Neoliberalism has failed, but the Labour government is wedded to it. No wonder they're so frightened. They realise that we might rumble that they, too, are a bunch of failures.
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Why are governments so frightened?
I ask the question because it's very clear that most governments, and I will use that in the UK as an example, are absolutely terrified of the people that they are now governing.
Why is that?
Why is it that they need such draconian legislation to try to control protest?
Why is it that they are literally trying to control the freedom to express opposition to what the government is up to?
Why are they trying to tell people you must comply or else, and why are they imposing so many laws that basically say, unless you work, we will not recognize your existence as a human being?
What is it that is going on that is making these people so terrified of the alternatives that might exist within society?
Well, the answer is actually glaringly obvious, and that is that they are promoting a form of government that is obviously inherently failing.
Neoliberal government, which is what the Labour Party is promoting in the UK, just as the Tories did, just by the way, as the Lib Dems do, and just by the way, as some other parties, particularly the SNP in Scotland tend to do - that philosophy of government is one that is based upon some absurd assumptions, including the fact that we are all simply economic units and that we only exist to maximize wealth and that we have no other interests at all.
And there is no other form of thinking available because although this type of thinking supposedly promotes competition, in fact, if you look at what neoliberalism has done within the UK's universities and within the teaching sphere, it has completely eliminated all other forms of teaching about every other available economic system to the point where opposition has been eliminated.
That has not made neoliberalism work.
Since 2008 and the global financial crisis, the real earnings of most people in the UK have hardly risen.
We've had a largely stagnant economy, so in fact, this system, which is so heavily biased towards business, has not generated vast amounts of business growth either.
It has inflated the value of assets, and in particular the value of land and buildings, including the homes of those people who are fortunate enough to own them, and the value of shares because of the manipulation of the share price that is now the normal form of activity of the finance director of most quota companies, but it has not delivered an increase in real values - in other words, an increase in the value of the things that we can actually consume or pass on to the next generation so that they might in turn consume.
Neoliberalism has, in fact, failed.
It's an ideology and not a system of government based upon any form of observed reality. And that ideology has imposed on us a form of thinking that suggests that markets are supreme when it is very clear that government does, in fact, form an essential part of the supply of our wellbeing.
If our government is in the business of actually denying the validity of its own purpose, which it is doing by denying the payment of benefits to those who need them and the provision of healthcare to those who are ill, and the provision of education to those who require it, such as the young, then it is clearly actually trying to impose something upon us that we know is wrong.
We know we need government.
There are sufficient people still alive who can remember government that was not neoliberal and who know as a consequence that it was actually possible to have governments who liberated the potential within the people of the UK.
But that is not what neoliberalism has ever done, and has ever sought to achieve.
Its goal is actually to suppress the opportunity of most people to promote the advantage of a few. That is very clearly what it's about. That is why it talks about maximising wealth. But not everybody can maximise wealth. It's obviously clearly impossible. Therefore, maximisation of wealth must be for the benefit of a few, not the many.
This is why the government is frightened, because it knows that neoliberalism has effectively run out of road.
It's obviously not working.
There is no growth potential in the UK economy anymore.
There is no earnings growth potential either.
There is no chance as things stands that people will be better off.
There is no hope that we can manage climate change whilst simultaneously trying to pump more and more goods and services through the system, and not necessarily ones that we actually want to consume.
This is a failed ideology, and the only way that Labour, which is completely wedded to this ideology, can maintain its authority in the country is by perpetuating those draconian powers that were put in place by the Conservatives during the Covid crisis to suppress opposition to what the government was doing then.
Now those powers are being used to suppress our right to express our free will to say there is a better way of running government.
Government should be run on the basis of caring for people, not on the basis that people are economic units of production.
Government should be run for the benefit of everybody, not just for the benefit of the wealthy.
Government should be there to liberate people to achieve their potential rather than to oppress them to stay in the situations that they are in.
Labour has got everything wrong, and it's terrified that it will be rumbled and that people will demand something better.
It can't deliver that using the ideology to which it's now dedicated.
And so, of course, it's frightened of us, the people, but this is only sustainable for so long. There will come a point where people will say, "We've had enough", and when that happens, we will get better government.
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I’m not sure the UK government does know that neoliberalism has failed. I think people and parties on the left know it, and I think they know it on the right too – that’s precisely why they are working to defend current wealth and privilege at the expense of democracy and freedom – for ‘the continuation of capitalism by undemocratic means’, as one (the best) definition of fascism has it. But I suspect the UK Labour Party leadership’s thinking is almost entirely negatively circumscribed, defined by what it opposes (Corbynism, Tory ‘incompetence’) and what it thinks (probably rightly) will not play too badly in The Daily Mail, rather than its own ability to assemble the evidence and draw reasonable conclusions.
Noted
When the people of the UK (EU, US, Australasia etc) come to realise that neoliberalism has failed them will they be able to vote for a party that also realises thus and has a reasonable chance to achieve power?
And what might the consequences be if the answer is no to either or both?
We need new parties
If your only tool is a hammer – then every problem is a nail. Thus with LiNO. Starmer is a blank book ref economics, Reeves – PPE? – I probably have learned more useful stuff from this blog (plus what I have read) than Reeves did on the “E” bit of her course. Bolt on the conditioning they have recieved (Starmer in Washington & latterly McSweeney telling him what to think) and Reeves @ BoE and one has a zombie gov – following its programming. There are no dissenting voices becuase they are all neolibtard true belivers or they have never bothered to inform themselves & follow the bosses orders, who in turn has his eye (or McSweenye’s) on “what the papers babble”.
It is pathetic, not a government, just an unthinking rabble.
Thanks
Yes neoliberalism has failed. But the govt will do nothing. As for inflated land and house values they are pretty meaningless as the exchange value (if you sell you will buy a dwelling which has also gone up in value, so you do not gain), means you are no better off.
While not denying your description of the S.N.P, I feel that under present circumstances they are indeed trying to do their primary job, and that is to care for the people of Scotland. In one example, we have the best performing N.H.S in the U.K, which, allied to Social Care, is consistently better than the other three nations. And of course, I believe if we were an Independent nation, we could do even better, in all aspects of Government.
Not disputed
And they do have a purpose
Few parties do
Welsh independence is growing too
Agree but management and mitigation alone won’t work, when the choke got tighter and tighter. Eventually you run out of oxygen. That’s the inevitable effect of Neoliberalism.
It needed, and needs focus on core purposed / job, leaving the choke, not managing it.
Pointed out many times to high heids.
I do think there are strands of SNP thinking that is unnecessarily neoliberal. However, whilst far from perfect, they have tried to encapsulate economic well-being of the populace in general within their overall economic strategy. There is much to do…but at least they have voiced it.
There is an interesting conundrum for the SNP…if they do too well under devolution, there may be less interest in independence. Personally, I wish they would try to give full reign to their economic well-being for all strategy and trust voters to make the right choice. Who knows, if it delivers the intended benefits, other governments may adopt it. Note: I recognise that as they don’t have their own sovereign ability to apply MMT, they are somewhat curtailed. This, however, makes it all the more galling that the current UK government doesn’t apply the same economic well-being for all model as they are not constrained. Unfortunately, as voiced many times on this forum there is neither the economic literacy or political will to make such a choice.
Thanks
Prof et al,
Mayoral hustings 23 April in Cambridge Methodist arranging a different event to hold parties to account. Cross between assembly and usual effete hustings.
A 1 bed flat costs £137,000 in central Copenhagen for any Dane, how many such similar homes are planned in Cambridge, where the average flat is £400,000?
UK has Neoliberal housing market and virtually no alternative for most.
Whereas, Denmark has non market housing for its citizens.
Prof would promoting awareness of this practical alternative to Neoliberal outcomes –
Andelsboliger styled housing supply- light fires in people’s imagination, especially the excluded and younger generation.
When basic needs aren’t met fascism sweeps in.
I think I had better mark the birthday of someone I know quite well that day…..
Might the attitudinal, thinking and action paralysis of our current government, plus their European and American colleagues, be a consequence of the learning restricted, and restricting, effect of Neo-liberal dogma on education?
“To get rid of government is the mentality that has been drilled into a generation of people.”
(from the article below)
https://michael-hudson.com/
“The ideology of neoliberalism, with its privatization, its deregulation, its emphasis on consumption, its elimination of basic apparatuses that can give an alternative point of view, has been so powerful and so normalized.”
(Henry Giroux)
Yes, in a word
The Labour government is scared because it knows it has has made a big mistake.
It put its Left wing to the sword – even though there were signs that that Left wing was rather popular – because it was dominated by an internal power struggle between the Blairite and Momentum arms of the same party. It’s not bad work to get paid so highly to sit in parliament to, instead of representing your constituents, sit there and argue with each other over who should be in charge, and undermine the person who was nominated to lead. That is what a lot in Labour did.
This was because they wanted power without thinking how – if they got their way – they would wield it. They ignored BREXIT, they ignored Covid – all that mattered was to get rid of Corbyn.
No wonder they were so surprised to find the country in a mess. They had spent up so much effort getting rid of Jeremy and playing chess with those who were ‘one of us’ (another Thatcher trait Labour have learnt) that they just hadn’t thought about anything else.
You can sum up what Labour are scared of simply: Peter Mandelson.
Start from there and it will all make (awful) sense.
When you are governing a population under the principles of an ideology that is both against the populations best interests, and human nature itself, you better be scared. The fact that the only ideas they have is to exert more control is very telling. I feel that is what Reform is actually selling itself as. Not agents of change, which they tell their supporters, but agents of control, which they tell their sponsors. The only ones that matter. They will be the end stage of this farce I think, the last hurdle we have to get over before real change happens. I just worry about how long the old order will hold on, and how many must suffer before change arrives. A lot of boxes are being ticked in Peter Turchin’s hypothesis of social collapse.
I very largely agree with you
What is ‘neoliberalism’ really but a belief in private affluence and public squalor? It isn’t liberal at all. When ‘shareholder value’ is the only value, we are all mere ‘human resources’ , and the planet as a whole exists only to provide ‘environmental services’ to the wealthy. This means a world run only for the private profit of the few, and tgat wealth and power are their own justification. We are told that somehow we all benefit from being exploited and destroyed.
Of course it’s a lie. And the more desperate they all become to enforce it the more they dig their own graves. Intelligence is a product of life, and in various forms appropriate to the species it exists in all living beings. Artificial intelligence is nothing of the sort. Wealth and power do not confer intelligence. In fact, those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.
In reality neoliberalism is just a euphemism for corruption, for rule by organised crime. The increasing desperation to force us to accept and submit to it just demonstrates its failure. It is an expression of capitalism itself, the rejection of ethics or any acceptance of responsibility to do anything but make money at others’ expense. It was always a lie.
And it’s a lie that goes back at least to Bernard Mandeville in the 18th c. It has been powered by technology since the arrival of gunpowder, and later steam, the internal combustion engine, and above all electricity and the digital world. But they no longer exclusively control the technology. It is now used against them and shock and awe are now demonstrably unable to beat the human spirit. In Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in Palestine.
Neoliberalism has indeed failed, and it means a complete re-write of philosophy, politics and economics.