The Safe Depository

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.