Freddie takes a crack at defining neoliberalism (a rather easy endeavor, he avers):
“Neoliberalism is no more vague, complicated, or ill-defined than any other conventional political ideologies, which are by nature shaggy beasts… To put it simply, neoliberalism is the pursuit of traditionally liberal ends through traditionally conservative means, with the important corollary that when faced with a conflict between those liberal ends and those conservative means, neoliberals will always choose the means. In practice, this means that neoliberals prefer redistributive economic justice, but only insofar as it is achieved through ‘market’ mechanisms.”
I’m with political theorist Wendy Brown when she writes in “Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy” that “ours is a time of often bewildering political nomenclature.”
Is it simple enough to say that guys like Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein are just avatars of the left variant of neoliberalism, distinguished by their affinity for redistribution but committed to the “the most successful ideology in world history” all the same? In the same essay, Brown argues: “Neoliberal rationality, while foregrounding the market, is not only or even primarily focused on the economy; it involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social actions, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player.” Does this apply to the pity-charity liberals out there? Or is their neoliberalism less thoroughgoing, a repudiation of New Deal liberalism more than a totalizing ideology?
I honestly don’t know.
But this, from Klein himself, is telling:
“What [Romney] could have learned from that experience [at Bain] is that, just as creative destruction is important for moving an economy forward, a safety net is important for catching those who are left behind… There’s no inherent contradiction between appreciating change and being sensitive to its costs. In Northern Europe, countries like Switzerland, Denmark and the Netherlands have married dynamic economies to expansive social safety nets, and seen remarkable, durable growth as a result. The United States would do well to follow their example on both sides: We could be more open to disruptive change in the economy, and better at helping those who are left behind rebuild their careers.”
This is the policy agenda of left-neoliberalism, as expounded by one if its most prominent exponents. Accept the erosion of agency and democratic sovereignty, submit to market forces, then smooth out the rough patches “for those left behind.”
Freddie is right to questioning the feasibility of this agenda (it’s easier politically to deregulate than to meaningfully redistribute). But to me the most striking thing about left-neoliberalism—and the primary reason I think leftists aren’t just being schismatic or sanctimonious when they call its proponents out—is its lack of concern with power. Neoliberal wonks would do well to put down the latest Brookings white paper and read some Alinsky. Politics is a conflict over ideas and interests, but the actual outcomes of these battles is largely contingent upon underlying power differentials. Political and societal actors don’t operate on an even playing field or in a vacuum, and politics isn’t a subdued back and forth between people possessing equal power. The best ideas often don’t win out, and the poor almost always get the shaft.
Several months back I was sitting in a first-time offenders class, my punishment for Occupy-related crimes against humanity. Our instructor expected us to be contrite and, preferably, to reevaluate our lives, identifying and then rooting our destructive tendencies. The ensuing quasi-therapy session was predictably reductionist (structural constraints and the social contexts in which people operate, of course, went undiscussed). No excuse was a good excuse. To contextualize would have been to shift blame away from you, the malevolent perpetrator.
One comment that afternoon, though, was especially jarring: Our instructor claimed bosses were justified in intentionally scheduling workers at times that conflict with workers’ other jobs. This serves the purpose of weeding out the indolent and unreliable, she said. My protestations were quickly swept aside—in this weak economy, workers just have to suck it up. Our instructor was right in one respect. Mass unemployment has further disempowered a labor force long subjected to precarity. Absent full employment, worker power in capitalist economies is scarce. Browbeat and abuse your employees— if they quit they’ll have to compete with the rest of the unemployed, Marx’s industrial reserve army. (Aside from full employment, unionization also serves as a countervailing force that can combat worker docility.) The right response to this repugnant reality would have been to decry an economic system that has failed the many. Instead, our instructor valorized dehumanizing work and admonished the recalcitrant to accept subservience.
I recount this story not to dump on my instructor, a parole officer just trying to make some extra money on the side, but to illustrate how deeply market rationality has seeped into the populace. I think most left-neoliberals in America are more sympathetic to the plight of workers than my instructor. But the left has to be centrally concerned with empowering the marginalized. In relegating questions of worker power to the periphery, left-neoliberals are already arguing on the right’s terms. If we want to directly bolster the power of labor vis-a-vis capital, capital will stand to lose power. That’s not just a petty policy dispute, it’s an attack on the 1 percent.
If that sounds too class-warfare-y for left-neoliberals and the circles in which they operate, so be it. That’s power, and that’s politics.
Tbh, I don’t see how the hell what the instructor said is remotely “market rational”. If an employee has the skills and stamina to simultaneously work two jobs and be productive in them both, wouldn’t you rather than one of those jobs be for your company? Better than nothing, ain’t it?
On a larger note, while I understand the angle old-school liberals are coming from at least versus pity-charity types, I can’t help but wonder why in the face of blatantly obvious collusion between state and concentrated wealth there’s still such an emphasis on political solutions. Even if one is not an anarchist, how Not Listening To You can political power get before direct action is seen less as a supplement and more as a full alternative?
“Instead, our instructor valorized dehumanizing work”
See, I think Mr. de Boer did a bit of the same in his piece. (when he wasn’t conflating ‘neo-liberals’, ‘liberals’, ‘libertarians’, ‘conservatives’, and ‘people I don’t like’ as the comments pointed out).
Take his model example:
Now besides the fact that this illustrates best that the most small c conservative people in the political realm are the members of the labor left and its environs, this type of thing was (before my time but still) frequently used as an example of the drudgery of this existence at the time this existence was commonplace (which I think is overstated anyway, the commonplace of this existence).
However, having said all that, I think there is a possible common ground to be found between the de Boer style left, ‘neo-liberals’ and liberalitarians toward a goal of *humanizing* dehumanizing work. On the other hand, there’s still going to be a sharp disagreement on the means to do that. (and one method, is paradoxically, bringing in robots for the most irredeemably dehumanizing tasks*)
*for instance, going through landfills for resource recovery and recycling, vice third world kids.
Our instructor claimed bosses were justified in intentionally scheduling workers at times that conflict with workers’ other jobs.
my instructor, a parole officer just trying to make some extra money on the side
How is a market supposed to work when one side refuses to pursue its own interests?
1. De Boer’s polemical definition of “Neoliberalism” is off. Neoliberalism is a very specific term. It’s like the abuse of the term “socialist” by the right. Using it as a pejorative to mean “people whose policy prescriptions we don’t like on our ostensible side” is ultimately facile and stupid.
Now that being said…
To some extent I agree that there’s a lack of argumentation on the concept of power in policy discussion circles. However, I think critics of the Klein/Yglesias wing of policy discussions mischaracterize the alternative structures of power when they try to argue the fundamental blindness to power differentials.
First: Market liberalization is here to stay. If the last round of crises couldn’t recreate beggar thy neighbor mercantilist policies, I find it very hard to believe that the trend of increased capital and goods mobility will be reversed any time soon.
There’s a reason why capital was forced to deal with closed shop unions in the 20th century. Most of it had to do with trade restrictions and capital flow restrictions. The Cold War helped to solidify those restrictions and kept out huge amounts labor from the global market and made the flow of goods and services less possible. And let’s not for a moment valorize this past. High unionization rates certainly didn’t help employees during the Great Depression, and weren’t saving British factory jobs in the 70s. Stagflation was a serious, enormous structural problem in the US through the 70s. The average cost of many many goods was substantially higher then than it is now. Comparatively speaking, even the worst off today are still in a better position from a consumer point of view, in terms of everything from clothing to electronics to foodstuffs, than they were 60 years ago.
Unless Freddie and co. are proposing that we all go back to models of autarky, Ricardo and co. have won that argument. Comparative advantage is here to stay, and it’s not going to go away just because we want to yell and scream for more restrictions on capital. Moreover, autarky is AWFUL. How well is Juche serving North Korea these days?
Second: Market mechanisms are not by themselves a closed system. Market and utility can change depending on how much effort we’re willing to put into changing consumer preferences.
The power of third party actors to change behaviors of powerful states and private actors is often underrated. Everything from certification programs to naming and shaming are great ways to force changes to behavior.
For example, it wasn’t government action that forced Apple into action over the Foxconn allegations. It was consumer outrage and efforts of third party groups to expose that behavior to the public.
Modern mass communications technologies have given these parties power if not equal, then at least rivaling those of the actors setting the epistemic debate. The nature of power is changing, and clinging to localized modes of action won’t work in the future. A lot of that was tried once, and it didn’t work. Sometimes it’s necessary to move past that and work with the tools available in the here and now.
I really like this comment, though I’m not quite ready to throw out localized action as an agent of change (though I don’t think as much needs changing as you and esp de Boer thinks needs changing)
+1, Nob.
There’s a reason why capital was forced to deal with closed shop unions in the 20th century. Most of it had to do with trade restrictions and capital flow restrictions. The Cold War helped to solidify those restrictions and kept out huge amounts labor from the global market and made the flow of goods and services less possible. And let’s not for a moment valorize this past.
Right. Unions were basically extracting rents on their geographical proximity to holders of capital and wealthy consumers.
Here’s what I said to Matt Bruenig when he made a post about left-neoliberalism”
“When I hear ‘neoliberal’ I think deregulation, privatization, cutting taxes, cutting social programs, washington consensus, disaster captialism, Hayek and Pinochet etc.
Left neoliberalism seems to muddy the waters. Neoliberalism has only been around 30 years or so, and there were leftist capitalists long before that.”
The right response to this repugnant reality would have been to decry an economic system that has failed the many.
This comment is grossly ahistorical. Capitalism has succeeded in raising the standard of living of the many to levels that were unimaginable in the 18th century. That it hasn’t met the unreasonable standard of monotonically increasing living standards is hardly an indictment.
And one of the reasons it has succeeded is the idea that you don’t own your job—that you can take or leave what’s offered, and even make counteroffers, but you can’t just dictate a job description and force someone to pay you for it. This is what’s enabled the adoption of new technologies over the objections of luddites and the dissolution of obsolete firms and industries. Owners need to have the freedom to run their businesses as they see fit, even if they don’t always do it right, because no central authority can reliably distinguish good and bad business plans.
Our instructor claimed bosses were justified in intentionally scheduling workers at times that conflict with workers’ other jobs. This serves the purpose of weeding out the indolent and unreliable, she said.
I kind of suspect that you’re telling this story wrong, because that doesn’t make much sense to me.
I every time spent my half an hour to read this blog’s articles or reviews every day along with a mug of coffee.