Ian McWhirter, the political editor of the Scottish Herald, which is not a left wing paper, wrote an excellent attack on neoliberalism in that paper yesterday.
He started from the premise that corruption in RBS was clear indication of the failing of that system of capitalism and went on to attack it more generally, before concluding:
The beneficiaries of this kleptocratic capitalism are hiding in plain sight. And I believe their time is nearly up. In the 19th century, plutocrats could protect their wealth behind laws largely drawn up for the benefit of the wealthy. The poor had no lawyers. But today the poor have the vote, and lawyers, and there is no way this kind of structural inequality can survive in the 21st century, short of the extinction of popular democracy. Eventually, people will vote for change: for a society in which wealth is spread more equitably, and in which public services are run in the interest of the people who pay for them.
I don't know if Jeremy Corbyn is going to be the agent of this change; I suspect he is too old. But behind lies an entire generation of educated young people who have no stake in the system as it stands. Their parents accepted regulated, post-war capitalism because it offered them secure jobs, pensions, cheap houses, free higher education. Millennials have seen all that swept away as corporate capitalism's thirst for profit became insatiable. They will be the grave-diggers of the system, and while it may take a decade or so to be buried, this era of capitalism is already a dead parrot.
But it has yet to fall off its perch.
The final push is needed.
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[…] be the tipping point. I am not sure though: at most he is emblematic of the deeper malaise I have already noted this morning. But whatever might push neoliberalism off its perch its fall is inevitable. The only question is […]
Still too many people dazzled by the ‘beautiful plumage’.
Actually it’s been dead for a while, it’s just that not enough people realised. You knew someone would post this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj8RIEQH7zA.
Seriously, though, it’s probably just a statistical issue. When enough older people eventually die it will open up the opportunity at the ballot box for the millennials to exert their preference. Some will, of course, still adhere to the old orthodoxies but they should be a growing minority.
Keeping the wrinklies alive longer might delay the transition. But, in the end, it’s simply a matter of time. Unfortunately, it’s not beyond possibility that the sociopathic neo-libs will adopt a scorched earth policy.
In order to hasten the parrot’s demise here in the UK, it’s a pity Corbyn doesn’t have the charisma & wider appeal of his grey-haired US counterpart, . However, I’m confident someone will eventually emerge to deliver the coup de grâce.
We could do with Bernie’s fire
@ Richard
Have you read Philip Mirowski’s book – Never let a serious crisis go to waste: how neoliberalism survived the financial crisis.
I think the dead parrot will need more than a final push.
I think it is nailed on to its perch and will require continued effort (many pushes) to get it off.
I agree
So we have to push hard
Unfortunately you may be overlooking the invidious effect of modern ‘psy ops’, used as consumer-operational research perhaps with increasing effect and confidence (?) in modern, conventional politics; by those with a parrot in the game. This may have the capacity to revive even dead parrots.
You may be right…
But the nail corrodes in the end, come waht may
To paraphrase the great Frank Zappa on jazz
“Neoliberal capitalism is not dead, but it’s really starting to smell funny”
🙂
Who are these ‘millennials’? The world has got harder for others too. Let’s not beat around the bush here.
I’m 53 and I’ve seen my pension screwed around with, my grant at Uni cut by 10% when I was there in the 1990’s as a mature student (which precipitated the need for some student grant that was a lovely drag anchor on my low post grad earnings ) and since 2010 I’ve had a wage rise below inflation, plus taking a pay cut too. So since 2010 I have lost £8,400.00 from that pay cut I had in 2010 (not adjusted for inflation).
I’ve always worked and had some crappy jobs to avoid becoming unemployed – I’ve studied (post grad too) to better myself but all I got in 2010 was austerity.
I’ve seen many more colleagues made redundant or leave the public sector for – wait for it – higher wages in the private sector (great way to raid the capacity of one sector to benefit another – just starve the other of cash) . The only people who are not better off are those who wanted to become self employed and many who I am in contact with have seen their income drop further. That is a dark world right there but hey it keeps the unemployed figures low doesn’t it?
And as for the ‘dead parrot’ that is capitalism falling off its perch – What? Again? Will it actually fall off this time? I’m still waiting?!!! Along with all the others!!
There is a saying in Derbyshire: ‘A creaking gate hangs longest!’
Contemporary United States Capitalism is a lie. And the bigger the lie, the more people believe it. Rather, let us face up to this fact and not kid ourselves that its going to topple over any time soon. Use that realisation as an accelerant to fuel the fire that burns in those of us seeking a fairer world.
We cannot afford to call the death of neo-liberal United States North American capitalism prematurely.
Rant over. Sorry.
You’re welcome
Not a rant Pilgrim, you’re just describing things as they are . Though I’ve been lucky enough to avoid the impacts I’m well aware of what it has done to so many. And I emphasise luck rather than amazing judgement on my part.
My own thought is that what is needed to push the decrepit stinking parrot off its perch (a great analogy) is a genuine alternative, which recognises both todays challenges and the even bigger ones coming down the track. At the moment we have a choice of parrots as it were, one being slightly more attractive than the other
Pilgrim,
“Who are these ‘millennials’?”
They, and Gen Y, are the ones who got ripped-off on housing – being expected to pay twice as much or more (in median income terms) as their parents and grand-parents did. There are other factors but that’s the stand-out.
“”Who are these ‘millennials’?”. They are the ones that get increasingly pissed-off the more they hear older folk say “oh nonsense, it were just as bad in my day”. Well, no it wasn’t actually.
As for the dead parrot of neo-liberalism. That death ultimately has little to do with appearances, personal impressions, feelings, “psy-ops” or peoples’ preference in grey-haired socialists. The death is inherent and structural.
I remember Steve Keen and others teaching us about the descending heirarchy of bubble markets. In the 1960’s and ’70’s “productivity gains” through mechanisation witnessed an increased use of machinery over labour but growth of demand didn’t (couldn’t?) keep up up with it. So the rate of return on industrial capital ceased growing as can only be expected anyway. Its a finite world and unrealistic for anyone to expect the rates of return on anything to grow indefinitely.
So capitalism turned to rent-seeking through financial speculation (rigged gambling doesn’t add to production but it can have good rates of return ) and “globalisation” – exporting Western jobs to places that aren’t yet fully industrialised – those places grow faster, so growing returns, for a while at least, maybe a good while but its still a finite world. As for that hierarchy of bubble markets. It starts with stocks and mergers in the ’80’s (crash), dot-coms in the ’90’s (crash) housing in the 2000’s (big crash) and half-arsed, indefinite stagnation since then. Those “booms” were like forest fires,. You eventually run out of asset classes to burn.
As for using QE to “revive” asset markets while ignoring the real economy?. That’s desperate stuff (petrol on dead wood) that reinforces the divide. Speaking of which, the divide between the pissed-off young and their middle-aged landlords or between the job insecure, working poor and the rich – well that just keeps narrowing to the “99%” and the “1%”, now we are talking about the 0.01% ! Getting rich through inequality is another zero-sum game that’s pretty much run its course.
I’m sorry to get boringly Marxist and Determinist about all this but the death of neo-liberalism is primarily due to some popularity contest of political philosphies It is economic, inherent, structural and marked out at birth. The neo-lib’s restoration of laissez-faire is like the Bourbon attempt at restoring feudalism – doomed from the outset. The contemporary politics that we know is a cover story.
The philosophy itself, the “neo-liberal” dogma that never spoke its name. It s a revival of an old con (hence “neo”). A two-faced, corporate version of laissez-faire. But “neo’s” never last. You can’t fit an old suit on new body. The seams eventually split and certainly you can’t fit a frontier, empty-world doctrine to a full and shrinking planet. They wanted greater inequality and “market forces”. Well they got ’em. The outcome from that sucks and now pleases very few.The young don’t like it, the working poor don’t like it and we never did. The neo-libs have lost their ascendancy, exhausted their agenda and do little more than bitch about each other and the “the Left”. Yep, that’s a dead parrot.
None of which means that we shouldn’t do what we can to push it off its perch as Richard says. Historic change can be slow but life is short, the young are impatient, the globe is warming and most of us don’t want to see a corpse hanging around indefinitely.
Rant over, (kind of) sorry.
Correction: the death of neo-liberalism is NOT primarily due to some popularity contest of political philosophies
No you’re not!
Nor are we
Pilgrim Slight Return says:
January 22 2018 at 2:03 pm
Who are these ‘millennials’? The world has got harder for others too. Let’s not beat around the bush here……
Rant over. Sorry.”
‘These millennials’ are the people we are relying on to fix the problems we have created for ourselves and them as they grow up. Your (and my) generation) fucked up big time, Pilgrim because we didn’t get involved with the political process and swallowed a load of bullshit.
It’s not too late to try and rectify some of our errors. If you didn’t agree you wouldn’t be on here.
It’s why I am here
I don’t share this faith in the “millennials”. I grew up in the 60’s when everybody was going to “make love not war”, when radicals like Straw were going to make trouble, and Hain was digging up cricket pitches and Darling was marching under a banner for a “Workers’ Republic”, and Mandelson and Reid were communists and Blair was roused by Trotsky. To paraphrase Wilde: you’d need to have a heart of stone not to laugh at where they are now.
Unfortunately, as people grow older, many become more C/conservative and are “captured” by politician’s promises and a comfortable life. With the US virtually a plutarchy and China, Russia and several others similarly inclined I think this parrot is far from being an “ex-“.
Just as Brexit hasn’t happened yet, climate change/chaos lurks in the future and may well bring about the end of neoliberalism – and a whole lot more too, as it has in the past.
Some of us move left
G Hewitt,
Your comparison between the 60’s movement and the Millennials fails on some pretty basic terms. The baby-boomers in the ’60’s had good economic prospects, better than their parents, but many were moved to protest by a range of issues including ecology, Vietnam War, the nuclear Arms Race etc.
This current generation do not have better economic prospects than their parents and the climate change problem (scarcely heard of in the 1960’s) has added a far greater degree of urgency to the ecology issue.
I disagree. My point is, we’ve been here before, many times – whether it was the flourishing of “democracy” in ancient Athens or theAmerican or French Revolutions. “It’s different this time” – the most dangerous 4 words in investing, it is said, and also I think in expecting social change. As Walter Scheidel argues it is only great catastrophes which have effected change, and as soon as peace and quiet return things revert to how they were with the rich and powerful in control. And today there are more extremely wealthy and powerful people controlling the politicians, the press, the corporations than there ever were in the 60’s and they are not going to give up their gains without a fight. So, I don’t see “millennials” turning the world upside down.
But I did mention climate change, which is still not being taken seriously, and Trump has “declared” it a hoax (more or less) and I believe that will finally bring an unimaginable catastrophe to human kind- and, inter alia, to neoliberalism.
G Hewitt
With reference to my determinist rant above I think that you may generally be looking at the icing of current affairs rather than the cake of fundamental change.
As for “being here before”. I would humbly suggest that the problem there may be one of misplaced expectations with people waiting for the next revolutionary trend to appear around the corner.
History might suggest that gradual change is the norm and what appear be revolutions are the odd, tight pressure points in an otherwise evolving, cyclical process. The disappointments that you refer to may also be misplaced as they represent nothing more than a dialectic: thesis (we hate it) – antithesis (now its our turn) – synthesis (‘oh, I’m so disappointed’).
We will always be disappointed if we see things for what we wanted them to be rather than what they are. That ’60’s revolution that you refer to actually created a lot of positive social change and the backlash (conservative, “family values” etc.). has made a relatively small impression. Likewise the economic gains of the post-war era have not been entirely lost no matter what the exaggerators might say and the cycle is now heading back in that direction.
There is not going to be any one almighty, positive, singular movement that changes everything for the better, forever in one big hit. Admittedly, occasionally some have made a big impression. Clement Attlee, for example, but he was coming off the back of the Great Depression and W.W.2 so that may not be a useful comparison. We don’t want things to get that bad again.
As for this suggestion: “today there are more extremely wealthy and powerful people controlling the politicians, the press, the corporations than ever were in the 60’s”
Is that entirely true? The may be more corporate control and corruption on some levels but is that suppressing rebellion or causing rebellion?
As for the Millennials, they have very pleasantly surprised me. I would encourage that rather than load them up with excessive and irrelevant levels of expectation.
G Hewitt says:
January 22 2018 at 7:15 pm
I don’t share this faith in the “millennials”. I grew up in the 60’s when everybody was going to “make love not war”, ”
Everybody ELSE was going to make love not war.
You, me, Pilgrim, what the fuck did we do?
We let all the people you mention and a lot more besides carve up what we had (what our grandparents and parents had built) and share out the spoils between themselves.
It’s payback time.
Or rather, it’s pay forward time.
Yes, I did SFA too, but tell me, who is going to lead this assault and get payback/forward, esp in light of your comment at 12:20 and paramilitary forces?
G Hewitt says:
January 23 2018 at 12:59 pm
“Yes, I did SFA too, but tell me, who is going to lead this assault and get payback/forward,……”
That really is the 64 to-the-nth-power pick-your-preferred-unit-of-currency question.
One person no matter how ‘big’ and how charismatic is not going to do it. What Margaret Thatcher achieved, or is credited with, she didn’t do alone – far from it.
Whoever it is will need a considerable groundswell of support and that involves, in large measure, getting out the message that TINA is on her deathbed.
Jeremy Corbyn looks a bit like a David and Goliath contest but…. If you remember the story David eschewed the orthodox armoury he was offered and fought with the weapon he knew how to handle. He won the head to head but that was the beginning not the end of the battle.
re My 12.20 prognostication. It’s being field-trialled in New York as we speak. It wouldn’t take much to roll it out on a wider scale.
Hammering, vilifying, impoverishing and dehumanising the poor, the immigrant (and disabled, you’ll notice – very nasty echos there!) through a constant barrage of MSM benefit-scrounger narrative sets the tone. Much of the hard work of repression is already done, and being subtly (and often not very subtly too) reinforced daily.
“Who is going to lead the assault?” Nobody CAN lead an assault unless their rallying cry is heard and more importantly understood. That’s what this blog is about.
Understanding the questions. If people don’t understand the question they will never vote for the right answer. We’ve probably still got enough democracy left to forestall the violent solutions, but democracy is dwindling fast like the sand in an egg timer, the last bit seems to disappear very quickly.
Cometh the hour cometh the man (or just as likely these days the woman).
Trouble is, it’s difficult to kill a phantom.
And that’s all neoliberalism is. A phantom made up by people like you as a term to cover everything you don’t like in politics or economics.
Who are neoliberals? In your crazy world they are people who support neoliberal policies. What are neoliberal policies? In your crazy world they are policies supported by neoliberals.
And so your silly story goes on.
Neoliberalism can’t die. It never existed. It isn’t a philosophy. It’s just the evolving working economics of the day. Capitalism doesn’t stand still. Unlike the policies you endorse it isn’t born of dogma. It’s just what works.
It is based on freedoms and incentives and human nature.
You’re old and out of date. Stuck in time playing an old tune that few dance to today.
A museum piece. A time warp. A silted up backwater.
Relevant only as a warning of where misguided thinking and unlearning political obsession can lead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgZ3kbBPeXI
“You’re old and out of date. Stuck in time playing an old tune that few dance to today.”
Dude, that’s you looking in the mirror.
“Neoliberalism can’t die. It never existed. It isn’t a philosophy.”
Yep, sure. Thatcher, Reagan, Hayek, Milton Friedman, the Chicago school generally, The Mont Pelerin Society (look it up), Blair, New Labour – they are all fictional characters.
And when Milton Friedman wrote this famous essay called “Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects” in 1951 -that wasn’t real. He was just imagining shit. Right?
https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/friedman_images/Collections/2016c21/Farmand_02_17_1951.pdf
Either that, or this non-existent philosophy is so broadly recognised that standard, quick-reference sources like Investopedia have it well covered. Actually here -this is closer to your level and not a bad place to start:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/neoliberalism.asp
Thanks, Marco Fante, for the link to Friedman’s article … so if public opinion is shifting back now again, do we have to wait for another 20 or 30 years? And is public opinion really shifting?
Good question Alexander,
What Friedman was saying about time lags is kind of consistent with what Ian Mc Whirter of the Scottish Herald said: ” while it may take a decade or so to be buried, this era of capitalism is already a dead parrot”.
To the extent that Friedman’s idea holds true we don’t have to wait 20 years from now because the clock had already well started ticking for the death of neoliberalism when the GFC hit – so that’s 10 years gone already – probably more when you consider that popular resentment about banksters, offshoring, and job insecurity (to name a few) had already started building well before then.
As for this question: “is public opinion really shifting?” I’m not going to cover that entire topic but age and demographics are a big factor and indicators like this are as clear cut and decisive as you’re going to get:
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/05/19/nationalisation-vs-privatisation-public-view/
Phil Mystic says:
January 22 2018 at 8:57 pm
“Trouble is, it’s difficult to kill a phantom.”
It’s not a phantom: it’s a political and economic idea.
As to the rest of what you say it’s a classic finger point: three pointing back towards what you defend. A broken dogmatic ideology.
If 2008 didn’t persuade you that market ideology doesn’t work very well, see how the next crash affects your outlook. It will be a bigger fall because it’s coming from a higher start – it hasn’t even got near the top yet. Irrational market exuberance has hardly begun.
I don’t know how you make your living, (I guess you are doing OK at present) but your complacency is staggering.
Frightening actually, because there are a lot of people who share your general outlook. And you will be looking to ‘somebody’ to ‘do something about it’ when the excrement hits the extractor, because it won’t be your fault.
Will it?
The danger coming with the death of neoliberalism is that the ruling elites, seeing that they loose the consent of the intellectual elites, make use of cruder methods. A recent FT article argued that we cannot afford democracy anymore. Fake news is delibereately used by the ruling elites not only in the US and the West, but also in China and Russia to devide and rule the people. We are made believe that people are fed up with experts. The US is spending more and more on military and the number of generals in the government is going up. Western governments lead a foreign policy that causes migration and terrorism, which sparks fear among their people. Public services are cut and sold to private investors. Elite education becomes ever more expensive, narrowing social mobility. Tenure has already been abolished at UK universities a long time ago and now pensions are under attack. New rules and laws, such as ASBOs are introduced that can be used to suppress people in case of an uprising (“community protection”). Many countries already now have authoritarian “democracies”. The list can made longer at will … I am not claiming that it gives a coheren picture, but I still fear that the ruling elites will fight back with all means …
I have not a doubt that they will fight
“I have not a doubt that they will fight”
They won’t need to. The largely bogus ‘War on Terror’ has equipped them with a well-armed paramilitary police force which will do the fighting for them.
All that is needed is a system of spot fines and/or property confiscation in lieu and they will be self financing.
Job done.
[…] clearly asking the wrong question. What is clear is that the liberal international model as was is, as I noted yesterday, dead. So the only question to be asked is not what can save the existing, and deeply corrupted, liberal […]