Jeremy Corbyn's call to Nationalize the Utlilities: Beginning of end for Neoliberalism?
In the UK, Jeremy Corbin, Labour's leader, called for nationalizing Utilities to standing ovation in the hall.
The politicians would not have done so a few short years ago, but, as the failure of Neoliberalism continues, many politicians in the UK are seeing that another route must be taken. One more akin to the social compact like that after the war and running until the advent of Thatcherism.
Will our politicians eyes also be open enough to see how bad neoliberalism has been for the country and willingly try a new route or go back to what worked before with our own Social compact in the New Deal.
Neoliberalisms love of small government and privatization has been a 40 year failure. One that both parties embraced. And as a result, it has caused pain for the working and middle class both sides of the Atlantic.
I personally will dance on the grave of Neoliberalism when and if it comes to America.
From the article:
'But this was not just one proposal: it was part of a much wider narrative, set in train by the Labour manifesto in June and cemented by Corbyn at conference. It is the narrative of social democracy, of economic demand management, of public spending and public goods, of nationalised projects in the name of the society at large, of education from cradle to grave.....
The moves in the first half of the 20th century across the West toward large social spending, encapsulated in early welfare states of Europe and in the New Deal in the US, did not spring from nowhere. They came from the spread of ideas by trade unions and labour movements and thinkers over many years. These eventually led to a groundswell of demand to do things differently.
Likewise, the move throughout the 1970s towards Thatcherism and Reaganism did not spring from two elections at the end of the decade. They came from a long germination of ideas that ran counter to the previous social democratic consensus.
In both cases, politicians emerged to represent the emergence of these new ideas and lead the charge to implement them as policy. But without the narrative in the first place, there is no charge to lead, and thus no sweeping change.
So it is with Corbyn’s Labour party in 2017. They have seized the moment, identified the failed years of austerity and recognised the disaffection people feel with politics when there is little difference between the parties that represent us. It has offered a vision of society that feels – and is – very different to the dominant visions of recent decades. It’s the product of Corbyn’s lifelong commitment to the vision he outlines, for sure, but also a skillful bit of manoeuvring. He has identified social trends and corralled them.'
Read the article at Infomed Comment:
https://www.juancole.com/2017/09/nationalize-utilities-neoliberalism.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thatcher started it, and Major continued it.
All terms are "made up"; that's the nature of language. It does, however, mean something - and the privatisation of utilities is a significant part of it.
These include economic liberalization policies such as privatization, austerity, deregulation, free trade,[3] and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society.[11] These market-based ideas and the policies they inspired constitute a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus which lasted from 1945 to 1980.[12][13]
The term has been used in English since the start of the 20th century with different meanings,[14] but became more prevalent in its current meaning in the 1970s and 1980s by scholars in a wide variety of social sciences,[15][16] as well as being used by critics.[17][18] Modern advocates of free market policies avoid the term "neoliberal"[19] and some scholars have described the term as meaning different things to different people,[20][21] as neoliberalism "mutated" into geopolitically distinct hybrids as it travelled around the world.[4] As such, neoliberalism shares many attributes with other contested concepts, including democracy.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
