
Furthermore, as you yourself have said, speculative capital has already corrupted all other industries. There really is nothing left but capital and the military. If capital fails, then it fails as a mechanism of imposing power - it no longer works. So we will revert to the only mechanism of imposing power that can never fail, which is military force.
Military force isn't even now always ruled by capital in all places.
You must post some pictures from your planet one day. It must be very different to ours.
Hillary Clinton was probably the single most neo-liberal candidate from the whole election, apart from possibly Jeb Bush.
No, it's not about that, but the thing is that you're not the first person in your age group 50+ who I've met who thinks exactly the same way. You all miss the golden days of the fall of the Berlin wall, how we are all becoming one humanity, New Ageism, etc. etc. There is a reason why you cannot stand Donald Trump, and that is precisely because in some regards he is dynamite in the neoliberal system. He is part of what both Democrats and Republicans agree that is inadmissible. All the other disagreements between the two parties are superficial compared to this fundamental agreement.
lol. what on earth was bad about the fall of the Berlin Wall? Wasn't that even the bi-product of america winning the cold war and putting itself first? IF the Berlin Wall had collapsed under Trump's watch, are you telling me he wouldn't be taking all the credit for it?
And in terms of policies that Trump supports or is prepared to sign, and the politicians and media organisations he works with, how exactly is it that he is dynamite in the neoliberal system?
Or do you just mean that he's hastening america's demise and expanding the sphere of influence of China and Russia?
Because it seeks to make everyone into a wage-slave, who consumes more and more products, has no morality but that which increases consumption and is a servant to the market. It was Lenin who said that "all official and liberal science defends wage slavery", and I think he was right. Look at what our Universities are doing. Today, they are literarily in the business of producing wage-slaves.
Quoting sime
I didn't say anything was bad now, I just made a remark about what symbolisms the neoliberals hearken back to. We can discuss if it was good or bad though if you want.
Quoting sime
He most likely would have, of course.
Quoting sime
Even Fox is against Trump, or at least not fully positive. There are a lot of Republican interests that are opposed to Trump. Really, it would be fair to say that both parties are against Trump, just that the Republicans seek to use him support some of their interests.
I'm saying that the word is used by people with a left-leaning bias, which inevitably results in caricatures of the other side when engaging in polemics. Wayfarer mentioned the term cultural Marxism. That's a term used almost exclusively by people with a right-leaning bias. Like the word neoliberal, I've never seen anyone positively identify as a cultural Marxist, which is why, as best I recall, I've never used the word.
Quoting Agustino
Name names. Who are the left wing neoliberals? Do they identify as such? Who are the right wing neoliberals? Do they identify as such? Finally, who are the right wingers, besides yourself, who criticize neoliberalism?
Again, this is way too broad to characterize any single "movement." There are politically correct identitarian leftists who loathe the free market, consumerism, and globalism. There are conservatives who support the free market, consumerism, and globalism while decrying political correctness, ID politics, and sexual promiscuity. And there are doubtless other combinations, given how Western politics engenders political eccentricity and individualism.
From this forum? I was saying mostly people I know from real life, but from this forum Wayfarer, Banno, VagabondSpectre. Despite the many disagreements these three have, there is major agreement over some essentials.
Quoting Thorongil
No they don't.
Quoting Thorongil
Possibly Hanover, though I'm not sure about him.
Quoting Thorongil
On this forum, no one, but there's not many right-wingers here. I'm tempted to say apokrisis, but not sure if it's best to identify him as right-wing. He sounds like neither.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes, they are being contradictory.
Quoting Thorongil
Hmm okay, that's like liking one effect, but hating the other effects and the cause too.
No, that's not helpful at all. I had in mind thinkers, journalists, politicians, philosophers, etc past and present.
Quoting Agustino
How?
Quoting Agustino
Think of the SJWs and their ilk. That's who I had in mind.
Because
Quoting Thorongil
Are supported by:
Quoting Thorongil
These things are neutral, though. There's no internal logic to them that "makes" them support PC, ID politics, and sexual promiscuity. It depends on the values and interests of the people who partake and contribute to them. If these people are rotten, then the market will pump out rottenness.
:s that makes no sense. The logic of free markets rewards the satisfaction of ANY desires, it does not care about morality and immorality. If hookers sell, then hookers are what will be sold.
How do you grow the market? Grow desires and create new desires. That's consumerism. People have to give in to their desires, that's good for business. Desires create problems, and businesses have to solve problems. To repair the windows by day, you have to break them by night.
That's exactly the point I just made. :-|
So if something rewards both the moral and the immoral is that something moral? :s
My point was that the market is amoral. It doesn't have to reward the immoral. That's entirely up to the people who interact in the market, buyers and sellers.
That said, it can be supported by appealing to its ability to lift literally billions of people out of poverty around the world, as it has done in the last century or so.
Right, so something that does not sanction immorality is not moral, but immoral. If I see someone rape a woman and don't intervene to stop it in any way, presuming that I can safely do it, then I am immoral.
Quoting Thorongil
Right, hurrah for communism for turning the Soviet Union and China from completely destroyed, bankrupt nations into world superpowers :s
This assumes that everything the market allows is on a par with rape. That is patently absurd. Okay, so the market sells contraceptives. That leads to sexual promiscuity. But the market isn't putting a gun to the head of some would-be condom buyer and forcing him to buy the product and engage in immoral sexual relations.
Quoting Agustino
I don't get your point. Are you trying to say that the Soviet Union and China were great places to live before the economic reforms in the 1980s?
No the market just puts an ad on TV showing how great having sex with that contraceptive is, how free you can be, etc. etc. It's like me telling you a lie.
Quoting Thorongil
I didn't talk about live, I talked about the fact that economically it did make those countries catch up a lot. China is still communist, and it's been growing a lot faster than the US.
It's because he's incompetent, narcissistic. demonstrably dishonest, doesn't understand the office that he occupies, has never previously held an elected office; he's impulsive, erratic, chauvinistic, a threat to world peace and is degrading the democracy of the US.
Yep, sounds like I'm listening to one of my friend's 65-year-old dad.
Yes, I know I know. It's just funny listening to you people... you just simply can't understand the world anymore... you still think we're the same world that is becoming one humanity, that we're taking down walls, yadda yadda yadda :s - really, you cannot give up the times of your youth.
Right, but a person duped is not a person forced.
Quoting Agustino
China is ruled by a communist party, a party that for several decades has increasingly allowed for a free market, which in turn has brought a large portion of the country out of abject poverty. That's a big difference from massive famines brought about by Mao, when the government controlled the economy and there was no free market.
Left~right doesn’t really apply as I take a natural systems view of politics/economics. So what is to be encouraged is the balance of competitive and cooperative behaviours. You have to have both working together in a feedback fashion which is then in turn intelligently responsive to its environment.
Neoliberalism gone wrong is the muddle headed promotion of competitive behaviour - market freedom. If you check your history books, the 1938 Paris meeting where the term neoliberalism was coined was in fact the attempt to fix laissz faire liberalism by given the state a stronger hand in market creation.
Neoliberalism as theory has plenty of natural logic to recommend it. As much as possible, barriers to individual creative striving ought to be removed and collective norms allowed to self organise. That is just democracy.
But for collective norms to become established and then function as social constraints - market regulation - requires strong institutional memory. Somehow the right ways of behaving must be captured as social capital.
So it is pretty easy to spell out the right theory.
In practice, neoliberalism became just an excuse for Thatcher and others to flog off state institutions for cash. It was a straight transfer of public wealth into private hands. It was oligarchy, although not as crude as what was going to come with the eastern bloc later.
Good social/economic theory has just been applied corruptly all along.
The financialised economy had a rational basis. Derivatives were meant to be financial instruments for taming risk. But packaged risk could easily be mis-sold in a market where the watchdogs had been muzzled by elite interests.
Financialisation was meant to be the democratisation of capital. Anyone could be an entrepreneur as the capital to enter into speculative ventures could be freely pulled out of thin air by the banks. But all that capital got invested into the speculative bubbles the banks then created - tech stocks, housing, etc. All the democratisation of capital achieved was interest paying serfdom on asset classes. Very little real productive uplift was created. Ordinary people were turned into speculating mopes to allow a transfer of their wealth into the hands of those able now to create money.
So yes, right wing philosophy - the competition championing, de-institutionalising, philosophy - has become the modern orthodoxy. But let’s not pretend the theory itself was ever properly applied. The practice has been utterly corrupt. The new self-organising social institutions promised have not really emerged. Unless we are talking Goldman Sachs or Davros.
Neo-liberalism could still be done right with another crucial shift - if it is founded in a clear understanding of the limits to growth.
In the business world already - not in the US perhaps, but elsewhere - there are new models like social enterprise that are a rational response. Alternative economic thinking does exist. Business can consciously pursue social and environmental outcomes.
Who needs Trump, his generals, and the fascist regime in waiting? Augustino, is this the future you are supporting? Are you aching for the strongman junta that steps in to restore public order as the GFC proper kicks in?
You seem so caught up in a meaningless triviality - the non-difference of whether the Clintons or some Republican stooge of big business is nominally in charge of protecting the corruption of the elite. Look up, lift your head and see just what dark force you are backing.
Do you think Trump and his generals are going to be able to act against the now off-shore elite in the same way they will be able to do what they want with all the little men?
Why don't we start with where you're getting these ideas of yours about neoliberalism from? I recognise your association of "what's good for the market is good for the people, consumerism, globalisation" with neoliberalism, and I recognise your association of "the fall of the Berlin wall, the opening of the markets, pro-globalisation" and, in a sense, "hating Trump", with neoliberalism. As for the rest...
Yes.
Quoting Thorongil
It's not the free market though, it's just industrialisation and mass production.
Quoting Thorongil
Well, neither China nor Russia really allowed "free market", even now. It's all a way to be able to trade with other nations. The Communist block was economically isolated, that was the problem, not lack of free markets. Rather the issue was not being able to impose your trade and your businesses and your products on other nations. That's why Russia is struggling to expand its sphere of influence today because this - favourable trade policies - are what is required in order to grow your economy. That's what America did successfully. Otherwise communist China can produce just as efficiently as the US.
And the so-called "free market" in China and Russia isn't what it sounds like. Just that previous state-owned businesses are given under the administration of privates, with the understanding that okay, you take a few million out and focus on growing this but this is ultimately ours, you just handle it for a little while.
As for people suffering under communism, it depends. Many of the peasants lived better under Communism than before. Many were brought to the cities, given housing, education etc. (my family included for example). The intellectuals, religious people, etc. suffered, but many of the peasants and poor people really did better.
Lots of places, reading, thinking, can't pinpoint one particular source.
Quoting Sapientia
As for the rest what?
No, I think the problem is systemic, and neo-liberalism itself is the failure.
I quite like Monbiot, from the little I know of his views. I first heard of him through Russell Brand.
Do you think this might explain your dismissive attitude towards democracy, which you frequently express? Along with your admiration for the 'strong man leader', which apparently you see in Trump? I mean, if that is the case, then really it would save everyone here a lot of pointless arguments.
Quoting apokrisis
(Y)
The huge problem I see looming is that the Western liberal democratic order hasn't yet come to terms with 'the limits to growth'. All the growth curves keep going up, but they clearly are going to hit an absolute barrier. And that will then effect future valuations, which so much of the economic order is based on. God knows what will happen then, but it won't be pretty.
The way it's shaping up, the economic elite - the top 1% - clearly see this coming, and are preparing to withdraw into their gated communities and safe zones, whilst ever-increasing numbers of economic refugees drown in rubber boats, trying to flee rampant over-population, resource depletion and climate catastrophes. And every single thing the Trump cabinet does illustrates this.
Don't be silly. Economic markets largely free of government influence allowed for industrialization.
Quoting Agustino
I never said they had purely free markets. My point was that their expanding the free market since the 1980s has brought economic prosperity they were unable to achieve with a more robust state-controlled economy.
Very helpful. Well, without that - without comparing your claims to a credible source and finding that they match like-for-like - I have little-to-no reason to accept how you're defining neoliberalism.
Quoting Agustino
I thought that was obvious, which is why I didn't complete the sentence.
As for the rest, I am doubtful of their supposed relationship to neoliberalism.
No, I do not think that. Why do you think it might explain it?
Quoting Thorongil
Has nothing to do with anything. If I'm working for the government, charged to open a factory and get it going, I'll do my work the same way and even better than if I'm an entrepreneur on my own. Government support always helps one be bold.
Quoting Thorongil
Nope, opening up trade with the world did that.
They were forced to the cities because of collectivization, given shitty housing, and provided propaganda in lieu of education.
They are just the necessary conditions for globalisation, consumerism, etc. The environmental conditions that make the former possible. Political correctness is necessary - to keep the peace now that there's many immigrants around. Identity politics is necessary - to expand the pool of labourers to women (cheaper labour too), etc.
No, that's not what happened.
No you won't. This is proven time and time again. Command economies are inefficient and ridden with corruption. Compare Chile to Venezuela today, for example.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, that's an aspect of freer markets for these countries. :-|
For instance, on what grounds would you be claiming that it is not the corruption of neo-liberalism that is the systemic issue, rather than neoliberalism itself.
And are you familiar enough with social enterprise theory to say it wouldn’t work as neo-neoliberalism? Can you spell out why.
Okay, whatever you say, comrade Agustino. ;)
No, that's an aspect of being allowed to trade with other countries, which the Eastern bloc wasn't allowed while it was communist. (and it wasn't because the communists didn't want to trade).
Quoting Thorongil
That's more of the combined effects of economic isolation and brutal dictatorship, not just command economy.
Quoting Thorongil
Right, well you've only read in your history books, which are also propaganda to a certain extent, what happened. To expect that the enemies of communism would have said nice things about communism in their history books is of course silly. As I said, there were good parts and bad parts. I for one would not have thrived under communism, nor would I have liked it. But that's me. For some people it really was good.
Where to begin? The financial crash? The minimum wage? The extortionate and ever increasing rail fares under privatisation in the UK? Business needs to be restrained, not let loose to wreak havoc.
Big business*
Quoting apokrisis
There's two.
Because you seem a reasonable person in most respects, except for your opinions about politics, such as your frequent dismissals of the importance of democratic principles. It might be a consequence of not having been acculturated to democracy.
The prefix "neo" seems to get attached to older terms that a probably liberal user doesn't like, such as neoliberal, neoconservative, or neofacist. JOHN MCWHORTER in the May, 2017 Atlantic monthly wrote an article " When People Were Proud to Call Themselves ‘Neoliberal’" He mentions a handful of people who are "neoliberal" but nothing like a substantial list.
He notes that the "neo" in neoliberal means "fake" not "new" as it is normally used, these days.
Quoting Agustino
Political correctness & identity politics both came really into play after the 1990s.
Promiscuity heralds back to the sexual liberation of the 1960s.
Globalism was coined in the 1980s.
Neoliberalism is a doctrine born out of the reinterpretation of liberalism in the years 1880-1890.
I guess it just seems to me like the timeline is undermining your argument?
You are misreading the reality, the theory, or both.
Consumerism (as presented theoretically in advertising) is not intended to contribute to sexual license. Anything but. Consumption is intended to take the place of sexual gratification. Sex (according to Freud, and he used the more complex term "libido") is the primary tool we have got for reliable gratification--that and food. A consumer economy tries to divert gratification from sex to buying products (which advertising sets up as a quick satisfying experience).
What confuses many people is that vaguely to specifically sexual imagery or innuendo is employed in advertising to transfer sexual attractiveness from our normal object (people) to tends of thousands of products. The sexy part is only bait. Once you buy it, the sexual attractiveness usually disappears, and you're left with just the thing.
Of course, libido isn't the only drive that advertisers work with. People also desire to appear successful, sexually attractive, strong, healthy, and smart. Those desires can be used in advertising too. Our perceptual apparatus is exploited. For instance, lighting in the common areas of shopping malls is slightly dim (usually) so that the large glass display windows -- the shop itself accessible through a missing wall -- are more enticing--more attractive, noticeable--than the common areas. Muzak and music is employed. Odors are used to enhance our willingness to buy.
Whatever theoretical model of advertising, selling, and closed sales is employed, "sexual promiscuity" isn't the object. Neither are political correctness or identity politics.
Business is about selling stuff, or services, to people. Period.
So a smart government could get in behind an alternative.
I said earlier that neoliberalism seems to be antithetical to liberalism, so I guess I'm not the only one who sees that.
When you allow for private industry to a greater extent than it previously existed, then that industry, and thereby the country, can make more money by trading the products of that industry internationally. A free market usually applies to a domestic economy and free trade to the international economy. They are complimentary.
Quoting Agustino
Well, all three tend to be inseparable.
Quoting Agustino
I never thought I'd see you making a seemingly relativistic point here. It was really good for atheists who hated Christianity, the family, the kulak, the Jew, and so on, for example. I won't deny any genuine goods provided by communism, but whatever they are, they could have been provided by another system, which means that communism still doesn't deserve any praise.
Little do you realize that there are and have been many people in Western history departments and among the general Western intelligentsia sympathetic to the Soviet Union. There are plenty of Marxist historians and economists in the West. Far too many, in my opinion. The crimes of communist regimes are largely ignored or forgotten, thanks in part to the whitewashing attempts by many of these aforementioned professors and activists. Instead, the focus is almost entirely on the Holocaust and the crimes of fascism. Both ideologies were exceedingly murderous, but communism has by far the larger body count, a fact many communists like to downplay in various ways. I hope that's not what you're doing when you insinuate that my criticism of communism is because I've somehow been brainwashed by Western history books.
Let me also say this: Putin is someone who has contributed to the economic isolation of Russia, is dictatorial, and is a craven political opportunist. I sense in the background of your remarks the positions of Putin, who pretends to be an Orthodox Christian, yet admires the Soviet Union and is a warmonger of the worst kind. So I hope also that you're not simply aping Putin here.
Elsewhere, the political philosopher William Connolly emphasises the commitment to the active maintenance of market mechanisms across all domains as a signature of neoliberalism: “Neoliberals... often do not think that markets are natural; they think markets are delicate mechanisms that require careful protection and nurturance by states and other organizations. The state does not manage markets much directly, except through monetary policy, but it takes a very active role in creating, maintaining, and protecting the preconditions of market self-regulation. The most ambitious supporters want the state to inject market processes into new zones through judicial or legislative action, focusing on such areas as academic admissions, schools, prisons, health care, rail service, postal service, retirement, and private military organizations” (Connolly, The Fragility of Things).
One thing to note about these definitions is that neoliberalism is thus not just a newer, shinier label for capitalism, which has more to do with widening the circuits of commodification (turning all sorts of life processes into commodities for the extraction of surplus value), rather than extending market metrics to non-market domains. It’s the difference between ‘how can we make money from this?’ and ‘how can we measure this with market-like metrics?’. As Brown notes, this latter question may have nothing at all to do with money: "Importantly, such economization may not always involve monetization. That is, we may think and act like contemporary market subjects where monetary wealth generation is not the immediate issue, for example, in approaching one's education, health, fitness, family life, or neighborhood. To speak of the relentless and ubiquitous economization of all features of life by neoliberalism is thus not to claim that neoliberalism literally marketizes all spheres, even as such marketization is certainly one important effect of neoliberalism. Rather, the point is that neoliberal rationality disseminates the model of the market to all domains and activities - even where money is not at issue.”
As far as these understandings of neoliberalism go, Agu’s strange association of it with sexual promiscuity and identity politics seems, at best, complete misunderstanding, and at worst, utter fantasy. If anything, as authors like Connolly (Capitalism and Christianity, American Style) and Melinda Cooper (Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the new Social Conservatism) have shown, neoliberal positions tend to hew closely to social conservative positions (as can be found in the work of neoliberal scholars like Gary Becker, Richard Posner, and Milton Friedman, not to mention in the policy initiatives of those like Reagan, Thatcher, the Bushes, and even - perhaps especially - the Clintons; on this at least Agu is right - Clinton is a neoliberal shill who deserves everything she got). The idea however that Trump stands like anything close to a bulwark against neoliberalism is a position halfway between madness and fantasy, with a good dose of hilarity thrown in. That anyone could believe this - and say it with a straight face - is living in wonderland.
There are other aspects of neoliberalism at stake in the US elections. Yes, it’s incredible that a figure like Trump, with his unbridled narcissism and sociopathic tendencies and ludicrous chest-thumping, could become the Republican nominee. What isn’t incredible in 2016, however, is a wealthy real estate developer proposing his business acumen and business success as qualifications for the presidency. This is the quintessence of the transformation of political life and political meanings by markets and by economic meanings … Trump is offering himself as a businessman who would bring to the executive office his capacity to make deals and dominate the competition. He’s not offering knowledge of the Constitution; he’s not promising to represent the people, execute the law, or work with Congress. That his credentials in business and entertainment could become credentials for the presidency is totally in line with the neoliberal assault on democracy." (source [pdf])
They fit the definition. See BitterCrank's quote from Wikipedia, for example.
Quoting Thorongil
Irrelevant. All that matters is whether they fit the definition. I agree that it seems to be considered something of a dirty work, and a word that people might not want to self-identify as - for good reason, in my opinion - but I reject your non sequitur that no such position exists.
That may be when it was born, but it came back into prominence in the late seventies here in the UK, and a similar thing happened in the US around the same time. Anyone who knows anything about Thatcher should know this. Besides all the policies and quotes, a big clue was changing the Conservative Party symbol to the torch of liberty.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Quoting Sapientia
*shakes head* self-congratulatory non-sense. You don't seem to understand the interrelations between these things. At least BC has tried to provide an alternative version (albeit wrong), but you Sappy :-}
Quoting Bitter Crank
Sure, it's not intended to contribute to it directly. That's a side-effect.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Wrong. You don't understand advertising theory, at least as it is applied in practice by people such as Claude Hopkins, John Caples, Eugene Schwartz, etc.
Consumption is not intended to take the place of sexual gratification at all. That's not what an advertiser does when he shows a hot woman with many guys staring after her 6 months after she used a weight loss product. On the contrary, consumption seeks to attach and facilitate sexual desire - ie, take this weight loss product, in 6 months you'll have guys staring after you too (and hence you'll have access to sex, that's the subliminal message).
Quoting Bitter Crank
Nope. More sex = more products sold. More condoms, more contraceptives, more sex toys, more porn, more medical drugs, more lawyer services (divorce), etc.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Again, that's not how advertising works.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, there are around 8 of what advertisers consider biologically programmed desires.
Quoting Bitter Crank
No, not the directly intended object, but it is a side-effect of it. I've already outlined how. In order to sell you my weight loss product I have to sell you the benefit of losing weight, one of them being more sex. But that's not all, obviously. It's probably not even the primary benefit. Health and wellness would be the primary benefit. Feeling more energy, being happier, being more motivated, being more engaged in life, etc.
You don't understand how advertising works at all. Products are NEVER sold. It's the BENEFIT that is sold - the state the consumer exists in after using the product. So trust me, I've done marketing for some clients and read extensively about it, I'm more than sure that I'm correct about this.
Quoting Bitter Crank
>:O Read one of the marketing greats. This is the idea they laugh at.
If anything, I understand that democracy is nothing special. I don't have a fetish for it, the way you do.
Yeah, as if the neo-liberal elite will willingly renounce their money and power, in order to make space for social enterprises :-} . But yes, I am aware that the two (distributism and social enterprise) are very similar, although distributism is more complex and extensive than merely social enterprise.
Who does that sound like.... :-}
Quoting Agustino
So long as everyone reading this understands the kind of person they’re conversing with, then my input would have served some purpose.
And why can't a government-owned industry trade (presuming that other governments don't stop it from trading by force)? :s
You don't seem to understand a basic necessity of growth and development. Growth and development require a net positive influx of capital into the country. That obviously cannot - simply cannot - be achieved by an economically isolated nation. It's not about the economic system - for that matter, either communism or capitalism can work (and this is what you don't seem to get - you seem to think that it's communism's internal fault alone that caused it to fail economically). In an economically isolated nation, the amount of capital always remains the same, it is just re-distributed around and around through the economy as people trade. To have net-positive gains, you need to export - to trade with other nations, or alternatively, to have other nations invest in your country. So investment and exports are the two ways to bring capital into your country. Centrally planned economies can do this just as well as capitalist economies can.
Quoting Thorongil
Right, obviously - as I said before it's not the system, but other conditions that are more important.
Quoting Thorongil
No, the Central Committee of the Communist Party (CCCP) was very much pro-family and anti-abortion, and otherwise socially conservative. Marxism(-Leninism) as it existed in the USSR and the Soviet Bloc was different than the Marxism espoused by the Western Marxists.
But it's not just the state apparatus who profited. It's the millions of people who were needed by the state apparatus to run the economy. The peasants who were taken from the countryside, given housing, provided jobs, provided free education, etc. - these people profited. The CCCP couldn't run the country all alone.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes, but they are also propagandists, and they're sympathetic to something they don't even understand. They read their own Marxism onto the Soviet Union.
Quoting Thorongil
Sure, I agree.
Quoting Thorongil
That's false, Putin has done very well for Russia.
Quoting Thorongil
Putin actually is an Orthodox Christian and doesn't much admire the Soviet Union.
Quoting StreetlightX
Yeah, the great social conservative Milton Friedman >:O >:O >:O . No, they weren't for that matter social conservatives. And even if some of them were, all that means is that they didn't understand the contradiction between their economic and social positions.
Yeah, an open-minded person, not a closed-minded propagandist like you :-}
If what we refer to as neoliberalism is an inevitable part of cultural and technological progress, then all that is needed is a strengthened social democracy, or even a democratic socialism to compensate the adversely affected, presumably something that requires a global universal income that in turn necessitates global social democracy.
The isolationist inclinations of Trump supporters don't seem to remedy the problem of neo-liberalism but to make its inevitable effects much worse.
There are such things as "marketing greats"? I'll pass.
"Merely synonymous"? Nothing is mere.
The "monetization of all human activity, automation and outsourcing of human labor, and coercion of human culture for profit" is an end-stage, terminal achievement, after which there is nothing.
Neoliberalism is a good thing only for the elites. For the vast majority, life, culture, community, family, the individual become impoverished.
So, it appears we have two distinct ways of quantifying humanity. The way of scientism assumes to be able to reduce human existence to something expressible by the mathematics applied to physical science. And the way of neoliberalism assumes to be able to express all human existence in terms of economic values. I guess the idea that there is such a thing as the quality of life is rather passé.
So, was Thatcher a great proponent of promiscuity?
*shudders intensily*
Why wouldn't there be? I'm not quite sure what you imply, but yes, of course there is such a thing as someone who is great at marketing, the same way there is such a thing as someone who is great at painting.
One could possibly even include earlier modern cultural conservatives like Burke, Schopenhauer and Rousseau in this category, but I'd leave it to other more knowledgeable members to decide if this is true or not. Yeah I know these guys lived way before the rise of neoliberalism, but I'm going off the assumption that this is just the latest unfolding of a certain historical trajectory in the West.
Seems like neither H nor N was much concerned with right or left-wing economic theories in themselves, but rather with the underlying assumptions which gave rise to the supremacy of economic thinking in the modern world in the first place.
Of course making this observation does no favors for opponents of neoliberalism who'd try to appropriate their insights in order to combat certain tendencies at work in it, since both N and H will be forever tainted with Nazi associations and thereby discredited.
But the idea that something much deeper than 'mere' economics is at play in neoliberalism is one that I find compelling. As H noted in 1935:
"Russia and America, seen metaphysically, are both the same: the same hopeless frenzy of unchained technology and of the rootless organization of the average man..."
I think it's important to note that at least some of the salient criticisms of neoliberalism - coming from both the left and the right - are not preoccupied with questions like which type of economic system is the most efficient at satisfying individual desires, but instead with the reduction of human beings to atomistic consumers in a world understood primarily as a collection of exploitable resources; 'human resources', 'information resources', etc etc.
Again, this wider movement (hyperbolic as it may be) could take place under a free market or a communist one, but the guiding relationship to the world is largely one of calculation and exploitation, albeit under the more respectable guises of spreading democracy, advancing individual 'freedoms' and improving the quality of life of vast numbers of people around the globe.
As a descendant of rabble myself I'm not as quick to dismiss the emancipatory aspects of modernity as many previous critics of socialism, capitalism, liberal democracy, advanced technology and other such things have been.
Anyhow, this is one area where even these culturally 'conservative' thinkers may line up with more progressive left-wing types, to me at least, especially when it comes to things like environmental protection (deep ecology), educational reform, cultivating strong communal bonds, the role of the arts in society, etc.
In an ideal world we could appropriate the many material and other benefits of neoliberalism (technological advancements, medicine, etc.) while curbing some of the unfortunate consequences (e.g. individual alienation, the general cheapening of life, a narrow understanding of the purpose of education). Highly unlikely though.