I have intended a diary on the topic for ages. I usually don’t have much in the way of spare time at my disposal, and don’t have spare time now, but as a primer on neoliberalism strikes me as one of the more useful things we could manage on a Democratic/Democratic-leaning blog, I thought I’d make some attempt. A bit more about my motivation and some recommended reading can be found below the fold.
My motivation: I am convinced that an honest discussion of neoliberal theory might be of some use. Regrettably, that is often not what happens on blogs like ours (or Daily Kos or elsewhere) or on social media. Neoliberal and neoliberalism are often used as pejorative terms, and I have learned the hard way that it is best not to trust the intentions of those who bandy about these words. Basically, even though I am not a political economist by any stretch of the imagination, I have read some of the very basic scholarly work (both critical and favorable) about neoliberalism and found most conversations about it on this blog frustrating for the reasons I mentioned before. My scholarly knowledge may be minimal, but it is just enough to suss out that “neoliberalism” is badly misused to the point of being rendered meaningless.
Regrettably, too much “knowledge” about the topic seems to come from opinion pieces in the popular press (as much as I may like to glance at the Guardian, at the end of the day, an opinion piece is merely an opinion piece and no more), and too often those opinion pieces do little more than muddy the waters. So when I see yet another comment that is just patently stupid (e.g., Candidate X is just another neoliberal – which is slightly more sophisticated than poopy-head, I suppose), my inclination is to dismiss whatever is being said as being offered in bad faith.
Now to the good stuff: I think a good starting point is this paper by Thorsen and Lie. This is the non-paywall version available as a pdf file. Thorsen would shortly complete his doctoral thesis on neoliberalism, and this work provided some of the basis for his doctoral work, as I understand it (I have not read his doctoral thesis as of this time). This paper seems to get cited quite a bit if Google Scholar is any indication, and the references at the end of the paper should give anyone interested a running start if they wish to delve into the scholarly research on the topic. The service Thorsen provides is his effort to come up with a neutral definition for a term that has, for better or (more likely worse) become highly emotionally loaded. Maybe neoliberalism amounts to a loose set of theories and concepts that espouse how our governments and the markets are related, and presumably one in which there would be an increased transfer of power from government to the private sector, a shift from thinking and acting in terms of political processes to economic processes, and a shift from legislative power to power elsewhere (perhaps the judiciary essentially “legislating”?). I highly recommend this paper, as Thorsen appears to be asking the right questions and appears fairly skeptical of the critical literature on the phenomenon. In the process, Thorsen asks a valuable question: do we really live in a neoliberal era, or are such claims a bit overstated? I don’t think he offers an absolute answer, but he does suggest some healthy skepticism.
One of the better critical books on the topic is David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism. As the title suggests, it’s a quick read, and unlike a lot of academic writers, Harvey goes out of his way to be readable. Then again, David Harvey is a scholar who is perhaps as close to being the Carl Sagan of Das Kapital as any Marxist scholar might be (he actually posted a series of lectures on YouTube breaking down that complex tome into something more digestible). But I digress. You don’t have to be a Marxist to get something out of Harvey’s book, and as far as I’m concerned it might actually help if one is not. Thankfully, his intention appears to have been to write a scholarly book for a relatively broad audience. Keep in mind that he’s a Geographer by training, so his book is organized around a very geographic framework.
I’d start with Thorsen and Lie first, though, and then work backwards from there. Hopefully this particular diary is helpful to a few folks on this blog who have a genuine interest in the theory. I have a hunch that many of us have read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, and although her work serves as a semi-useful entry point, it is not the end of the journey if we are genuinely interested in knowing more.
Hopefully this of some use. Theoretical discussions are usual something of a diversion here, but absent substantive diaries as of late, perhaps a needed diversion. As mentioned earlier, I am no political economist and have no intention of changing stripes, going through years of grad school and becoming one. I’m just a member of the peanut gallery here who happens to prefer using terminology that actually does have some academic origin properly rather than using that same terminology as a means of insulting others. The latter has done us no good.
I think neoliberal has become such a snarl word in public discourse it can’t really be rescued. Too often it replaces substantive analysis. As an academic term it has some utility but in political discussion it should probably just be replaced with specific policy critiques.
X is neoliberal and therefore he sucks is useless.
X supports privatizing this vital public service and therefore he sucks is a valuable critique.
Too many just assign the label to whoever they decide they don’t like and toss it around without any specific underlying policy issue to critique.
The problem with “neoliberalism” is that it has had three different meanings:
The first, original meaning, from the early part of the 20th century, referred to people who wanted socialist goals but in a market economy – which is to say people like FDR.
The second meaning, from the later part of the 20th century, referred to somebody who wanted extensive deregulation from a belief, or at least pretended belief, that that would produce substantial economic improvement, so people like Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet.
The third meaning, from the 21st century, is a nonspecific pejorative for somebody less leftist than the speaker, so – well pretty much anybody.
The problem with salvaging the term is that almost everybody who isn’t a wingnut or a communist is one by the first definition, but since it’s been used as a pejorative it can’t be used to describe “pretty much everybody who isn’t nuts” (including both Bernie and Hillary). To make it a useful term distinguishing among sane people would require redefining the term, and with 3 meanings already rattling around and a lot of rhetorical heat that’s just not going to work.
You both are hitting on something that strikes me as correct. To the extent that is true, we’re left with a term that probably should be abandoned.
The academic literature is also a bit on the vague side. One problem is that much of the academic literature published in the last 20 years is largely critical (David Harvey’s tome comes to mind, as would anything Sherry Ortner might write). Much of the favorable literature is written by folks who don’t even use that term as a descriptor. There are some common threads, and it really comes down to specific policies. I’d say that referring to taking taxpayer money from public schools and transferring that same money to charter schools, or turned into vouchers for private schools would be a neoliberal policy, to the extent that the policy would take away from the common good to private entities (whether profit or non-profit). I think that could be a defendable statement. It might just be easier for me to say that someone advocated or is trying to privatize public education. That describes the situation, the terminology is minimally emotionally loaded, etc.
Some of my comments will probably be a bit on the short and incompletish side – have a bit of a family crisis going on.
And some have taken to confusing it with libertarianism (or would it be neoliberalism?), which IMO is how #3 originated. Libertarianism has no regulations or laws controlling goods. Taking economic advantage of an emergency is libertarian.
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Neoliberalism = libertarianism arose mostly from #2, the use to describe Reagan/Thatcher/Pinochet. Theoretically their intensification of police states should have been anathema to libertarians, but somehow most libertarians managed to like them, often even Pinochet. Their advocates preferred putting “free-market” in their labels, so the “neoliberal” tag was mostly used by their opponents, which helped create the #3 use.
I may have to concede that it’s not a good word to use, but that just means we need a new word for it. Criticizing specific policies without criticizing the underlying bad philosophy is talking about symptoms not the disease.
>>Too many just assign the label to whoever they decide they don’t like and toss it around without any specific underlying policy issue to critique.
and many criticize the label to distract from discussion of specific issues.
I think the linked paper does a decent job of defining the characteristics of a political philosophy matching my interpretation of the current label “neo-liberal”. As I see it the main issue is the attempt to move as many issues as possible out of the realm of politics and into economics, to be regulated by markets not laws, and the individual therefore is no longer a citizen with rights but merely an “economic actor”. Which to me is the world that Thomas Hobbes described as “man against man”, except that it’s man against corporation now.
I love this comment. You manage to say quite succinctly what I say rather clumsily. The underlying ideology is one of turning us from citizens to little more than consumers.
I’m watching that play out in my state. The city a couple hours east of me used to have an elected school board. My state passed a law some time ago that allows the state government to effectively annex school boards with some proportion of underperforming schools (the goal posts shift each legislative session), relieve the elected school board members of their positions, and hire in their place a technocrat. That technocrat then closes the allegedly underperforming schools, sells those plots of land to charter school corporations, which then open up and operate schools at a profit, using the taxpayers’ dollars. What can the taxpayer do? Nothing meaningful. There is no one to hold accountable. No public meetings where issues can be hashed out. Only a consumers’ choice: go to the underfunded remaining public campuses or go to the shiny new charter campuses. Cronies get kickbacks, the kids still get substandard educations, but we all get told that the educational consumer now has a “choice” – whatever that is supposed to mean. Education is becoming increasingly market-based, as are other public goods that our ancestors fought hard to make public in the first place. The former citizens – now consumers – ask with increasingly faint hope about when they’ll get to elect a school board again. I’ll be amazed if it ever happens.
There is an ideology behind that set of policies. It probably does deserve a name. Whatever that name, it needs to be one that can be used neutrally – and in a way that avoids deflection and mudslinging. I’ll give Thorsen and Lie points for making an effort to salvage neoliberalism as a neutral term for understanding an ideology behind a set of policies. Surely those academics in areas where these policies and their underlying ideology are relevant need neutral terminology in order for them to carry out their work, but so do we who occupy the peanut gallery on the blogs and other internet tubes to the extent that we wish to communicate clearly and in good faith with one another. I am a bit pessimistic about neoliberalism being salvagable, but I am perfectly okay with finding terminology that would fulfill the same basic function in a neutral fashion. If that happens, wonderful.
When terms get a pejorative meaning I have found that it is mostly due to what is described rather then the word. Most obvious with terms for groups with low social status, where a word is introduced as descriptive, then is perceived as a slur, the group that is now described with a slur protests, new word is introduced and the cycle start anew.
So lets work from Thorsen and Lie (pages 14 and 15):
“Neoliberalism is, as we see it, a loosely demarcated set of political beliefs which most prominently and prototypically include the conviction that the only legitimate purpose of the state is to safeguard individual, especially commercial, liberty, as well as strong private property rights (cf. especially Mises 1962; Nozick 1974; Hayek 1979). This conviction usually issues, in turn, in a belief that the state ought to be minimal or at least drastically reduced in strength and size, and that any transgression by the state beyond its sole legitimate purpose is unacceptable”
“Neoliberalism generally also includes the belief that freely adopted market mechanisms is the optimal way of organising all exchanges of goods and services”
” If a person demands that the state should regulate the market or make reparations to the unfortunate who has been caught at the losing end of a freely initiated market transaction, this is viewed as an indication that the person in question is morally depraved and underdeveloped, and scarcely different from a proponent of a totalitarian state”
“Thus understood and defined, neoliberalism becomes a loose set of ideas of how the relationship between the state and its external environment ought to be organised, and not a complete political philosophy or ideology (Blomgren 1997; Malnes 1998). In fact, it is not understood as a theory about how political processes ought to be organised at all. Neoliberalism is for instance silent on the issue of whether or not there ought to be democracy and free exchanges of political ideas. This means, as Harvey (2005) indicates, that policies inspired by neoliberalism could be implemented under the auspices of autocrats as well as within liberal democracies”
So in short, markets rule, if you lose you are a loser, and democracy is optional. Which is what you are describing happening with your school boards.
If I say that politician X will push through market reform despite running the same, because politician X has a history of the same, and looks like he or she belongs to an ideology that does not care about democracy or telling the truth to voters, I will like come across as shit-posting about X (at least to his or her potential supporters). If I use a term for the ideology, I think said term will be in time perceived as a pejorative term.
There might not really be a neutral way to point out politicians that are lying, intent on selling of assets (with kick-backs into their own pockets, because they are winners) and views democracy as optional, and if so any term will end up seen as a pejorative.
neoliberal.
What core raison d’être ascribed to government by the Founders is there no space for here:
If you answered “promote the general welfare”, collect your prize at the exit.
It’s no mystery why, as its results have played out, “neoliberal” has come to be seen as a pejorative by people with a basic understanding of its meaning (and who aren’t selfish greedheads).
I’d go so far as to say that — for non-selfish-greedheads at least — the better you understand the tenets of neoliberalism the more pejorative the term becomes.
‘…the attempt to move as many issues as possible out of the realm of politics and into economics, to be regulated by markets not laws, and the individual therefore is no longer a citizen with rights but merely an “economic actor.”‘
Thanks for this. I’ve never really had a glimmering of a definition before.
Where’s the beef? Or more precisely where’s the “defining neoliberalism?” Pointing to a paper (behind a paywall no less) that formed the basis for a doctoral thesis (that you admit not having read) is like “defining black holes and string theory” by telling readers to get “A Brief History of Time” (well except Hawking ” is the former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.”)
“The Shock Doctrine” is a good primer on what happens to the people and an economy when neoliberalism is taken out of the ivy covered academic buildings and imposed for real. Probably helpful if one has taken coursework in economics, understands Keynesian economic theory and how it has been applied, and for Americans what The New Deal accomplished in applying Keynesian theory (before it was fully understood and had been attempted) and adding to the tradition of progressivism and socialism that has been a feature of this country since the beginning.
Here’s decent summary of Thomas Piketty’s work. Although I think it minimizes the expansion of socialism throughout the 20th century up until the 1970s and the government regulations that tamed the most predatory aspects of capitalism.
Anyone not using the terms “neoliberalism” or “neoliberal capitalism” as a pejorative endorses robbing the poor for the benefit of the rich and it’s promulgated and facilitated by the power of the state.
Гражданин! В последнее время мы заметили, что ваши комментарии, похоже, не имеют такой же надежной защиты Мохаве в прошлом. Этот комментарий является хорошим примером, так как это было совершенным всегда было яростным противником неолиберализма, как показали прошедшие выборы. Важно не тратить впустую эти шансы, особенно в ходе продолжающегос&#
1103; расследования, которое привело к поддельным новостям. Вы отлично поработали, игнорируя это, наши поздравления, но вам нужно проявлять больше энтузиазма. По крайней мере, вы должны были привести Хилари как классический пример неолиберализма, но вы даже пропустили это. Хотя мы знаем, что даже наши самые преданные и горячие последователи иногда ускоряются, важно не терять свое преимущество, поскольку в ноябре нам понадобятся все преимущества.
Будь настороже! Оставайся сильным!
The pdf I pointed to is not behind a paywall. I offered you all a non-paywalled version (I double checked and it is still downloading as a pdf file for me on an outdated computer with a mediocre internet connection). The Shock Doctrine is basically a journalist’s take on the matter. Her approach is definitely a bit sensational in spots – though points for reintroducing the world to Dr. Ewen Cameron’s abuses as a psychiatrist. Viewing the world through that particular author’s perspective almost begs for seeing a neoliberal hiding behind every corner. Dr. Sherry Ortner considered her work a bit conspiratorial, and Ortner is one of the critics of neoliberalism.
You are also clearly misunderstanding what I am driving at here with regard to neoliberalism as a pejorative. It is one thing to be critical of a policy or set of policies, that may or may not fall under the heading of neoliberalism, depending upon the author’s definition (and that can unfortunately vary from author to author). It is quite another thing to use a label that has often been poorly defined as a means to smear opponents. I have no use for neoliberalism or neoliberal on blogs as a rule because as noted earlier that label tells me practically nothing about the person or the policies under discussion. It amounts to a more sophisticated form of grade-school name-calling. I think I easily avoid using neoliberalism or neoliberal capitalism and still manage to oppose policies that hurt the poor or that allow governmental abuses to occur. In the process I can spell out the policy in question, as well as my concerns with that policy and its impact and make myself clearly understood. Perhaps even open up some conversation. Once we start hurling names at one another, the conversation stops. On a political blog, that’s hardly healthy.
In the meantime, maybe it’s time to say death to neoliberalism, and simply move on to clear thinking and straight talking. I’m all for that.
And on a brighter note – been meaning to read some of Piketty’s work. Thanks for the reminder. I’ve read and heard good things.
Apropos black holes, it’s a concept that comes out of the general theory of relativity, which I’m going to guess that, oh, 0.0001% of the population has ever studied let alone understood. So having Stephen Hawking as as intermediary for the reader who’d like to know something more about black holes without the necessity of an advanced degree in physics makes one hell of a lot of sense, actually.
To put things another way, your snarky criticism is ridiculous.
How dare you cite a Guardian piece about Mr. Piketty without providing irrefutable proof that you’ve read all of his works in French?
. . . are for, hunh?
Well, you’re right, of course.
Not that anyone could tell that from recent history.
I know. What sort of madness is this? Relevant content in a diary? Generally worthwhile comments? Who knew. Glad to see it though.
. . . comments”: Just notice who’s not here. No satisfactory release from a good circular wankfest to be had in this thread, so what could be the attraction?