‘Free market,’ market-oriented reform capitalism; think Reagan, Bill Clinton, any moderate or conservative before the trump era.
It has been the sole economic theory in power in the US since the 1970s, with more or less a sliding scale between more neoliberal (republicans before 2016) and less neoliberal/more classical liberal (Biden’s and Harris’s campaign messaging, not Biden’s actual actions).
The reason it sounds confusing, especially in memes, is because you think dems and republicans have different economic theories behind their actions, when in actual legislative reality they’re just more or less neoliberal, and the minute differences get overblown in campaign rhetoric.
The reason it sounds confusing, especially in memes, is because you think dems and republicans have different economic theories behind their actions, when in actual legislative reality they’re just more or less neoliberal, and the minute differences get overblown in campaign rhetoric.
The funny thing is that it’s Trump, of all people, who represents the first genuine shift away from neoliberalism for the US in 50+ years. That fucker is downright mercantilist.
Too bad it’s a shift away from neoliberalism in the opposite of the direction the leftists wanted to go.
Also a fake populist. He says things that seem like he will work to benefit the working class, but completely lies to them and screws them over at every opportunity.
The imminent $6T tax cut for the rich and corporations will be Trump’s magnum opus.
It has been the sole economic theory in power in the US since the 1970s
I’m not American so I may be missing something, but I find it hard to say that, for example, Carter and Reagan shared the same economic policy, or Obama and Trump. Only by flattening away any nuance whatsoever would those be called identical.
First of all, Trump really is very different. All these tariffs are decidedly not neoliberal.
Trump aside, though, Carter, Reagan and Obama really did share broadly similar policy with regards to free trade treaties and whatnot. The Democrats were better on support for unions, but not so much better that they weren’t willing to throw them under the bus of cheap foreign labor.
Their idea of the rightful role of the state in everyday affairs was rather different though, wasn’t it? If support of free trade were all that’s needed to be a neoliberal, anarchists would be neoliberals too.
In contrast, neoliberalism is sometimes constructed as an ideological antagonist of both critical theorists and progressive liberal identities. Marxist scholars conceptualize neoliberalism as a particular historical regime of capitalism, more corrosive and iniquitous than the “embedded liberalism” of the post-war era in Europe and the United States. Similarly, socially progressive liberals criticize neoliberalism for subordinating public life to market forces and for displacing the welfare state commitments of the Keynesian era. Some on the political left collapse the distinction between liberalism and neoliberalism, seeing them as simply two ways of ideologically justifying capitalist rule. Conversely, some of those most likely to be identified as neoliberals are motivated by a deep hostility to political liberals, particularly in right-wing political discourses where liberal operates as code for left-liberal, even socialist, values that are opposed to a free market identity.
An alternative to both neoclassical and Keynesian explanations and solutions for capitalist crises emanates from the Marxian tradition. Its explanation stresses neither what Keynesians focus on (destabilizing maneuvers by self-seeking individual consumers, producers, merchants, and banks facing an inherently uncertain economy and/or possessing asymmetrical information in regard to markets) nor what neoclassicists pinpoint (market-destabilizing concentrations of private power by market participants and/or public power by the state). Rather, Marxian theory pursues the connections between capitalism’s crises and its distinctive class structure (its particular juxtaposition of capitalists appropriating and distributing the surpluses workers produce). We propose to show these connections in the rest of this paper. On that basis, Marxian theory reaches very different conclusions from those of the neoclassical and Keynesian economists. Briefly, durable solutions to capitalist crises require, in the Marxian view, transition to a different class structure. That is because capitalism’s class structure has so systematically and repeatedly contributed to crises in both the regulated and deregulated forms of capitalism. That is why Marxian theory does not share the fundamental conservatism of both neoclassical and Keynesian economics vis-à-vis capitalism.
Can someone who identifies as a leftist explain to me what “neoliberal” means? I have no fucking clue at this point.
‘Free market,’ market-oriented reform capitalism; think Reagan, Bill Clinton, any moderate or conservative before the trump era.
It has been the sole economic theory in power in the US since the 1970s, with more or less a sliding scale between more neoliberal (republicans before 2016) and less neoliberal/more classical liberal (Biden’s and Harris’s campaign messaging, not Biden’s actual actions).
The reason it sounds confusing, especially in memes, is because you think dems and republicans have different economic theories behind their actions, when in actual legislative reality they’re just more or less neoliberal, and the minute differences get overblown in campaign rhetoric.
The funny thing is that it’s Trump, of all people, who represents the first genuine shift away from neoliberalism for the US in 50+ years. That fucker is downright mercantilist.
Too bad it’s a shift away from neoliberalism in the opposite of the direction the leftists wanted to go.
Also a fake populist. He says things that seem like he will work to benefit the working class, but completely lies to them and screws them over at every opportunity.
The imminent $6T tax cut for the rich and corporations will be Trump’s magnum opus.
AKA “demagogue.” That’s the essential difference between Trump and a populist like Bernie Sanders: Trump is a demagogue; Sanders isn’t.
I’m not American so I may be missing something, but I find it hard to say that, for example, Carter and Reagan shared the same economic policy, or Obama and Trump. Only by flattening away any nuance whatsoever would those be called identical.
First of all, Trump really is very different. All these tariffs are decidedly not neoliberal.
Trump aside, though, Carter, Reagan and Obama really did share broadly similar policy with regards to free trade treaties and whatnot. The Democrats were better on support for unions, but not so much better that they weren’t willing to throw them under the bus of cheap foreign labor.
Their idea of the rightful role of the state in everyday affairs was rather different though, wasn’t it? If support of free trade were all that’s needed to be a neoliberal, anarchists would be neoliberals too.
The post actually explains it really well
On Liberalism:
Additional:
On Leftist ideologies:
Additional:
Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions
Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism