Mourning "Neoliberalism"

Did you know that

The neoliberal order that triumphed on a global scale in the Nineties and 2000s aspired to the free movement of goods, capital, people, and information throughout the world.

Apreed? I'd say: sorta. Gary Gerstle, the Paul Mellon Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Cambridge and the author of The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, says that "international merchandise trade" peaked in 2008. Anyway, he says,

The Great Recession, and the widening disparity between rich and poor that followed, shattered the belief that a global world of free trade was bringing prosperity to all.

Yes yes. Quite so.

But now, what with COVID and Ukraine, it looks like things aren't going to get better.

Establishing outposts of free-market capitalism in countries such as Russia and China, it was hoped, would compel the regimes of those nations to liberalise: to institute the rule of law (if only to protect property and contracts), to embrace a free press and free elections, and maybe even to embrace democracy itself. Open markets, it was hoped, would produce open societies.

But now it looks like

Globalisation has strengthened authoritarianism and illiberalism, not weakened them. We may be moving into a world that is not open, flat or harmonious, but fractured and divided into rival geopolitical blocs: Russia at the centre of one, China, Europe, and America at the centre of the others. 

And so on. For there have been flaws in the regime of neoliberalism:

a toleration of too great a level of economic and social inequality; a reluctance to recognise and assist those who have suffered economically; and a flow of political power away from national legislatures and toward international organisations, private and public. 

All this educated-class conceit and piffle got me to thinking. What really went wrong with "neoliberalism?"

Honestly, I don't know. Partly because I'm not sure what neoliberalism is really supposed to be. Because "everyone" uses it as a punching bag. Who exactly are supposed to be the "neoliberals?" It ain't me; it ain't thee. Must be that fellow behind the tree.

Here's an idea. Neoliberalism has died of its internal contradictions. That's what we students -- but not followers -- of Marx would say.

On the one hand neoliberalism suffers from the conceit of its practitioners --whoever they are -- that they are noble disinterested lords of freedom and justice. On the contrary, I would say that, for the most part, the educated ruling class is merely just another ruling class that has developed a political formula that celebrates itself, bribes its supporters with other peoples' money, and then decides what is best for the rest of the world. Because it is special.

Bottom line is that it uses our money to pay off its supporters, whether they are global corporations, NGOs, lower class subordinates, or Lawfare activists.

So, while the neoliberal order has a magnificent opinion of its magnificence and the justice of its rule, the reality is that, as with all humans, it makes mistakes. It is tied by its need to service its supporters. It cannot admit when it makes a mistake.

And, of course, there is the little problem of my reductive Three Peoples theory that instructs us that different people want a different world. Creative people want a glorious stage on which to strut and fret and exhibit their creative magnificence. Ordinary Responsibles want a fairly predictable world in which to obey the law, go to work, and follow the rules. Subordinates want a world in which they are taken care of in return for their loyalty to their overlords.

Lord only knows what happens next with Russia and China. I'd say, at least, that we were doing better under Trump who played diplomatic games with them, alternating carrots and sticks with respect to international trade and property rights and tariffs and whatnot, and keeping them on the back foot while not actually going to war. 

Hey, it seems to me that the current regime has provoked a war over Ukraine by goading Russia with threats of getting Ukraine into NATO. And today Ukraine might as well be in NATO anyway. The NATO powers are acting as though their job is to defend Ukraine from Russia. As if it were actually in NATO like Poland or Hungary.

If the neoliberal era was supposed to be the 1990s and 2000s, then maybe we can learn from the previous decade, when the US was led by Ronald Reagan and the UK was led by Margaret Thatcher. 

Of course anyone who was anyone sneered at Reagan and Thatcher: the Amiable Dunce and Thatcher the Snatcher. What they did, if you have forgotten, was fix the national economies of the US and the UK after the economic stupidity of the 1960s and the 1970s that had led, by the end of the 1970s, to "stagflation."

That set the stage for the so-called neoliberals to do -- well what, exactly? Mostly strut and fret their hour upon the stage and making pompous announcements and wasting the dividend from the 1980s.

And golly geewillikins, after the glorious two decades of neoliberalism, whatever it was, now we are back to stagflation. How come, geniuses?

I have an idea. Why don't you neoliberal geniuses just Go Away for a while. Come back in ten years when we in the basket of deplorables have fixed the leaks and repaired the engine and got the ship of state back on track.

Then the peoples of the US and the UK and the EU will probably let you come back and mess everything up again. Just for fun.