Neoliberalism, anyone?
I don't much like 'isms, because they tend to be names one's enemies give one. Other people have 'isms, we are just sensible right-thinking chaps. Nevertheless, I succumb to the temptation to put a name to that which seems all too prevalent that I disapprove of, and this is the name that my fellow moaners have come up with...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/11/brexit-ultras-triumph-neoliberalism?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0L716Jfb77D0rVi70On31vxqAFrsxJYBKcKPHpI-BVv5qZoB5Hwq_0TUc#Echobox=1568188651
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/11/brexit-ultras-triumph-neoliberalism?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0L716Jfb77D0rVi70On31vxqAFrsxJYBKcKPHpI-BVv5qZoB5Hwq_0TUc#Echobox=1568188651
But this is obviously the case for the prosecution; does anyone have any sort of case to make for the defence?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/11/brexit-ultras-triumph-neoliberalism?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0L716Jfb77D0rVi70On31vxqAFrsxJYBKcKPHpI-BVv5qZoB5Hwq_0TUc#Echobox=1568188651
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/11/brexit-ultras-triumph-neoliberalism?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0L716Jfb77D0rVi70On31vxqAFrsxJYBKcKPHpI-BVv5qZoB5Hwq_0TUc#Echobox=1568188651
But this is obviously the case for the prosecution; does anyone have any sort of case to make for the defence?
Comments (54)
But maybe the Brexit angle is not your focus.
The article explains how Reagan made use of neoliberal thought. But, you say, neoliberalism is often characterized as essentially libertarian. Reagan wasn't a libertarian. He was conservative. Conservatives aren't libertarian. So if neoliberals are often characterized as essentially libertarian, and reagan is a conservative, and so not libertarian, how could he be neoliberal?
hmmmm :chin:
If only there were a weak link or two here, the removal of which would make everything fall into place!
I think neoliberalism implicitly rests on neodarwinism which provides its underlying rationale. It is the culmination of Enlightenment values sans Christian social conscience. I don’t mean by that there could be or ought to be a return to institutional Christianity but there has to be a critique of the underlying worldview.
A bureaucratic EU that is notoriously hard to maneuver, has been a torn in the eye of many UK actors seeking to be in controle. It effectively reduced their agency from being relevant powerbrokers in a world-empire, to that of one of countless pawns of a member-state in a EU that saw it's position decline over the years.
The specifics of the ideology matter less then the brute fact of being in a position of controle I'd think, although some sort of neo-liberalism would seem to be a nice fit in that it conveniently happens to have the effect of channeling wealth into the hands of a few.
Anyway, I disagree that ideology is the main driving factor here eventhough there are undoubtedly some true believers that swallowed it whole.
Reagan didn't really do anything in the vein of libertarianism.
Yeah, but the plot sucks.
Are you relaying koans?
Wasn't that what my first post was about? :-\ :-/
yep
Quoting csalisbury
Even one promoting continuous revolution wants the revolution to - continue.
"I'm not fascist, but I believe that there should be no hindrance made to the strong by a coalition of the weak."
Thus every fascism is in principle against every other fascism as being just such a coalition, unlike their own leader who has followers. :vomit:
Generally in neoliberalism there is the idea of economic freedom and political freedom going together. However, in practice, at least, this freedom is radically different for individual citizens and corporations and financial institutions each of which are given rights like people (corporate personhood) but powers and freedoms no citizen can have. I cannot lend you 10,000 bucks and then have magically appear in my account the right to invest that many times over. I do not have limited liability. I cannot influence political leaders in the ways corporations and financial organizations can. Yes, one could look at them as groups of citizens, but they actually have more power than that. And since it is their business to improve their business and this means increase their power, I do not see economic freedom leading to political freedom through neoliberalism. There are other issues like the tension between privitization and the commons, that I also think inhibit citizen freedom. But I won't try to go into an essay I am not competent to write. I just wanted to focus on what I think is a couple of the core flaws in what is assumed in neoliberalism, that need not be, for example, in a libertarianism that did indeed try to avoid giving organizations hallucinatory powers.
beep
Quoting csalisbury
“Neoliberalism” almost always has a negative connotation, is used pejoratively, and as such no one actually uses the label to describe himself or his ideas.
Neoliberalism: From New Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan
The third-way politics and policies we see today could be better described as “neo socialism”, as exemplified by Tony Blair: “My kind of socialism is a set of values, based around notions of social justice ... The objective - a modern civic society in which all individuals have the ability to develop their potential - places us firmly within the tradition of social democracy and democratic socialism." Blaire’s “kind of socialism”, his third-way triangulation, is now in disfavor, leading to Brexit and other populist campaigns.
I think “neosocialism” works better to describe the current model (for instance in the EU) while still resembling the neosocialism of the past:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neosocialism
We are not seeing the elephant in the room and that is migration and racism. All these brown people and foreigners 'invading' Britain and the US is what has created this popular movement. Racists want to keep Britain and the US ethnically white and the lower class is seeing their jobs being taken over by foreigners. In the meantime their social benefits are being eroded while the rich get even richer.
Do you even read what you link to? To describe Tony Blair as a neosocialist because he once used the word "socialism" in a speech and then link to an article that clearly shows he definitely wasn't that is at best an extreme example of intellectual laziness. If you know nothing about something, please stay mum until you do. You at least know enough about Trump to present some superficially plausible lies, which to my mind is more laudable than this kind of malarkey.
[quote=Bob Dylan]The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
’Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.[/quote]
That's not an elephant, that's a propaganda machine in action, 'because you're worth it'.
It’s a far more accurate term than “neoliberalism”, which is a boogie-man. Blair wasn’t the only one who spoke like this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way
I think neosocialism is a far more accurate term to describe the failed and unpopular policies of the third-way, which is currently being rejected. So please make an argument or stay mum.
Why?
Quoting NOS4A2
Why?
Quoting NOS4A2
You've made an assertion without argument or evidence. Just make an effort to back it up and I'll show you where you're going wrong.
Simply because Third Way policies came from the minds of socialists, not liberals, as I just quoted.
The third way philosophy explicitly rejects “neoliberalism”. So there’s that.
The idea that Hayek’s ideas reign supreme in social democracies is patently absurd.
He rejected both social justice and the welfare state, both of which are regnant in social democracies.
Don't you know that people are poor because of the welfare state? If companies don't have to employ people, they won't. Governments create artificial scarcity in labour markets through the administration of welfare, and since they're less efficient at allocating human resources than markets they always run at a loss. Moreover, if companies didn't have recourse to the state, there would be no regulatory capture! And wealth would be much more liquid, flowing free like business. As it stands, the state is a bastion of corruption and creates shortages where really there are none.
(it's so easy... so easy...)
Don't take our word for it, just read.
"Even though Blair’s New Labour came to power on the basis of a social-democrat agenda which included redistributive social policies and expansionary economic policies, it seems that instead of reversing the neoliberal consensus of the time, New Labour under the premiership of M. Blair actually maintained such consensus and mostly followed in the footsteps of its predecessors."
https://www.academia.edu/5373503/Blair_s_New_Labour_and_the_power_of_the_neoliberal_consensus
"For some, the landslide victory of the Labour Party in 1997 held the promise of a reversal of the socio-economic transformation of Britain that had been achieved through nearly eighteen years of Conservative government. But it did not take long for the Blair government to disappoint these hopes. For, in many ways, the three successive Labour Governments under Blair’s continuing authoritarian plebiscitary tutelage have deliberately, persistently, and wilfully driven forward the neo-liberal transformation of Britain rather than halting or reversing it."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312167931_New_Labour_or_the_Normalization_of_Neo-Liberalism
"Instead of being insulated from and thus capable of steering the economy, the state is increasingly instrumentalized by big capital— all the big industries, from agriculture and oil to pharmaceuticals and finance, have their hands on the legislative wheels. Instead of being politically pacified, citizenries have become vulnerable to demagogic nationalistic mobilization decrying limited state sovereignty and supranational facilitation of global competition and capital accumulation. And instead of spontaneously ordering and disciplining populations, traditional morality has become a battle screech, often emptied of substance as it is instrumentalized for other ends." (In The Ruins of Neoliberalism)
Elsewhere, Michel Feher notes that the ascendency of finance means that it's become increasingly hard - per neoliberal theorizing - to approach markets as entrepreneurs, insofar as it's speculation, and not entrepreneurship that ultimately rules the roost: "Neoliberal reforms purported to fashion individuals who would rely on utilitarian calculus - rather than on collective bargaining and vested rights - to maximize their income. By contrast, the subjects of financialized capitalism tend to wager their prosperity on the continuously rated value of their assets - material and immaterial - that make up their capital... Contrary to their conversion to the entrepreneurial ethos, the subscription of economic agents to the dictates of financial markets does not deactivate the polarity between employers and employees without fostering another kind of conflict - one that involves the allocation of credit and that pits investors against the investees who depend on their largesse". (Rated Agency)
In other words, the model sold to people as the best way to get by in life under neoliberalism - you're a utility maximizing individual capable of rational decisions in a fully transparent information landscape! - is simply not fit - is utter garbage - for a world in which it's a literal case of making wagers - betting, gambling - on mostly unknown and unknowable futures that is the key driver of wealth creation in the modern economy. It's the ascendency of the 'animal spirits' (Keynes) that the price mechanism was supposed to put into abeyance.
Anyway, the point of all this is that the traditional distinction between state and market - the one acting as a bulwark on the other - is simply no longer conceptually feasible. The state - which is in debt everywhere around the world - is beholden to (extra-democratic) financiers' interests and is simply incapable of playing the extra-market role so often attributed to it by both neoliberalism and its opponents. So the irony is that there is more than a grain of truth in the neoliberal disdain for the state; only, the reasons are wrong. It's because, and not in spite of, neoliberalism, that the state is so fucking wretched.
The Victorians gave us liberalism and 2 world wars.
Now 75 years later we are again in the shit, sold to us as Neo-liberalism .
No one sold neo-liberalism. It’s essentially anti-market term of abuse.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12116-009-9040-5
Neo-liberalism is a political choice. Clinton, Thatcher, Blair, Bush they all started to deregulate and let the market loose what previously had been the public sector. Banks were deregulated, Public utilities sold off and then all the tax cut and tax breaks and tax havens to dismantle the rest.
I ask in part because I don’t find evidence that economy ever prospers - or maybe even exists - in the complete absence of governance. What type of governance, and governance by whom, to me are the pivotal issues.
To that effect, governance of economy and governments alike by an ever concentrated sum of corporate oligarchs is to me not a good thing, and that’s where I see things headed. So I’m not misunderstood, I do endorse capitalism when properly structured.
They merely disguised the failures of socialism and the post-war consensus with market reforms, as did Sweden and many others. If Thatcher hadn’t privatized entire industries the Winter of Our Discontent would have lasted for more than a season.
The problem with Blair, Bush and Clinton is they never deregulated enough, and never gave liberalism a chance. Their middle-of-the-road policies were socialism in the outward guise of capitalism.
To be clear, by "capitalism" do you just mean free markets, or do you mean the division of society into a class of owners and a class of laborers? The latter is the original sense of the word still in use by opponents of it despite the misleading conflation with free markets promulgated by proponents of it last century.
If you just came here to spout unsupported nonsense, please bugger off. There are people here interested in a serious conversation.
I resurrected the thread because I wanted to debate neoliberalism. No ill will was intended. I will step away so as to comply with your orders.
Or support your claims with argument and evidence. Either would be fine.
Not a very easy question to properly answer. In earnest, by "capitalism properly structured" I interpret a meritocratic system of capital acquisition wherein those with greatest ability gain the most. The leading problem I currently find with capitalism as-is is that it selects for those with most greed to be endowed with most capital and, hence, economic power. The stock market has nearly no interest in long-sighted success but, instead, is most interested in short term gains, nowadays at least - often time leading to long-term calamities (economic, environmental, etc.). A CEO that destroys a company, instead of being financially ruined him/herself, often gets selected to run other companies. If the head destroys the body, its unnatural for the head to be placed on another healthy body and prosper. By comparison - as an ideal economic model to be pursued and developed - an economy structured by the people (with the people at large being its governance) in manners that select for qualities we value (as per the golden rule) to gain greatest economic power would by my appraisals be commendable. There would still be competition for capital here and, hence, to me the latter is yet a system of capitalism.
But less idealistically and more directly, in a forced choice, I'd select the "free trade" meaning of the word. Still, class division is by my appraisals not requisite for capitalism. As one example, cooperatives can - or at least could - prosper economically with a system of fair competition - if we actually lived in such a system. Here, the owners are in part or in whole the laborers.
Gave a longer spiel than anticipated. I usually try to shy away from partaking in these subjects due to their complexity - especially when it comes to debates. It just that the idea of economy in the absence of any governance doesn't so far strike me as realistic.
The failure of socialism is that it prevents exploitation, (the dirty secret of unregulated capitalism.)
It sounds like what you favor is what is technically considered a form of market socialism. That “owners = laborers” part (and equivalently the “economy governed by the people” i.e. economic democracy part) is pretty much the definition of socialism, and likewise “owners != laborers” is the original definition of capitalism. Competition is not a requisite feature of capitalism, but of markets, which can be socialist is capital ownership is widespread and there is no owner/laborer division.
Capitalism is the exploitation of a society by means of ones assets.
So its your stance that economic competition has so far been mostly equitable?
I don't find it to be so. But I won't be debating the issue.