worth reading in full
Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm. All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state. This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%. In the US, for instance, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s. The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice the philosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaborate disguise for a wealth grab.
This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%. In the US, for instance, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s. The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice the philosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaborate disguise for a wealth grab.
And a warning for John Edwards is implied at the end
But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Most of it is owned by multimillionaires who use it to project the ideas that support their interests. Those ideas which threaten their interests are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through the newspapers and TV channels that the socially destructive notions of a small group of extremists have come to look like common sense. The corporations' tame thinkers sell the project by reframing our political language................ Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.
Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.
But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.
So we should just wait as the oligarchs discredit themselves and hand over power to the other side?? That sounds unduly optimistic.
I rather expect the "we never really liberalised / we never really slashed government, let's do it now to solve the crisis" arguments to dominate, for some reason.
And to be pushed by that same media. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
I think we're maybe a couple of years away from a potential shift which could discredit neoliberalism and market nonsense for generations, if not permanently.
But there have to be plans in place to capitalise on that shift and make sure the message sticks.
Part of the answer is getting traction and flipping the media pyramid so that information comes from the bottom up instead of being distributed top down.
That's becoming easier to do than it's ever been before, and it's going to get easier still over the next few years.
I actually suspect the process is already fermenting to a certain degree within the Netherlands - the left is winning. But it is also losing. The evidence of a failing neoliberal policy is also beginning to show the other side of the coin: rampant nationalism and xenophobia. In other words: blame the funny looking ones.
As has been noticed various times: the centre is dying in Europe and the masses split in half. In Netherlands this is no exception: one part moves to the left (the rise of the Socialist Party in the Netherlands is the example) and one part to the right.
Socialist Party definitely moves the overton window back to the left. But then there is the other side: Geert Wilders and its lot who, by replacing the now practically abolished Pim Fortuyn party, actually moved further to the right. Their message is populist and thrives on xenophobia and, like the Socialist Party, targets the common man. However, the program actually exacerbates the neoliberal frame - but that's okay as long as we get rid of those pesky foreigners. As the press is now openly printing Wilder's frothing ravings, Jerome's point also comes into play.
I want to propose a new left concensus around co-operatives and the creation of specifically non-authoritarian democratic institutions, but I simply don't have the socio-political or philosophical background to do it. I can put up bullet points and ideas, but creating a newly minted ideology is beyond me I'm afraid. keep to the Fen Causeway
A new ideology? Do we need one past simply rebalancing things? The problem, really, is that we've let the system get out of balance in several ways. We need to fix that.
I'm not the sort of person who can survive a conformist society, if there's no space at the edges I don't want your future in my backyard. And the argument last night about gay people in cuba was ridiculous, of course ALL communist societies regard gays as degenerate. Any society that idealises the people whilst treating the individuals like shit cannot bear to have its iconography mocked. It's only societies that allege to be free that have to face their hypocrisy. keep to the Fen Causeway
But his theoretical solutions were IMHO never based upon correct assumptions in relation to Reality, and via the wonders of Dialectics, he flew, like the Oozlum Bird, in ever decreasing circles until he disappeared where the Sun does not shine. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
The thing about this is that if the politcal system can achieve this end, you can have evolution rather than revolution.
All people want meaning in their life. You either find that in building yourself up, or tearing others down. If you can't find a sense of self worth through work and raising your family up in relative equality, maybe you turn to race and religion, and a clash of cultures. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
