I have already posted once this morning on how to consider the threat from the New Right. Nick Cohen also has thoughts on this today, in the Observer. I know many have problems with Cohen's version of liberalism, as do I quite often, but this seems both correct and insightful to me:
Leftish condemnations of “neoliberalism” miss that the Thatcher/Reagan ideology of the 1980s is over. Conservatives rarely admit it, in public at any rate, but an idea is still dead even if no one turns up for the funeral. Who can now pretend hopes that a small state and free markets would bring prosperity to the mass of people are anything more than a hollow joke?
I think he may well be right: neoliberalism is dead, except on the left. There it continues to create an obsession with the past, when the focus should be on the future. And on the left it still creates an obsession with austerity, balanced budgets and independent central banks which will deliver the austerity the right have now completely abandoned.
It's time to smell the coffee on the left, and start talking about what people really want, which is a fair, just, open, liberal and decidedly green society. But still most on the left insist on playing on the opposition's pitch, even when they have long left it.
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:
A pivotal post.
In my view, all the Left has to do now is print the effing money if it gets in and explain to people how that works – but just print it first and explain later.
BTW – printing money is not neo-liberal. Printing money and looking after the people is how you re-assert the connection of the people to the state – it is the people who man your armies, produce your GDP, build your roads, provide security in numbers and realise civil engineering ventures that help a country to work properly – just like the ancient civilisations Michael Hudson describes in his book ‘….and Forgive Them Their Debts’.
Pilgrim – I have just put in an order for 10,000 ‘Just print the effing money!’ tee-shirts. I think you’ve summed up forty years (or more) of Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
My fear when Johnson was on his on his ‘piffle paffle, wiffle waffle’ (Copywrite John Crace) tour is that he had more or less announced sotto voce that he had reached the same conclusion. If he has then under all his bluster he’s a wily old bugger – because in so doing he will not only have shot Labour’s current, past its sell-by date, fox but also bagged the ‘Corbynomics’ one carefully put up for them by Professor Murphy which they carelessly left in a hedge somewhere.
Boris as Roosevelt?! – leading the UK out of the EU and into a land flowing with (Green?) New Deals to get the country back to work and put money in peoples’ pockets, spending like Billy-Oh. Doing that which his hero Churchill failed to. For an egomaniac it would, I’d suggest, be irresistible…and it would consign Labour to irrelevance.
I don’t think Cohen is right at all. Neoliberalism as an idea is moribund, not dead. Hence, no funeral. You don’t have a funeral for something that, while dying, is not dead and may never truly die. A problem with Cohen’s approach as I see it is this: if an idea is abandoned without truly burying it and there being general agreement that the burial was justifiable, it can be resurrected in the future without much change. Like the anti-New Deal argument. The banks and the rich never understood that they were wrong or even why they might have been wrong. The hiatus can be explained away as the result of improper implementation or simple abandonment as a consequence of a lack of true understanding. I consider Cohen’s approach to be potentially dangerous.
Sure, in the sense that flat earth is also still alive, but we sure as heck don’t need to give it much time
Let’s sweat the big stuff
And stop pretending we need to be neoliberal to get on as too many on the left still do
Richard, you have misunderstood my point. I have always hated neoliberalism. I probably wasn’t clear enough, but I think it is a mistake to think neoliberalims has died when it hasn’t but is just no longer flavor of the month. It is underpinning a number of policy proposals even though the neoliberal frame these policies are relying on has a name that the proposers no longer care to use.
Those of the far right that Cohen so rightly points to are there as a consequence of years of neoliberal economic and political policies. It is the latter that is the causal agent responsible, directly or indirectly, for their rise to prominence.
I think you missed Cohen’s point
Neoliberalism as we knew it probably is dead
Let’s deal with the new threats, not the old ones that the right has moved on from
If Cohen thinks that there is no point consistently arguing against the retreat of the State from its obligations, the seemingly never-ending cuts to vital services and the vilification of the vulnerable and poor because the underpining ideology has been found to be utter garbage, he is wrong.
The fight is more important than ever.
Conflating that fight with the Left’s posturing to woo the swing voter – offering austerity-lite and so-called ‘fiscal prudence’ – is not only nonsensical, but harms the good fight.
Why not read what he said?
He said the issue has moved on – and it has
The frontline is elsewhere now
It’s not that there isn’t one still – it’s just different
How can anyone proclaim Neoliberalism is dead?
Its tentacles are interwoven into almost every physical and abstract structure in modern Britain.
As a concept it’s long been known to be wholly inadequate for equality and justice. But it is alive, and soon its proponents will be shaping policy from behind the door of Number 10.
It’s legacy is very real
But it’s not what the right are pushing anymore
Thar’s the point
We need to clear up the mess, for sure
But we do not need to fight a past war and lose the current one as a resullt
Have you noticed what the right is really doing now? It’s planning big deficits to win elections and the left is still talking balanced budgets
Yes that was an interesting article. But my favourite sentence from the weekend was Saturday and
Philip Inman, ‘And third is the savings glut that can mostly be traced to baby boomers in the developed world, China’s middle class and the oil-rich states and which means there is more money sloshing around the international system than viable things to invest in.’
I don’t think I’ve seen that expressed so clearly in a national paper.
The last 17 words should make any investor sit back and think.
Little off topic, but I bet you’ll be surprised to know that you are part of the secret evil group intent on using the GND to subvert a push for socialism. Oh, and so is XR and Greta Thunberg. https://youtu.be/IAUrzee9jfc
Apparently I am promoting ideas I have never heard of – and most certainly utterly oppose
I guess if you want to oppose soemthing make up what it says to suit your purposes….
It could be that Neo-liberalism continues to co-habit with the Alt-Right (especially in economic practice) but I agree with Richard and Cohen that in terms of how the Tories are appealing directly to the electorate, they have embraced fascism in a big way and have been doing in fact since 2010 – more so since they split with the ‘Limp Dems’.
The Tories use the services of Lynton Crosby and he has a lot to answer for about the of our political climate in my opinion.
Do you really think Emmanuel Macron can be included in the ranks of the anti-right?
I think he is just (another) political opportunist, hanging on to the coattails of the latest ideas.
His interest is only getting re-elected.
I woke up this morning to the news that Mitsotakis’ Nea Demokratia had been elected with a strong majority in Greece to (wait for it) reduce top tax rates, cut back the role of the state, ‘make Greece more business friendly’, etc. etc. etc. – but apparently neoliberalism is dead? Who knew?
Tzipras and Syriza laid the foundations for this by getting themselves elected in 2015 to combat austerity and then promptly lying on their backs like little doggies to have their tummies rubbed when the Troika told them to get lost, and Tzipras will now rightly disappear into the obscurity he deserves, but even that betrayal by Syriza of everything it claimed it stood for was part of neoliberalism.
The programme of austerity by which the ECB and financial services elites ‘rescued’ Europe from the disastrous results of their own profligacy after 2008 was just reheated Structural Adjustment from Latin America in the 1990s. Neoliberal elites using the disaster they created to take a larger share of the pie…
Forgive me, but all I see is increased inequality, an invisibilization of unemployment amongst the precariat through statistical pretence and an unceasing, robotic assault on the entire idea of public services and social welfare through privatization across the length and breadth of Europe. Even as we speak, Boris ‘Nero’ Johnson salivates in the wings, promising, ooh,let me think, what was it? O yes, cuts in the top tax rates, deregulation, etc.
Reports of the death of neoliberalism have been greatly exaggerated…
Maybe the Greeks were wrong to buy into the Tzipras argument, but what else would they have been expected to do after they were dropped in sh** by the previous politicians, (who, BTW, are now MEPs for the most part, guaranteeing their pensions, you couldn’t be sure that the Greeks will have the money).
Tzipras was left out to dry by a carefully crafted PR campaign by the ECB that the Greeks had only themselves to blame. Try googling Greece and Goldman, to discover who now gets the fees from landings at Athens airport, for example.
An Italian(!!!) managed ECB , to be replaced by worse, is to blame for Tzipras collapse and its replacement by ‘one of our own’
This is the major challenge of our times to which there is no straight-forward answer. It’s yet another manifestation of the exponentially growing complexity that increasingly defines our era. Neo-liberal ideology has permeated almost every aspect of our lives, both consciously and subconsciously. The parasite continues to gorge on the host to the extent that there is now such a symbiotic relationship between the two it’s difficult to separate them. A better analogy might be a comparison with institutionalised religion. Although a majority in the west no longer adhere to it, outwardly practise it or even believe in it, it permeates every level of our secular state, even among hardened atheists. Denounce it publicly and you’re toast. God Save the Queen, God Bless America, etc.
Any fiscal measures Neo-liberals may find expedient to introduce in order to obtain votes should not be seen as a sign of their conversion to a progressive new socio-economic agenda. If it was they wouldn’t be Neo-liberal! It’s more a Machiavellian gesture to Keynes or even simply a Trojan horse. Caveat emptor!
Synchronistically the topic has popped up recently in various media, indicative of the growing concern as to how to eradicate it. John Harris’ piece in the Guardian this morning re. Britannia Unchained highlights the possible direction of travel here in the UK. But it’s just one worrying part of a complex global issue.
Forgive the cross-posting, but you may find this recently uploaded 2-part interview with David Harvey interesting and relevant –
The Persistence of Neoliberalism Despite its Loss of Legitimacy – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvPNOp97x-k
The Limits of Social Democracy and of the Welfare State – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w-Lu5czbk0&t=4s
I agree with your basic premise that the Labour Party will not succeed with their current strategy, albeit the idiosyncratic nature of our voting system could throw up an unexpected and unforeseen result at the next GE. However, even if it wants to (doubtful), it’s probably already too late for the LP to change direction. It should have offered an inspirational, non-market driven vision for the future immediately following the GFC. Now only the smaller parties offer an alternative to Neo-liberalism and here in the UK their voice is too weak to be heard by a critical mass of voters. The rise of the Greens in the EU is more heartening and encouraging, although there is a growing suspicion that they too have been infected at a certain level.
To conclude these meanderings, it’s war, Richard. Not class war in the old sense. But a seminally crucial battle for the hearts and minds of electorates everywhere to save life on the planet while offering a sustainable, egalitarian future for generations to come. Although at this moment in time it’s unrealistic to be optimistic, as you always emphasise, the grass-roots fight must go on irrespective even though in the short-term it’s certain to get worse before it starts to get better.
Much to agree with in your last para