Dan Hodges has an article in the Mail on Sunday this morning celebrating the demise of the liberal elite. I always have to remind myself that because Dan Hodges has written something it is not necessarily bad: in this case it is. He concluded:
This week May and Rudd killed off the British liberal elite.
We can criticise their brutality. Or we can thank them for putting us out of our misery.
The article praised all that most have criticised about what both of those politicians had to say, and most particularly their xenophobia. I am not, however, going to concentrate on that: others have already dealt with it. I am worried by the broader attack on liberalism.
I have always considered myself a liberal. Liberals respect the other person. The uphold their right to be different. They defend their freedoms. They acknowledge their right to hold contrary beliefs. A liberal realises we do not all share customs, but realises that customs matter to us all. True liberalism is the foundation of tolerance. As a result it is the bedrock of modern society, and our democracy.
It is a million miles from neoliberalism. That is what has corroded our society. Neoliberalism is about abusing the freedom of others for personal gain. It is about the freedom of the individual without regard for the consequences for others. It is as a result the basis of modern capitalism. It is the foundation of our current economic crisis. It is what so many around the world are resoundingly rejecting.
Hodges, though, deliberately conflates the two when they are utterly different.
He is not a fool. It would be easy to think he is, but wrong. He knows exactly what he is doing. By celebrating the end of a liberal elite he is in fact supporting the culture of abuse that underpins neoliberalism. And that is a profoundly worrying development. The opposition to the abusive culture that is really tearing the world apart is itself being attacked. We are living in truly dangerous times. And no one should be deceived by a Conservative Party claiming it is moving to the middle ground. I spy nothing remotely middle like in its agenda. And nor do I see anything very liberal in Labour's. Even the Liberal Democrats have failed to live up to their name.
These are dark days for those dedicated to liberal freedoms.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Beware the Wolf in sheep’s clothing. Neo-liberalism is finally dead and, hey presto, the right wing are suddenly nationalists who support the working class!
The very worst legacy of the Brexit vote may be that politicians now think they can tell whatever lies they want and still win a popular vote. Even Corbyn succumbed with his rammed train. Somehow we have to get standards of honesty back into politics.
I’ve been concerned for a long time that this prolonged economic slump will lead us to a very ugly place. Resentment is building and the media and prominent politicians are channeling that resentment against different sections of society in order to avoid it becoming a united call for change. This is a very dangerous game.
I hope i am wrong, but if there is another 2008 style collapse, it’s quite easy to imagine there being rioting and looting, and with May in charge, the response will probably involve martial law and suppression of freedoms and rights in protection of property and privilige.
Winning the argument now and implementing radical economic reforms that improve ordinary people’s lives, and give them a sense of hope for the future is the only way to avoid this, misery and war. As i say i hope i am wrong.
P.s daily mail to me will always be the rag that supported Hitler.
https://futiledemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/blackshirts1.jpg
Cough, cough, it was The Mail, what you might call the locker room of the UK media if you look down the pictures on the right of the online page.
I think that only adds to the threat
You raise a very important and relevant point, Richard. The word ‘Liberal’ has been high-jacked by the right. Yet another example of cognitive ‘framing’. As one would expect, Noam Chomsky has spoken at length about it over the years. One short clip – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1dv2xkPsz0.
Once in the general mind-set it’s no easy task to reverse the linguistic ‘process’. In fact I don’t know how it can be done.
Liberalism is the freedom of people
Neo-Liberalism is the freedom of capital
To the very wealthy they are one and the same
Nicely put…..
Short and clear, very good.
Thanks Alastair – a quote to be re-used
It is also neatly attaching ‘liberal’ to ‘elite’. Whereas I’d say I and most people I know are liberal but we aren’t the elite. (And if we were we’ve never been in the ascendancy so cannot now be in our demise!)
This manipulation of terms seems to chime with David Graber’s ‘The Democracy Project’, where he “attribute[s] the well-known working-class enmity against the ‘liberal elite’ to the fact that the liberal elite have good jobs, rewarding jobs, jobs that by definition lots of average people will never be able to get.”
Discussed towards the end of this article:
http://www.salon.com/2014/06/01/help_us_thomas_piketty_the_1s_sick_and_twisted_new_scheme/
There is no point having freedom if you don’t have the resources necessary to ensure your survival and flourishing. In other words having human agency, the ability to do things, is only possible with resources, food in your belly, healthcare, etc. As creatures who’ve created complex societies we are dependent on our political institutions making laws to provide us all with access to those resources.
Neo-Liberals/Libertarians are not the sharpest pencils in the box because they fail to understand this simple explanation, their primitive ape egos quite literally prevent their understanding. Poor attachment process as babies and children have prevented their frontal cortices developing normally. It is the development of our frontal cortices in particular that allow us to recognise the benefits of co-operation and encourage us to pursue this mode of survival and flourishing through the empathy process.
Words are more important than people often realise in influencing attitudes. I have always disliked the term “neo – liberalism” , which as you say has nothing to do with proper liberalism , but which is often confused with it , deliberately or not. The other assumption behind the use of the term “neo – liberalism” is that it has something to do with free markets when in practice it is often a defence of monopolies or oligopolies. “Neo – liberalism” as practiced since the 80s has given hardly anybody any new freedoms and those it has largely have been at the expense of others – thereby adding nothing to the total of human freedom. For example the freedom to buy your council house usually means that someone else loses the freedom to rent a decent house at a price they can afford.
As you say true liberalism is in a crisis and needs help so let us start by abandoning the term neo- liberalism and call it for what it is – elite economics , trickle down economics will do as far as I am concerned. A small step but a start.
I have a love/hate relationship with Liberalism. I agree with Richard’s definition and I find that liberalism chimes with a dialectical view of the world and an acceptance of the duality of everything that I have always had. But I would never describe myself as an actual ‘liberal’ – not politically anyway.
To me, the concept is one of those things that you have if you can afford it or are relatively comfortable. It has always been the preserve of those who have been enlightened by education and opportunity – and this is a good thing – to be concerned about other people even though you are not part of their lives. But liberalism also has serious weaknesses (see below).
The Daily Mail article quoted above is clearly wrong. It is not May or Rudd who have destroyed liberalism in this country – it was David Cameron and George Osbourne who have effectively tried to kill it since 2010. Perhaps it started even earlier with Thatcher because this country has never really recovered from her first term in office?
Cameron & Co did this by taking money off people – even though many of those people had not contributed to the financial crash of 2008 – and by doing so made life a lot harder for many at a time when the economy was still very delicate.
And when life is harder, some of us are less liberal than we would like to be. And once in that state, people can be easily wound up and be less liberal towards immigrants, disabled people and other groups we want to take our unfocused anger out of. A wonderful environment for the divide and conquer tactics at the hands of the Tories and UKIP. Paulo Friere has written about these concepts at length.
This country with its low wages, poor terms of employment and meagre social assistance schemes is becoming a nasty place (although there are still pockets of good employment practice here and there) where liberalism in the long run cannot possibly thrive amongst a significant portion of the population. Too many people are worried about being left behind or how to live to worry about others.
In other words an unhappy population is not a good base from which to promote liberalism or hope for it to grow. And if you keep things going like that or even increase unhappiness you can keep enlightenment and liberalism in check. And I believe that this is as a result of deliberate policies pursued by certain politicians.
And I go back to what I said earlier – that I do not consider my self to be liberal. This is because I fundamentally do not respect those who have behaved as they have in their positions to get us into the state we find ourselves in today.
I cannot in any way condone or uphold the freedom of George Osbourne to make people’s lives a misery; for Hunt to slyly undermine the NHS as a prelude to justifying privatisation or for Cameron to claim that Labour bankrupted the nation etc., etc.
Liberalism has no answers to these injustices because tacitly by acknowledging the right to be different and for others to have an opinion it effectively tolerates the intolerable in the pursuit of its lofty ideals. Being liberal is what enabled neo-liberalism to get a foot-hold in the first place.
So, like my fellow human beings on zero hours contracts and poor wages I too cannot afford to be liberal at the moment because I may well end up like them. So my stance is one of self defence. And the only way is to remove that threat by removing the source of it; to negate the source.
Well – how should I do that? I know – lets use democracy! Well, I could vote for another bunch of politicians – maybe they’d help? But it turns that some of these parties have people in them similar to those I’m angry with! And one of the parties is too busy fighting amongst itself never mind helping me and many others!
So you are quite right Richard to say that these are dangerous times. I personally think that now is a time to show our intolerance intellectually and even physically towards neo-liberalism. But how do you do that in an acceptable way? We may say that neo-liberalism is technically dead (it finally died in 2008 but like Sauron in the LoTR it somehow ‘endures’) but liberalism towards those who are its proponents is just not effective.
They need dealing with and need to be cast out and even exorcised out of the political, economic and academic systems they’ve been allowed to inhabit for far too long. These are dangerous and deluded people. And we are better off without them.
I cannot see how liberalism is or need be associated with wealth
I do not agree that it is
So I think your analysis wrong
I’m closer to PSR’s view of Liberalism than yours Richard. As I hinted at below, when PSR says :’Being liberal is what enabled neo-liberalism to get a foot-hold in the first place’ he is spot on in my view and it is this tension that makes the situation hard for the Left to unravel.
let’s not forget an important feature of neo-liberalism: it is (on the surface) very tolerant and not racist: it cares not whether you are jewish/Black/Hermaphrodite/LBGT or Martian; all neo-liberalism want’s to know about you is whether you are a wealth extractor are the ones being extracted – it is a system of two classes and cares not about creed or skin colour.
When Cameron and Osborne were socially marginalising the poor and ill, it was not remotely racist it was simply hammering anyone who refused to be monetised and we know the middle class (who feared being next) largely permitted this and did not protest vociferously -there liberalism deserted them, as hedges points out:
““In a traditional democracy, the liberal class functions as a safety valve. It makes piecemeal and incremental reform possible. It offers hope for change and proposes gradual steps toward greater equality. It endows the state and the mechanisms of power with virtue.”
The liberal class is only possible without fear of their own position. This doesn’t apply to everyone and I’m sure someone like yourself, Richard, even if you were stripped of house home and other material assets, would not desert those values but many would. i can remember my shock when the Tories started ‘grooming’ the populace to see the ill/poor/vulnerable as social pariahs; my first thought was: ‘the good people of this country won’t let this happen’ – they did!
In my experience, the ‘liberal class’ will be liberal as long as you don’t touch their corner. Their corner has been touched by the neo-liberal siphoners and they are battening down the hatches.
Richard, you definition of liberalism as ‘treating others as your equal ‘ is totally belied by the economic system you are part of which is based around inequality and preservation of rungs of power as well as sitting on the shoulders of the poor in countries where the extractive industries do their stuff. I’m aware that you mean by ”treating others as your equal ‘ as a purely personal stance independent of the nexus of economic relationships -but does that really have any meaning other than: ‘I will be polite as possible.’?
I felt Loire posting an appropriay response to match your condescending rudeness
But I won’t
Just read Viktor Frankel
There is no point having freedom if you don’t have the resources necessary to ensure your survival and flourishing. In other words having human agency, the ability to do things, is only possible with resources, food in your belly, healthcare, etc. As creatures who’ve created complex societies we are dependent on our political institutions making laws to provide us all with access to those resources.
So you believe in Liberalism, in theory, but in practice you want to restrain it?
That is the defence of every authoritarian impulse from far left to far right. You want to do this? Yes, fine in theory but we have to restrain you to prevent society from falling apart (the right) or going in need (the left) or to protect higher values (the religious).
I personally think that now is a time to show our intolerance intellectually and even physically towards neo-liberalism.
Soe of you guys really, really don’t get this Liberalism thing do you? Here’s a dictionary definition of Liberal “willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one’s own”. How does equate with your proposal to show intolerance?
The moment you show such intolerance you have shown you aren’t really a Liberal. … these are dangerous times Well indeed, if the “Liberals” are prepared to prevent free speech because “these are dangerous time” the we are indeed in trouble. (Do you not realise you sound like every right wing despot ever?)
I think a lecture on Liberalism from someone who uses a fascist pseudonym is a bit rich
Hmmmm – OK – I didn’t think it was ‘analysis’ as such Richard – just a reflection on what I’d seen as liberalistic thinking and the sources of it throughout my life in response to your post. And all the more poorer for it being a reflection of course. Also, my thoroughly working class back ground will also colour what I see and interpret despite educating myself to Master’s level in later life.
Remember that you were referring to the Mail’s reference to the ‘liberal elite’ – by that I interpreted it being part of the same elite that hovers around the top or towards the top of society as defined by their economic status. Or does the ‘liberal elite’ only hover around say academia – less well paid etc., – I don’t know?
I can think of someone like Owen and his New Lanarkshire Mills whose more liberal attitudes to work actually seemed to have improved the lives (and output) of his workers. He was a wealthy man and a businessman. There are lots of examples of classical liberals coming from affluent backgrounds. The Cadbury family. Was Joseph Rowntree a pauper? We know the answer. All these example show enlightened attitudes – a willingness to explore other ways and respect others – especially lower economic castes. In a word they seemed ‘liberal’ to me and the people who subsequently wrote about them.
But I also know that my late father (working class until the day he died) was a liberal but his liberalism came from the church he used to go to as a boy. He also had a very strict father and his more liberal attitudes to us came from wanting to be different to his Dad (of whom he was terrified).
And keeping with the theme of money – how an earth in this day and age can liberalism – in fact any political force (for good or ill) survive without having large amounts of money behind it? It is wealth that is driving neo-liberalism; it is wealth that bank rolls UKIP and has been used by Labour and as we know by the Tories.
So who is bank rolling good old fashioned liberalism? Anyone? It doesn’t feel like it to me. I’ve just started to read Harrington’s book and it seems that the neo-lib doctrine (extreme liberalism?) has all the money at the moment! So I contend that liberalism and what it offers (as you say) DOES need money in order to influence society as it is today in order to compete with other ideas (unfortunately). Wealth certainly seems to have helped it in the past.
So I suppose we will have to disagree on the money or wealth question within liberalism – one of the very few issues I disagree with you at all really.
With regard to liberalism as a political philosophy, I will simply restate that I’m not sure in an age of extremes if it is relevant anymore. In fact it may be untenable as it has had a role in facilitating the unacceptable and illiberal ideas (such as neo-liberalism and others on the whole political spectrum) anyway by tolerating them in the first place.
Does liberalism have a place in a world that seems to be slipping into all sorts of trouble? I’m really not sure. Are we at the limits of liberalism?
I think so. So if so, what next? What are we to do without resorting to the pitchfork? Maybe going forward, politics has to get more complicated and this means (as has been said here before) instead of politics operating along the lines of single paradigms (left or right or centre) we need multi-paradigm politics (more coalition politics). And we also need new breeds of leader who can make that happen. And may be these people are already emerging in the generations below us as I write.
I have no alternative to liberalism
I do not know what the alternative to treating others as your equal that is acceptable might be
Benito
Yours is reactionary writing in reaction to my reactionary writing.
All I would say in my defence is that my writing is in self defence of people (this Government) who are having a demonstrably negative and deleterious effect on the people I see and serve in my community and on myself and my family. And they have been doing this since 2010. They have shown an intolerance of good wages, pay and conditions, the disabled, those who cannot find work, those who wish to use a library, those who wish to have children even but a breathtaking tolerance of those who caused the 2008 crash.
In mitigation I ask you to consider that instead of blaming immigrants or people who need benefits to live or the disabled or the EU , I am pointing the finger quite rightly at the political elite who are responsible. And I’m asking how the ideas that drive them – really bad ideas – have been allowed to thrive – especially since 2008.
These ideas that I do not wish to be tolerated anymore have undermined people’s ability to be free of want, to be free of fear, to be free of debt, to be free of indolence – I could go on.
That’s my excuse. What’s yours?
He’s banned
Dan Hodges is the son of Glenda Jackson, an obvious member of the “liberal elite” he claims to despise. In fact, Dan is the most obvious beneficiary of the “liberal elite” currently working in journalism, so to point out that he is biting the hand that feeds him would be an understatement. He is, quite simply, a professional troll. Although even trolls can get it right sometimes – Dan spent five years saying that Ed Miliband was crap, and Labour would lose the 2015 election… and then Labour lost the 2015 election.
I presume he is good friends with Toby Young
Richard, you really are a champion unravelling neoliberal theories.
I feel the need to wear protective clothing when I’m within 10 feet of the Daily Mail and feel very uncomfortable at my local newsagent when I see someone buying one; keeping as large a distance as I can! Richard I never put you down as a Sunday Mail reader! My wife used to occasionally buy the Telegraph to see what the opposition was up to; but the Brexit coverage was too much even for her. I applaud your ability to descend into the sewer and come out unscathed.
I agree wholeheartedly with what you say. To add to this I thought the Tory conference in general was nauseating. It had the feel of a new variant on National Socialism; deeply ugly with plenty of Xenophobia and some very nice sounding words from May. I this is the centre ground it is one I want nothing to do with.
I have no confidence that Brexit will be a success. Indeed I feel that it will be a disaster economically, particularly the hard Brexit which now seems likely. (Of course if a sensible neo-Keynesian approach were used rather than a neoliberal one it could be totally different; but I’m pessimistic about this happening). I’m not sure for how long after we have left that the MSM and Torys can blame the EU for anything that’s bad. It is entirely credible that the “Liberal Elite” which will probably include many on Richard’s blog will be targeted next. These presumably include “experts” – possibly Gove’s malign influence is still having some effect on the party? And of course anyone with a Masters Degree or better (75% in favour of the EU) will be targeted. Not to mention the young- but they are already majorly discriminated against. Dark times.
Sean
I never buy it: online referrals usually come via Twitter – as with the Telegraph
I feel it important to know what is being said even if I do not like it
Richard
‘It is a million miles from neoliberalism.’
I’m not so sure that is right , Richard. neo-liberalism has replaced liberalism without the ‘liberals’ even knowing it. This confusion og the two was at the root of the Brexit ‘debate’ in my view:
1) neo-liberalism has the external features of liberalism in that it appears to be non-racist aand tolerant as long as you buy (literally!) into the neo-lib agenda. As Zizek put it: (within neo-liberalism) ‘ you can do what you want as long as it involves shopping.’
2) As in the case of the EU, the apparent liberalism of the institutions was belied by the underlying finance capitalism that was exploitative and imperialistic.
3) because the two have been conflated, we get a lot of confusion and misunderstanding which allows the Right to creep in in a reptilian manner. The Tories are a manifestation of this vileness.
The Left has been also derailed by this conflation because it cannot get its narrative sorted out and is eternally wrongfooted.
Chris hedges has explored some of this in ‘The Death of the Liberal Class’, a quite prophetic book in many respects.
I agree that the times are dangerous and I’m depressed by it, particularly as YET AGAIN those that might counter this are impotent to do so. i guess the old saw that ‘the devil has the best tunes’ is applicable again.
We have to disagree
Simon – you are too ‘benign’ on neoliberalism. It has a far darker pedigree than you suggest – going way back to the late 1930s and later re-affirmed following the obsession with Ayn Rand’s ‘objectivism’ – which continues today in the US and has give rise to what is very misleadingly termed ‘libertarianism’.
It is a political ideology based on some very dodgy (and dangerous) socio-economic theory, espoused by those on the right fearful of their power being threatened by the communists, trade-unionists, workers et al. It is inherently anti-democratic.
How it has survived (even flourished) thus far is a mystery to me, explained perhaps by the economic uncertainty of the past 50 years, during which time it has cleverly morphed into a global economic ‘policy’ – thanks to some nifty footwork by disciples of Friedman & Hayek.
It’s the parasite that is eating the host, as Michael Hudson has so eloquently explained. There is nothing socially constructive about it at all and until it is abandoned by all national & international governments I can’t see any progress being made towards a sustainably just and fair society here or anywhere.
Actually the Wiki entry for it is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Colloque_Walter_Lippmann
‘Benign’-I utterly condemn neo-liberalism in all its foul manifestations-I was just saying that if you scratch a ‘liberal’ beneath the surface you will often find a ‘neo-liberal’.
I was just challenging Richard’s view that they are distinct categories as did PSR above.
I may be wrong, of course but i can’t help feeling that the failure of the Left is due to neo-liberalism hijacking the liberalism of the left. One can see this hijacking at its most transparent in the EU which was, in its early manifestation (Monet, Schuman) was based on liberal principles of social purpose but became transformed into the neo-liberal wrecking ball and stooge of international finance capitalism. So the EU has working directives/Environmental Laws etc which SEEM liberal but are undermined by the neo-liberal financial structure.
The Left, in my view, have never fully grasped this and it continue to befuddle them, unfortunately leaving a right always on the ascendant.
I cannot see how liberalism and neoliberalism can be confused
As I nite, they are utterly different
Richard, it’s just something I’m exploring and at a gut level I feel to be a factor -sorry if I sounded ‘condescending’, I wasn’t aware of it but that fact probably means I ought to be concerned, my apologies -sometimes I get carried away in abstract thought.
Accepted
I agree about Michael Hudson’s work – it should also appear in the reading list that Richard was putting together a while back.
With regard to how neo-liberalism has flourished and endured I think that neo-liberalism is opportunistic; it seemed to gain traction in the West from about the same time the oil crisis hit and caused all sorts of problems for America and Europe for example.
I imagine that for politicians at that time, neo-liberalism might well have been seen as an answer to their problems. Dennis Healey spoke many years later about the IMF intervention in the UK economy when he was chancellor and how he felt pushed and rushed into making his decisions at that time. What became known as the ‘shock doctrine’ that many have shown accompanies the neo-liberal IMF agenda is now well known: create panic and disorder and then strike for a deal.
Look what happened to south east Asia? The property market over-heated because of international credit inflows , the IMF – sniffing like vultures – came in, lent money, enabled international investors to get their money out and left the region with the IMF debt still to pay. A filthy practice.
So that’s what we get? Privatisation, debt and a lack of investment and lives ruined.
According to Adam Curtis in ‘All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’ Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ was the second best selling book in America after the bible.
Neo-liberalism endures because it appeals to our individuality – our more base instincts – related to our need to consume and almost compete by consuming.
Classical liberalism also seems to put the individual at the centre of things but at least puts some form of expectation on man that he/she will behave rationally and fairly – ‘to do no harm’ so to speak.
OTOH Neo-liberalism is basically what Rand said it was (I paraphrase here) – that man only has a duty to himself to pursue his own happiness and should not be concerned with the happiness of others or expect them to be concerned with his happiness. Nothing could in my view be further from the truth about human beings. Rand’s views are nothing but a basis for dystopia and eventual human extinction.
Finally for me, I cannot be a liberal because I do not think that people like Rand , von Hayek and Friedman are equal to me. They are in fact by their ideas and actions LESS than me and many others who have been harmed by their ideas.
That is my position and I commend it others. But I wish that I did not have to. If the neo-libs could just meet us half way, that would be enough. But they are just in my view unable to compromise. They want to go all the way.
You confuse the person and their actions
I genuinely do not
It is why I can go for a drink with those with whom I strongly disagree
I’m not confused by anything Richard/Alistair. In fact I do not understand your point Richard at all.
How can you separate a person from their actions – is that what you are suggesting?
It is what I find tolerable that matters to me. If I’d met General Pinochet and he asked me to go out for a pint – should I have gone?
Yes I know – I confess that I could not do what you do and I’ve said as much. I’m not proud of that but it is my stance. And far from being confused I am self-aware enough to know that my stance is not really desirable from a human point of view.
But if you have an overarching, dominating ideology that will not listen, will not compromise and negates the facts of other people’s lives, negates other theories of economics and social order – how should one react? There is no balance in neo-liberalism. And it is fuelled by money – no doubt about that.
In conclusion I feel that I know your ideas and vision well and whole heartedly support them; but I do not understand the underlying philosophy that drives you – and I am at fault there. Perhaps it is best that I do not attempt to understand either. The less said, best mended.
It’s a Quaker belief that there is ‘that of God’ in everyone
A popular alternative is ‘lover the sinner, hate the sin’
I am hardly alone in separating the person and their actions
Most ideas of justice are based on the idea that this is possible
Gosh there is so much confusion here and much of it seems to be simple semantics. I think we can all agree that neo-liberalism is a dodgy, and misleading, term, but it’s in popular use so avoiding it would seem churlish. Worth noting:-
The systems we have in place, with marginal tweaking, can support pretty much any form of society we wish for. On the macro level the results produced will be dictated by the priorities that are programmed in. In almost every case the only thing missing is political will.
As long as we have profit at the top of the priority list then all the rest is just arguing round the edges and nothing significant will change. It really doesn’t matter whether we describe it as neo-liberalism, oligarchy, corporatism, neo-feudalism or all the other attempts to define it I have seen.
Every solution I have read involves changing the priority list to place people at the top followed by the environment, most of the time the two are so closely linked anyway.
Agreed