Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems (George Monbiot in The Guardian)

[JohnyCanuck]

Neoliberalism – the ideology at the root of all our problems

Imagine if the people of the Soviet Union had never heard of communism. The ideology that dominates our lives has, for most of us, no name. Mention it in conversation and you’ll be rewarded with a shrug. Even if your listeners have heard the term before, they will struggle to define it. Neoliberalism: do you know what it is?

Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power. It has played a major role in a remarkable variety of crises: the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump. But we respond to these crises as if they emerge in isolation, apparently unaware that they have all been either catalysed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

snip

Where neoliberal policies cannot be imposed domestically, they are imposed internationally, through trade treaties incorporating “investor-state dispute settlement”: offshore tribunals in which corporations can press for the removal of social and environmental protections. When parliaments have voted to restrict sales of cigarettes, protect water supplies from mining companies, freeze energy bills or prevent pharmaceutical firms from ripping off the state, corporations have sued, often successfully. Democracy is reduced to theatre.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

[bbgrunt]

1. ...and kick!

[tk2kewl]

2. ...and rec!

[Jack Rabbit]

3. K/R

I regret that I have but one rec to give to this piece.

[Phlem]

4. K&R for visibility.

[Martin Eden]

5. The most important things for the voting public to understand ...

... are deliberately kept out of sight.

[silverweb]

6. K&R

[NuttyFluffers]

7. know thine enemy "religion." knr!

the commodification of all human values to "compete" in an "unfettered marketplace" puts wealth as the sole ascendant value.

all you are has been quantified and monetized into consumable packets.

money talks, bullshit walks, and money is filibustering us all to death.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

63. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution - Peter Kropotkin 1902

Kropotkin's book drew on his experiences in scientific expeditions in Siberia to illustrate the phenomenon of cooperation. After examining the evidence of cooperation in nonhuman animals, in pre-feudal societies and medieval cities, and in modern times, he concluded that cooperation and mutual aid are the most important factors in the evolution of species and the ability to survive.

Cheers to my Marxist comrades for providing the good anarchist's work online for free.

[hedda_foil]

8. Read this and consider Hillary.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

[Fairgo]

9. This is the fundamental disease of our society

everything else is symptom

[appalachiablue]

12. +10

[SoLeftIAmRight]

10. and far too many support her

...

[appalachiablue]

11. K & R Neoliberalism, the evil, modern, global scourge of the earth..

[smirkymonkey]

67. *snort*

Great graphic! Did you do that?

[appalachiablue]

75. I wish but it's certainly an attribution to Lloyd Blankfein, Chief Exec of Goldman Sachs

and friend of Hillary Clinton, based on reporter Matt Taibbi's infamous description of the Wall Street international investment bank in Rolling Stone in 2009:



~ Reporter Matt Taibbi

*Matt Taibbi's "Vampire Squid" Takedown Of Goldman Sachs Is Finally Online*, July 16, 2009, Business Insider.
At long last, Matt Taibbi's highly readable and extremely long attack on Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone is online in full. Now you can read it without having to wrestle with teenage girls who want to read about the Jonas Brothers.

As you almost certainly already know, Taibbi describes Goldman as "the great American bubble machine" and, more colorfully, writes: "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."
http://www.businessinsider.com/matt-taibbis-vampire-squid-take-down-of-goldman-sachs-is-finally-online-2009-7


~ Release The Transcripts of The $225K Speeches Mrs. Clinton!

[lagomorph777]

13. So now "Neo-" "means "opposite of-"?

In other words, neoliberalism is a euphemism for conservatism?

[mckara]

19. That is the Reason Reaganomics Became Supply-Side Economics

Conservatives didn't want to remind people that capitalism was a product of liberalism. They didn't like the term neoliberal!

[IDemo]

24. It was the 'liberalism' part that is reversed

It was meant to refer not to left wing politics but a freeing up (liberalizing) of the marketplace. Apparently has its roots in European usage, if I recall.

[lagomorph777]

26. Ah, so it means the freedom to exploit humans, freedom to blow up other countries..

...freedom for the wealthy and powerful to do any damn thing they want. Thanks for the clarification.

[IDemo]

28. Yes

See: Milton Friedman.

[socialist_n_TN]

45. All that's true, but I would add......

that the "freedom to blow up other countries" is part of the neo-conservative viewpoint, which is mostly an American concept. A neo-conservative is a neo-liberal who supports a muscular and aggressive foreign policy. Otherwise known as empire.

[ReRe]

62. Also read cover to cover...

... Naomi Kline's The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

[AgingAmerican]

74. Yep, the terms liberalization and conservatism have different meaning outside the USA

[Odin2005]

41. The "Liberalism" in Neoliberalism is in the classical sense, not the modern American sense.

Non-American Libertarians call themselves "liberals".

[Fantastic Anarchist]

65. Non-American libertarians are:

Any version of anarchists, libertarians, libertarian-socialists, grassroots socialists, and socialism-from-below advocates. It is quite decidedly anti-capitalist, and is left-wing.

The basterdized American movement is just a masquerade to impose fascism.

[mckara]

44. The Origins of Neoliberalism

The term neoliberalism was coined at a meeting in Paris in 1938. Among the delegates were two men who came to define the ideology, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Both exiles from Austria, they saw social democracy, exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the gradual development of Britain’s welfare state, as manifestations of a collectivism that occupied the same spectrum as nazism and communism.

In The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, Hayek argued that government planning, by crushing individualism, would lead inexorably to totalitarian control. Like Mises’s book Bureaucracy, The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organisation that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.

With their help, he began to create what Daniel Stedman Jones describes in Masters of the Universe as “a kind of neoliberal international”: a transatlantic network of academics, businessmen, journalists and activists. The movement’s rich backers funded a series of thinktanks which would refine and promote the ideology. Among them were the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute. They also financed academic positions and departments, particularly at the universities of Chicago and Virginia.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot?CMP=share_btn_fb#_=_

[hedda_foil]

50. This Guardian piece needs to be an OP. Everyone needs to read it.

As it evolved, neoliberalism became more strident. Hayek’s view that governments should regulate competition to prevent monopolies from forming gave way – among American apostles such as Milton Friedman – to the belief that monopoly power could be seen as a reward for efficiency.

--snip--

At first, despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins. The postwar consensus was almost universal: John Maynard Keynes’s economic prescriptions were widely applied, full employment and the relief of poverty were common goals in the US and much of western Europe, top rates of tax were high and governments sought social outcomes without embarrassment, developing new public services and safety nets.

But in the 1970s, when Keynesian policies began to fall apart and economic crises struck on both sides of the Atlantic, neoliberal ideas began to enter the mainstream. As Friedman remarked, “when the time came that you had to change ... there was an alternative ready there to be picked up”. With the help of sympathetic journalists and political advisers, elements of neoliberalism, especially its prescriptions for monetary policy, were adopted by Jimmy Carter’s administration in the US and Jim Callaghan’s government in Britain.
After Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan took power, the rest of the package soon followed: massive tax cuts for the rich, the crushing of trade unions, deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing and competition in public services. Through the IMF, the World Bank, the Maastricht treaty and the World Trade Organisation, neoliberal policies were imposed – often without democratic consent – on much of the world. Most remarkable was its adoption among parties that once belonged to the left: Labour and the Democrats, for example. As Stedman Jones notes, “it is hard to think of another utopia to have been as fully realised.”

***

It may seem strange that a doctrine promising choice and freedom should have been promoted with the slogan “there is no alternative”. But, as Hayek remarked on a visit to Pinochet’s Chile – one of the first nations in which the programme was comprehensively applied – “my personal preference leans toward a liberal dictatorship rather than toward a democratic government devoid of liberalism”. The freedom that neoliberalism offers, which sounds so beguiling when expressed in general terms, turns out to mean freedom for the pike, not for the minnows.

I've never heard it said, but I'm convinced that the whole "failure of Keynesianism" ... which seems to me to refer to the massive inflation, oil crisis and stagflation of the Ford and Carter years can be traced directly to Nixon's authorizing the surprise removal of the U.S.from being pegged to silver. The ultimate result was the petrol-dollar, but getting there was a nightmare, and Hayek and company jumped right into the breech with his cockamamie, never tested theory.

And away we go. Damn it all to hell.

[mckara]

53. I Agree, Completely

Have you read Michael Hudson's book Super Imperialism. The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance? I highly recommend it, if you haven't.

[hedda_foil]

57. Thank you for the book info. :>)

[AgingAmerican]

73. Neoliberalism is economic liberalism

AKA privatization and deregulation.

[DJ13]

14. Kick!

The best descriptipn of why our country is so screwed up I've evet read!

[mckara]

15. It's an Economic Theory that Became a Political Manifesto

It is destroying democracy, the lives of most people, and the world's environment!

[warrprayer]

16. kick

and rec!

[Baitball Blogger]

17. I take it that the TPP is another neo-liberal power grab?

[Helen Borg]

22. Yes.

[Armstead]

18. Certainly echoes the current election

Financialisation, as Andrew Sayer notes in Why We Can’t Afford the Rich, has had a similar impact. “Like rent,” he argues, “interest is ... unearned income that accrues without any effort”. As the poor become poorer and the rich become richer, the rich acquire increasing control over another crucial asset: money. Interest payments, overwhelmingly, are a transfer of money from the poor to the rich. As property prices and the withdrawal of state funding load people with debt (think of the switch from student grants to student loans), the banks and their executives clean up.

Sayer argues that the past four decades have been characterised by a transfer of wealth not only from the poor to the rich, but within the ranks of the wealthy: from those who make their money by producing new goods or services to those who make their money by controlling existing assets and harvesting rent, interest or capital gains. Earned income has been supplanted by unearned income.

Neoliberal policies are everywhere beset by market failures. Not only are the banks too big to fail, but so are the corporations now charged with delivering public services. As Tony Judt pointed out in Ill Fares the Land, Hayek forgot that vital national services cannot be allowed to collapse, which means that competition cannot run its course. Business takes the profits, the state keeps the risk.

The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector.

Perhaps the most dangerous impact of neoliberalism is not the economic crises it has caused, but the political crisis. As the domain of the state is reduced, our ability to change the course of our lives through voting also contracts. Instead, neoliberal theory asserts, people can exercise choice through spending. But some have more to spend than others: in the great consumer or shareholder democracy, votes are not equally distributed. The result is a disempowerment of the poor and middle. As parties of the right and former left adopt similar neoliberal policies, disempowerment turns to disenfranchisement. Large numbers of people have been shed from politics.

[turbinetree]

20. K& R ..............................I think........................

I will help with a new Apollo program, and starts with what I call ...........................


Honk------------------for a political revolution Bernie 2016

[PatrickforO]

21. Very good post! The way neoliberalism looks like on the ground:

1. We need to trust business...
2. Business-led
3. Public-private partnership
4. Excessive regulation
5. Entitlements
6. Giving away free stuff
7. Realpolitick
8. 'Free Trade'
...and my especial favorite: 'You can wear a suit and be a patriot, too!'

Words matter.

[KPN]

23. Thank god for The Guardian ... again.

Posted to Facebook.

[LiberalLovinLug]

25. Will any Hillary cheerleaders dare enter this thread?

Or is this one of those "ignore it and it will go away" uncomfortable truths that define their chosen leader?

[Raster]

32. Of course they will enter this thread. There will be many eye-rolly gifs,...

...there will be many trite one-liner snippets of snark and there will be an entire cornucopia of obfuscation, from false equivalency to plain-old false information.

There will, of course, be thinly veiled personal insults and nauseating innuendo, that before Clinton candidacy 2016 were not tolerated by this site and Administrators, but are now daily fodder at the digital feeding trough.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the Americanized, feminized, pant-suited face of neoliberalism, running for POTUS.

[Nitram]

35. I'm looking forward to your apology when none of the above happens.

[Raster]

36. Are you now?... and you are?...

...oh, nevermind. I don't fucking care.

[Nitram]

78. Obviously.

[LiberalLovinLug]

39. lol. Its already happening

She has a long record already of supporting her husbands neo-liberal policies. Take the blinders off. And today? She is doubling down.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18507/hillary-clinton-democratic-debate-neoliberal

Despite Bernie Sanders’ Prodding Last Night, Hillary Clinton Stuck to Her Neoliberal Talking Points

Clinton, instead, clings to the idea that small, politically vulnerable, means-tested programs are preferable to large, universal ones, and that the mediation of a marketplace of profit-obsessed firms is just what America’s sick need to help them heal.

[Skittles]

59. the hysteria is fucking over the top

makes a mockery of DU

[LiberalLovinLug]

37. "...the Americanized, feminized, pant-suited face of neoliberalism, running for POTUS"

its funny because its true
- Homer Simpson


Probably funny is not the right word. But my post would be hidden if I said what I really think of her and her starry-eyed marks.

[Nitram]

79. LiberalLovinThug, your restraint is nothing short of noble.

Nice to know that chivalry is not dead.

[chervilant]

68. All I can say is

thank goodness for my IL, because I have almost all of the derisive, patronizing, verbally-abusive Hi11ary folk sequestered therein. Makes DU so much more pleasant.

[Nitram]

80. Yes, chervil ant, and give you free reign to be equally derisive, patronizing and verbally abusive.

As you've just demonstrated.

[JDPriestly]

27. K&R.

[daleanime]

29. K&R.....

and bookmarked.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

30. And, we're supposed to vote for a neoliberal candidate rather than a socialist because...?

[Raster]

34. Because the 1%ers deem it IN THEIR BEST INTERESTS for us to do so.

[malaise]

31. Good read

Rec

[Nitram]

33. I see. So right wing trickle down theories that destroyed the middle class are neoliberal?

The invasion and occupation of Iraq was neoliberal? Citizens United was neoliberal. The gutting of the voting rights act was neoliberal? Rubbish! Tax evasion is not neoliberal. This weird revisionism that blames neoliberalism for right wing policies is totally absurd.

[Skeeter Barnes]

42. weird revisionism? more like willful ignorance on your part.

Neoliberalism is famously associated with the economic policies introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United States.[6] The transition of consensus towards neoliberal policies and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s are seen by some academics as the root of financialization, with the financial crisis of 2007–08 one of the ultimate results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

[sus453]

52. I think some people don't know the difference

between "liberal" and "neoliberal". In fact most of my friends who get their news exclusively from the TV had no idea what it was until I explained it, and even then I don't think they really got it. Then when I mention Kissinger, they think he's this really smart man with a funny accent who was quite a ladies man.

[Nitram]

81. Just because you have friends who misuse words the same way you do doesn't make you less ignorant.

There is nothing liberal in any sense of the word about folks like Reagan and thatcher. They are hard core conservatives.

[JoeyT]

56. In order of your questions

Yes, No, Yes, Yes.

Neoliberalism IS right wing. It's libertarianism for the ultra-rich.

The only real difference between neoliberalism and neoconservatism is how militaristic they are.

[Nitram]

82. What an odd distortion of the meaning of liberalism.

[JoeyT]

83. It's nothing like what I associate with liberalism.

Neoliberalism and neoconservatism are just rebrandings of old ideologies that got bad names. (and for good reason) Neoliberals are laissez-faire capitalists, and neoconservatives are pretty much just fascists dressed up in a shiny new suit.

[Nitram]

84. Laissez-faire capitalism has always been a conservative thing.

I don't understand how a liberal who supports government regulation of the economy could be branded a "neoliberal".

[BeanMusical]

38. Kick and R

[valerief]

40. "Democracy is reduced to theatre." Well, we all sure hell can see that! Big K&R for this article! nt

[beastie boy]

43. If you define neoliberalism as being at the root of all problems, guess what?

It gets to be at the root of all problems!

This is bait and switch baloney. Neo-liberalism is an archaic 19th century economic theory and philosophy which has been dusted off and arbitrarily slapped onto perceived "enemies" by clueless demagogues. It has no purpose in defining any contemporary events. The latest incarnation of it, Reagan's trickle-down theory, had a mercifully short life and is back among the dead after doing enormous damage to America and the world. Even the ridiculous term "crony capitalism" which has become fashionable among the right wingers describes the root of our problems more accurately than "neoliberalism".

Frankly, when I hear college sophomores go on their "neoliberalism" tirades, it makes me puke!

[Scuba]

64. Nice job with the artful smear. You've obviously been studying at the foot of the master.

The Guardian isn't published by college sophomores.

[stillwaiting]

70. K-den. Bye bye!! Not my ally. nt

[socialist_n_TN]

46. There is one thing that most people don't really "get" about neo-liberalism.......

That it IS an ideology. The idea is what's important, not results or facts. If the results and/or the facts oppose the idea, there's something wrong with the results or the facts. It's NOT the fault of the idea. It's like religion that way.

That's why it can't be compromised with. Any compromise made with neo-liberalism is only made because they can't get it all at once. They'll never stop trying to bring their ideal neo-liberal world into being. That's why every compromise for the last 40 years has led further and further to the right.

[Admiral Loinpresser]

48. And thus Goldman Sachs execs get appointed to Treasury to run federal policy. n/t

[houston16revival]

49. very confusing

the term derives from classic 1890s laissez-faire liberalism

and has little to do with how left of center Democrats are
denounced as 'liberals' or worse, libtards

And correct me if I'm wrong, but neoliberal is not even
a 'third way' or DLC Democrat, although they may harbor
a few elements of neoliberalism such as moderate privatization
and austerity

neoliberalism is the philosophy of Reagan and Thatcher

Neoliberalism is conservative!

[haikugal]

51. Thanks for this! Kick!! Recommend!!

[azmom]

54. Kick and recommended

[Rex]

55. It is simple, political libertarians are just confused conservatives.

The same as neoliberalism is just watered down reaganomics and voodoo economics.

[snot]

58. Really great article, worth reading through – thx!

[Betty Karlson]

60. Third Way, you are one of the branches of this tree of follies. eom

[Fantastic Anarchist]

61. Mutualism.

By Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

[Uncle Joe]

66. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, JohnyCanuck.

[fasttense]

69. The major problem with neoliberal economic theory and practice

Is that they don't practice what they preach.

It's all about open markets and letting compitition and the invisible hand weed out the unsuccessful. But when the banks and Wall Street were about to go away due to their in efficiencies and the invisible hand of the market was about to wipe them all out, suddenly they wanted protection. They all were singing the song of collectivism and how we all had to save the banks in oder to save us all from economic horrors. But if they truely practiced what they preached, there would have been NO bailouts, NO central bank loans, NO assistance with foreign debt.

It's ok for the average guy to suffer at the hands of the free market but no so ok when the invisible hand is about to wipe out the really rich guys. Now after the little guys bailed out the rich and suffered the economic collapse, they have the nerve to claim neoleberal economics theory still works. What a CON.

[zentrum]

71. KicketyKick

[Ligyron]

72. K to the R!

Important read fo' sure.

[Dont call me Shirley]

76. No wonder Neoliberals have been so intent on smearing Liberalism. The two are opposites!

[DemocracyDirect]

77. Just remember that the corporations that love neoliberalism are majority own by a few families...

... and some of them are not even American.

It's disturbing to know how Citizens United has opened elections to foreign power.