This from George Monbiot is very good on neoliberalism:
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I watched it last night – it’s very good indeed.
A really good, clear overview of how things are. I wish this could be broadcast on massive screens in every city.
I’ve been calling them rabid capitalists for years, weird cult is good for me. Monbiot is right, call them out. Most people don’t get their agenda.
What neoliberalism has done is turn Adam Smith’s invisible hand on itself. The invisible hand is the idea that our moral vales come from or human relations. And these values help to guide is to know what is good for us and what is not.
Neoliberalism says that the invisible hand is the market. We must surrender our moral values and surrender our sense of self because the market is always right. Our sense of good and wrong is eroded – replaced by the market.
There has to be an alternative to this madness.
That’s not what neoliberalism says.
It is Milton Friedman’s own words in “Free to Choose”. The invisible hand is market freedom and it is a prerequisite for political freedom. Freidman says that the invisible hand is also at work in the government but it works in the complete opposite direction to Adam Smith’s. Freidman differentiates between these 2 indivisible hands. We are told that we need to reject the invisible hand of the government, our political values and political ideology; and must only accept the invisible hand of the market.
Try explaining George Monbiot to a roofer in Cumbria working 50 hours a week.. he works so word because he is aspirational and wants to make money to improve life for his family… that’s what the hard left don’t understand.
Don’t patronise the roofer
Good answer
Pete said:
“Try explaining George Monbiot to a roofer in Cumbria working 50 hours a week.. he works so word because he is aspirational and wants to make money to improve life for his family… that’s what the hard left don’t understand.”
Please could you explain why anyone, let alone a roofer in Cimbria where conditions for roofers for a large part of the year are difficult, should NEED to work 50 hours per week to try to improve life for their family. Especially when there is very little chance their family’s life WILL be much improved by their efforts and when the government is planning to improve the wealth of families who don’t work 50 hours a week.
I’m sick of hearing about this “hard left”. What is really happening is centrism struggling to make it’s voice heard above the overwhelming clamour from the extreme right.
Agreed
“George Monbiot is very good on neoliberalism.”
He is best on neoliberal lobbysists pretending they are impartial ‘think tanks’; and on the broadcast media for giving them free, unchallenged access to the media and the oxygen of publicity; as if they were the authoritative source of wisdom. The BBC’s role in this has been shameful.
Nesrine Malik today – a good piece saying what has been said on here for months – Labour seems scared of seeing it has an immediate opportunity to change the narrative – and demolish the neoliberal/ conventional boundaries – and offer something completely different.
Transcend ‘hard working families’ trope , go beyond its current offer – ‘Labour pitching itself as a better service provider to a British citizen who is above all else a customer.’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/09/labour-tories-conservative-party-ideology
I read Nesrine Malik’s article and i completely disagree with what she is saying. Elections are not won by convincing guardian readers and the quickest way to endure a Tory revival is if a labour government lurches dramatically to the left. The electorate want centre/ left of centre politics and that’s what they will vote for in kier Starmer. If the Labour party starts backbiting and in-fighting then they will look like the Tory party does now.
Which is why we need PR to break out of this
Slightly OT , Just saw this which addresses a hot topic here.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/banks-brace-for-shock-raid-on-rates-windfall-government-could-target-10bn-of-interest-on-deposits-held-at-boe-as-it-tries-to-steady-markets/ar-AA12KgYL?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=d665df1f0464458aaec22e88153a24f0
A blog post may follow…
A great presenter he is. It’s quite a western european experience, no doubt if you have spent a lot of time studying South America, demagogues can attack from both the far left and the far right. I support social democracy not fascism and not Marxism. It worries me how few people have actually heard of August Bebel.
Are you listening Labour? Please wake up NOW, your country needs you.
Watched the video, which I thought was excellent.
Just noticed the comment above, “Are you listening Labour? Please wake up NOW, your country needs you”.
I’d second that, so why do I get this deflated feeling?
Is it because Labour only seem to offer neoliberalism light? Are they so concerned with the “Overton Window” that nothing of note is thought of or discussed?
Seems as though Liz and buddies have offered an open goal, who and where are the strikers?
A quote from a recent blog post from Robert Reich helps explain why the Neoliberals are still with us after many years of failed ‘trickle-down’ experiments:
“Part of the answer is that the moneyed interests have also invested a portion of their gains in an intellectual infrastructure of economists and pundits who continue to promote this failed doctrine — along with institutions that house them, such as, in the US, the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and Club for Growth.
But perhaps the main reason for the public’s amnesia is that Democrats in the US and Labor in the UK have failed to offer what should be the obvious alternative: A bottom-up economics that invests in the education and health of the public, and the infrastructure connecting them.
This is the only true path to higher productivity and widely-shared prosperity.”
I couldn’t agree more. Neo-liberalism is a the heart of many of the problems we face today. The Labour Party needs to wake up to this, and soon.
The nearest Labour came to challenging the neo-libraol orthodoxy was 3 years ago with Corbyn. Unfortunatley journalist such as George, and his colleagues in papers like the Guardian, where shoulder to shoulder with the parlimentray Labor Party and those that run the party in undermining democratic socialism.
Hopefully George Monbiot has seen the error of his ways. But until the Labour Party ditches its love of neo-liberalism it won’t be the party that saves us.
I never saw George do what you claim
The Guardian was not a fan of Corbyn, and nor was I because his economics was dedicated to neolibera austerity and book balancing. He would have profoundly disappointed you in practice. But I think George was more convinced.