Neo-Liberalism: Has it fallen off the DU radar?

[cprise]

Some of you may be aware there are two-prongs to today's Right-wing economic movement:

Neo-conservatives (or neocons) are constantly decried here on DU until our ears bleed. They are apt to use military might to grab resources and to propel the economy. Reagan and Bush II are neocons.

Neo-liberals were discussed from time on the DU past. They stress deregulation of business, or of just about everything. Classic laisse faire, they naively believe that highly concentrated wealth will not try to take control of government/military.

They both have strong ties to Objectivist philisophy: Money is capable of all things, even miracles, and freedom is most important for those who have the most to spend. Deregulation, privatization, private monopolies and profiteering through IMF/World Bank manipulations are their hallmarks. For both, all problems are addressed through private ownership and free markets.

[dumpster_baby]

1. Yup, inconvenient...Clinton == Classic Neoliberal

Yeah, I think most Democratic party loyalists would rather not confront the fact that CLinton toed the neoliberal line as president.

[JNelson6563]

2. "Off the radar"???

What are you talking about? I see shades of it in every direction. Some very subtle, some not so subtle.

Julie

[cprise]

4. To clairify a bit

Are we really identifying them properly in our conversations? You and I can recognize neolib influences in many discussions, but DU is also a place where people learn. So is it not important to call Clinton a neolib, as regularly as we call the others neocons?

Do many of us even care? Do we think about the ways that a neolib like Clinton creates conditions that pratically guarantees a power-grab by neocons? Aren't they functioning together on some instinctual or conscious level... Neolibs take over and give the neocons a rest when the latter have discredited themselves?

And part of it is our habit of labeling. What happens lately is someone usually just says 'DLC something'. Isn't that weird? Conservatives go around identifying as 'conservatives' and setup web forums called "Free Republic" and we respond in kind by calling them neocons and freepers. None of those monikers from the Right are tied to a party brand-name. OTOH, we use progressive and liberal as secondary terms, and name the forum and our affiliations relative to The Party. Those bad Democrats are "DLC" nasties. "Democratic Underground" refers to democracy only indirectly, by way of The Party. The Right has the courage of their convictions and use hard-to-pin-down ideas, while we cling to the smelly party apparatus with our worth to the community seen as volatile as the fortunes of the party itself. Ugh.

I really think the issue is just getting drowned-out, and our inept use of language is making it worse.

[ContinentalOp]

3. I believe they are the same thing.

This is a difficult problem to discuss in the US because the kind of free market ideology espoused by the republicans or conservatives or "neocons" in this country is called "neo-liberalism" in the rest of the world. It's really just a matter of semantics. The "liberal" tag fits in a literal sense if you define laissez-faire or liberatarian economic ideas as more "open" or "free." But the term neo-liberal isn't really used here because we know the people who support neo-liberal ideologies as conservatives.

[cprise]

5. The term is class-conscious

'Neo-liberal' needs to be used in a context that questions just WHO is being liberated? A tiny number of people with most of the capital.

The biggest failing of the American Left during debates is the way they turned mush-mouthed when objectivist/coporatist rhetoric about 'freedom' and 'choice' thrown their way. Um, freedom isn't the best way to decribe corporate recklessness; pirates were 'free' by that definition. But that simple retort, that bit of attention to language was beyond the Adina Monsoon set.

"we know the people who support neo-liberal ideologies as conservatives."

I can't really agree. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair aren't conservatives. Or you could say 'economic conservatives' which is incomplete and awkward.

[ContinentalOp]

16. Yes, I agree.

"'Neo-liberal' needs to be used in a context that questions just WHO is being liberated? A tiny number of people with most of the capital."

Abosultely. And I agree that Democrats don't neccessarily counter the linguistic framing of "free markets" or "consumer choice" (i.e. privatization) in a forceful enough way. Is it possible that the neo-liberal label is used more in Europe because the Left there has a strong enough identity to call themselves Leftists or Socialists without worrying about the word "Liberal" being co-opted by a decidedly un-liberating movement? I really don't know. My understanding of the term could be way off base here.

"I can't really agree. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair aren't conservatives. Or you could say 'economic conservatives' which is incomplete and awkward."

Well, I suppose I haven't ever considered the idea that Clinton could be labeled as a neoliberal. But I would definitely consider him economically conservative. I had assumed that the specifically economic dimension was implied since I think of neoliberalism exclusively in terms of global trade policies.

Anyway, wouldn't it better for American liberals not to use the term neoliberal for the very reasons that you point out? Wouldn't it be more productive to specify that yes, Clinton is economically conservative to send the message that "neoliberal" economic policies in no way represent American liberalism?

[AP]

9. I believe Lisa Dugan says they're the same thing too.

In her book, The Twilight of Equality, she says they're the same thing. Whether you use force or the markets, their goal is the same thing: shift all the economic, political and cultural power to a few people at the very top. The US engages in interenational commerce in an attempt to drive down the costs of inputs (labor and raw materials) but doesn't pass the savings on to consumers & they don't pass any of their huge profits on to their employees by way of higher wages.

That's what neoliberalism is all about, weither it's in Iraq or in Haiti. Same coin. Same side of the coin...regardless of whether there are US tanks in the streets or not.

http://www.beacon.org/catalogs/f03/duggan.html

[cprise]

13. It has an interesting side-effect

(besides consumer advocates going around saying there's no difference in the effect they have on the world)

...the nation being used as the 'home' market for this internation scam can become completely dependant on foreign countries for the balance of its material needs. Since we started runnig a trade deficit in farm products, can you think of anything the world really needs from us?

That's when the empire's capitol becomes open to conquest: When the outsiders have nothing material to lose by gutting us.

Geez, I feel like I'm summarizing an Isaac Asimov novel now.

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. Is there really a trade deficit in farm products?

Accoring to this, there was still a 12 billion dollar agricultural trade surplus for the US in 2002; and according to this, it was 300 million dollars for May 2004. Not as much as it used to be, but still a surplus.

[checks-n-balances]

6. I understand the term "neocon" - used to be "liberal" and they bring

a "new" dimension to "conservatives."

But neoliberal?? They used to be conservatives, but have become liberals?

Or are they just liberals who made some conservative moves before the rethugs could, because without doing so they had no chance of being elected in the first place? At the time that seemed like a pretty clever thing to do, but now we're living with the consequences of that.

Seems like once the rethugs took over again, they were determined with a "Think YOU're conservative? By God, we'll show you conservative!! Except they (the neocons) took it way beyond conservative into radical rightwing insanity.

[AP]

10. The "liberal" in neoliberilsm, IIUC, means that US corporations don't want

to be subject to laws in the foreign markets they're dominating which force them to share the wealth they accumulate with their labor or with the owners of the raw materials they're taking. They want to be liberated from those constraints.

I could be wrong, but that's my understanding.

It doesn't mean they're left wing, or interested in social progress. Not by a mile.

[cprise]

12. That's one aspect

Another is that they're so dishonest they also implement an international system of law (with actual courts) designed to let the money-makers attack everyone else. It means the 'freedom' of the ultra-rich to remove any obstacles to profits.

They sue poor countries to release control of their resources to them, and also strike down environmental and labor laws. The poor countries are attacked first because they are the ones "in most need of 'modernizing' their economies."

[cprise]

11. The international definitions are accurate

Neo-liberals confuse individual freedoms with freedom for the powerful. They are not alarmed by public enterprises, and will talk about creating them to placate voters. But they like to mess around with deregulation and privatization when it appears profitable to them; they'll toy around with the henhouse keys until they've slipped and given the neocons all the power.

You also touched on a phenomena, a side-effect of Clinton's famous 3rd Way "triangulation". In our case, the Democrats define themselves relative to the Republican Right and the Cato Institute. It's nice the Dems want to be less severe than these groups, but the arrangement means that the Right defines the economic characteristics of BOTH parties.

Of course, as it did in ages past, this creates a sort of turf war over a single ideological pole. Derision turns to panic and the militaristic/belligerant side is induced to bitch-slap the now very close-range (but hapless) competition.

[dumpster_baby]

17. huh?

?

[neverborn]

7. I just may be a neo-liberal.

[cprise]

20. Do you support NAFTA?

[neverborn]

23. w/ certain changes - sure-- like the environmental standards

[Jack Rabbit]

8. Neoliberalism is the colonialism department of neoconservatism

-- Granny D

Keep that in mind. Everytime one of us denounces the war in Iraq as colonial piracy engineered by the neoconservatives, we are talking about neoliberalism.

[K-W]

14. This is just a labels issue.

The neo-conservative movement has just risen up, equalled and then swollowed neo-libralism. The conservative movement has continued on in that area, it has just added the conservative agenda for foriegn and domestic policy that we have come to know and love.

Before it was one of the biggest evils, now it is part of a much greater evil.

[Swamp Rat]

15. "Resistance is futile"

From what I've read in the past and heard from poly-sci and anthropology professors, Reagan was considered a neo-liberal, not neo-conservative. His economic policies laid the foundation for the neo-liberal movement. I can't remember, but I think I even heard Reagan refer to himself as a neo-liberal.

http://www.bidstrup.com/economics.htm
http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/n/neoliberalism.htm
http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/chomskysept97.htm

[sendero]

19. Makes sense to me..

.... and that is why I oppose the philosophy as one that is already approaching an impassable dead end.

In every adversarial relationship between forces, either side "winning" will be a disaster. The truth/reality is always somewhere in the middle. We've already given corporations more power than they can responsibly handle. Time for the pendulum to swing back, and it will.

[Selwynn]

21. Can someone explain how it has become irrelevant??

[cprise]

22. First, look at the vote tally

There are quite a few DUers who consider themselves Clintonites and/or aligned with the interests of corporate wealth.

Second, the DLC are portraying themselves as very close to Kerry while they dance on the grave of Dean's campaign (Al From et al still bring it up).

The issue is not so much irrelevant as submerged. We've stopped discussing it explicitly and are addressing its symptoms instead. And it was never frequently discussed to begin with.

[Selwynn]

24. Look at what vote tally?

What exactly is "quite a few?"

[muriel_volestrangler]

25. Do you mean 'inconvenient'?

Because that's the word used in the original poll.

[Selwynn]

26. Yes, thank you

[RichardRay]

27. I thought I was a neo-liberal, but not if that's the definition

I no longer espouse the dictatorship of the proletariat and the gradual withering away. I do still support and work for goals of equity and fairness. I also recognize that some principles of capitalist economics are pretty hard to escape without the willingness to go back to espousing revolutionary change - squawking about the way markets work hasn't, won't and can't make them work differently, either use them effectively or get rid of them. i.e. - why does capital get to define an acceptable rate of return on investment and make that a dominant consideration in economic planning? One reason and one reason only - because labor doesn't get its shit together to make compensation to workers as important as compensation to capital.

I was willing to take the name 'neo-liberal' because I was willing to work within capitalist economics in order to achieve traditionally 'liberal' ends. OTOH, that doesn't seem to be the choice I'm offered in this poll, so maybe I didn't actually understand the term.

Richard Ray - Jackson Hole, WY