I was directed to this post: "How to kill a zombie or the strange persistence of neoliberalism" by Alex Himelfarb from one of Greg Fingas's ("Accidental Deliberations" blog) helpful "Afternoon Links" posts.
Essentially, Himelfarb expands upon the proposition offered by Wolfgang Streeck that I talked about in my last post, to whit; that while neoliberalism is now widely recognized as having failed, we will continue to suffer as it lurches from one catastrophe to the next because there is no viable alternative at hand to replace it with.
Here's Himelfarb:
Neoliberalism is dead…again. It died the first time in the aftermath of the Great Depression and Second World War, in the heady days of the Marsh Papers, Beveridge Report and New Deal, when it seemed that profit and high wages could coexist, that endless growth would benefit just about everybody. It stayed dead for several decades, during which democracy flourished, inequality declined, but came back in full vigour after the economic upheavals of the 1980s.
Neoliberalism was again pronounced dead after the Dotcom bubble burst around 2002 and even deader after the financial meltdown of 2008. Books announcing its demise can be purchased cheap in bookstore bargain bins.
And now, post-pandemic, in the midst of “build back better” commitments here, in the U.S. and Europe, neoliberalism is yet again being pronounced dead. Just how many lives does it have or, as some have begun to wonder, is it more like a zombie wreaking havoc long after its demise because we haven’t figured out how to take it out of its misery, our misery.
...
For about four decades, we have lived in a world in which we are urged to focus on our own interests, our family and maybe our friends next door—a world in which there is no society, no obligations to the stranger or to some notion of the public good.
Ours is the age of austerity, where government was backing away, less present in our lives and, in any case, seen increasingly as foreign, even dangerous, rather than a means to express our collective will. Most of our political leaders have known nothing else.
Little wonder, then, that we have—most of us—turned our eyes to private troubles rather than public issues, that we have come to see social problems like poverty and inequality not as a failure of policy but as just the way the world works.
Many simply now accept as inevitable that our kids will have a tougher time than we did, that however much we may dislike what’s going on, there’s just not much we can do about it and we are pretty much on our own to manage whatever comes.
Thatcher’s “there is no alternative” could be the slogan for zombie neoliberalism.
Because I've been reading Streeck's book recently, it all sounded very familiar. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to see Himelfarb mention Streeck specifically:
But perhaps neoliberalism isn’t dead at all. Wolfgang Streeck describes what is said to be an Italian way of seeing politics, “dietrismo.”
“Dietro” means behind and this perspective asks what’s really going on behind the rhetoric, behind the curtain. It’s a useful frame for thinking about neoliberalism as a political project.
With a veritable plethora of perspicacity Himelfarb (and Streeck) point out how convenient this is for our oligarchic ruling class:
How do we reconcile the language of leaner, less intrusive government with the growth of the security state, packed prisons and cameras surveilling just about everything?
How do we reconcile the language of free markets with the readiness to bail out banks and other big corporations when they run into strong headwinds?
How do we reconcile the language of competition with the unprecedented degree of corporate concentration and the failure to deal with monopolies or near monopolies in critical sectors?
Few have been as explicit as libertarian tech billionaire, Peter Thiel, when he wrote “competition is for losers” and monopolies are how best to create and preserve value. But he captures well neoliberalism in practice.
Perhaps neoliberalism is not so much a zombie as a shape-shifter, defined only by its purpose: to preserve the power structure, to subordinate the state to that purpose, to keep democracy in check, with whatever means are at hand. So, for example, growing concern about global supply chains and free trade may not signal the death of neoliberalism but, rather, an adjustment necessary to protect growth and profits.
What about the various virulent forms of authoritarianism seemingly on the rise around the world? We are well to remember that neoliberal’s fiercest proponents made clear in both writings and actions that they’d prefer capitalism even under a dictator over any version of social democracy.
So, when negative, pessimist thwap criticizes the Left for its intellectual and tactical failures, people should stop and see that a few respectable, intelligent thinkers agree with him. It's not enough to describe the failures of our ruling system. It is imperative that we offer a coherent alternative. My argument is that we have to respect the fears of ordinary people for a leap into darkness and keep our proposals as close to what we have now. This also means employing the values and ideologies that ordinary, non-activist, only semi-informed people are comfortable with. Neoliberalism talks about individual freedom. It talks about efficiency. It points to the genuine dangers of totalitarianism. It also talks about harsh realities where not everything is fair and not everyone gets a pony. These are concepts that resonate with people.
But neoliberalism ignores the pervasiveness of corruption. Neoliberalism believes that wealthy, powerful people who work with little oversight will not corrupt the "free market" and bend it to their own self-interest. It stupidly maintains that the political process will not itself be corrupted by powerful oligarchs who will pursue profit maximization over everything and who will therefore try to legalize all such activity.
I have always argued that the principles of democracy and freedom and personal dignity should be our calling cards. My proposal for "Workers as Citizens" was my alternative. Universal workplace democracy combined with an activist state that is under the control of the electorate would have been the fastest way to transform from a wasteful, ecocidal capitalist system to a sustainable, humane, democratic one. But it's too late for any of that now.
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