Who’s responsible for a “remarkable variety of crises”, basically all the imaginable ones besides Covid19? Don’t hold your breath: neoliberals, of course, are.
In these days of quarantine, I tend to read The Guardian regularly. It has a remarkable opinion section. It has its own ideology (well, who doesn’t?), but it typically hosts arguments rather than rants.
I don’t see many “arguments” in this article by George Monbiot, a regular columnist for the paper. But it is anyway a remarkable piece. On the one hand, it brings together all the charges often levied against neoliberalism. On the other, it seems to me to be the perfect enunciation of “new” left-of-center ideas in the times of AOC.
For Monbiot, neoliberalism is responsible for an array of different problems such as “the financial meltdown of 2007‑8, the offshoring of wealth and power, of which the Panama Papers offer us merely a glimpse, the slow collapse of public health and education, resurgent child poverty, the epidemic of loneliness, the collapse of ecosystems, the rise of Donald Trump”. Such different crises appear to the unconsidering as indeed different, thus requiring diverse responses. This is a mistake as “they have all been either catalyzed or exacerbated by the same coherent philosophy; a philosophy that has – or had – a name. What greater power can there be than to operate namelessly?”
In part, Monbiot rejuvenates the idea that neoliberalism is a silent conspiracy, that has seized the commanding heights of political power in the eighties, with Reagan and Thatcher at the helm. As such, he admires neoliberalism because “it was a distinctive, innovative philosophy promoted by a coherent network of thinkers and activists with a clear plan of action. It was patient and persistent. The Road to Serfdom became the path to power.” This is the closest thing to a Leninist praise of neoliberalism I have ever read. Of course, it fits with a narrative that sees the development of think tanks and groups, quite different in spirit and size (ranging from the American Enterprise Institute to the Adam Smith Institute), as the result of a conscious effort aiming at a power grab.
I always find it very surprising that intellectuals, people who after all care about ideas and are passionate about their own, do not understand that others may be passionate about other ideas. This is the main reason why some groups have mushroomed at different times in history. More than being the offspring of a single root, they mimic each other, to a certain extent they learned from each other, but they were all born and (some) survived out of the intellectual passions of their founders: writers, scholars, intellectuals.
Of course, Monbiot has read some literature on so-called “neoliberalism” – and happily turns it into a comic book. Consider this: “The Road to Serfdom was widely read. It came to the attention of some very wealthy people, who saw in the philosophy an opportunity to free themselves from regulation and tax. When, in 1947, Hayek founded the first organization that would spread the doctrine of neoliberalism – the Mont Pelerin Society – it was supported financially by millionaires and their foundations.” I wonder what the readers will infer from this. What were exactly “millionaires and their foundations” supporting? The answer is: conferences that, no matter how fancy a restaurant you pick for the closing dinner, are a rather inexpensive matter. Also, one wonders how many neoliberal “millionaires” and “foundations” there actually are. Monbiot acknowledges that “despite its lavish funding, neoliberalism remained at the margins.” The statement is true, the adjective “lavish” is quite funny. Most think tanks, especially outside of the US, are modest operations, financially speaking. Certainly, classical liberals in Hayek’s time were not showered with gold coins. Quite a few of them had a precarious status within academia, as most supposedly “neoliberal” scholars today still are. Interestingly enough, Monbiot does not mention the most egregious case of “neoliberal” success: the German economic miracle, with Ludwig Erhard at the helm. Is that perhaps because it cannot be explained with money being “lavishly” spent?
In part, Monbiot tries to conflate “neoliberalism” with a worldview that encompasses basically everything. Neoliberalism “redefines citizens as consumers” and provides for a vague constellation of cultural points of reference that glorify the rich and the market economy. It is interesting that by describing neoliberalism as basically the source of mass sociopathy. Monbiot avoids defining it in any meaningful sense – as a good critic of “neoliberalism”, one of the most scapegoated and less defined terms in the social sciences. Neoliberalism becomes “an invisible doctrine” and it is indeed invisible first and foremost for its enemies, as they associated with the term whatever they dislike in the status quo. This includes quite a few social evils, that are certainly troublesome and would
But classical liberalism (or neoliberalism) is emphatically a set of ideas concerning the realm of _politics_ and not the meaning of life. Were he to attend one of these lavishly funded (I am sorry, I cannot stop laughing) conferences, Monbiot perhaps would marvel at cannabis activists breaking bread with conservative, bow-tied professors who are inseparable from their pipes. “Neoliberalism”, whatever it is, is a political philosophy: its focus is the limit of governmental activity. He does not say much about the meaning of life, actually, it consciously abstains from it.
In the conclusion of his piece, which announces a book being published by Verso (I won’t miss that), Monbiot talks to his fellow lefties:
Every invocation of Lord Keynes is an admission of failure. To propose Keynesian solutions to the crises of the 21st century is to ignore three obvious problems. It is hard to mobilise people around old ideas; the flaws exposed in the 70s have not gone away; and, most importantly, they have nothing to say about our gravest predicament: the environmental crisis. Keynesianism works by stimulating consumer demand to promote economic growth. Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.
What the history of both Keynesianism and neoliberalism show is that it’s not enough to oppose a broken system. A coherent alternative has to be proposed. For Labour, the Democrats and the wider left, the central task should be to develop an economic Apollo programme, a conscious attempt to design a new system, tailored to the demands of the 21st century.
I know that this is meant to be a plea to bring the left into the fold of economist Mariana Mazzucato – but let me just point out how ironic is that this strange blend of neo-communists is evoking a grandiose project propelled by the US government at the peak of the cold war!
READER COMMENTS
BS
Apr 24 2020 at 1:57pm
“Consumer demand and economic growth are the motors of environmental destruction.”
Surely evidence is accumulating that the curve is U-shaped: initially a developing society degrades its environment, and then with rising prosperity and advancing technology learns to mitigate the damage.
Chris
Apr 25 2020 at 3:50am
Unfortunately, while this is true – it’s more generally just pushed into developing countries so the local effects of pollution are felt more strongly there and the macro global effects remain constant.
Thomas Hutcheson
Apr 24 2020 at 2:16pm
My main point of discrepancy is in the use of “neoliberal” as a synonym for a species of non-state capacity Libertarianism that is hostile to redistribution, cost-benefit regulation and pigou taxation.
Plato’s Revenge
Apr 24 2020 at 6:47pm
unfortunately, the text is corrupted a bit after §8
Danno
Apr 25 2020 at 1:45am
Well in a CBC Radio interview We have to give up capitalism to save the planet, says George Monbiot He shows he doesn’t understand the role of prices because all growth is bad because we will run out of resources.
Phil H
Apr 25 2020 at 5:30am
Any ambitious political rant – which I agree Monbiot’s piece is – will leave significant theoretical gaps. But I think Mingardi really fails to grasp the nettle by picking at these gaps. He contests Monbiot’s view of the mechanics of think tank funding. But that’s just not the point. He contests that neo-liberalism is not tightly defined. But that’s just not the point.
The point is that Britain has, and seems to need, food banks; even while food is cheaper than ever, and a literal sofa in London costs more to rent than it would cost to feed a family of four. This seems to be a bizarre and inexplicable state of affairs, and unless you face up to it, you can’t begin to address the political argument coherently.
Matthias Görgens
Apr 26 2020 at 12:22am
London doesn’t allow enough construction.
About the food banks: the Brits could run a fairly high level of government spending without damaging the economy too much, if they were to improve their tax system. Land value taxes can yield enormous amounts and help lower taxes on labour (and capital).
Alas, the closest thing Britain has to land value taxes, council taxes, are misunderstood and deeply unpopular.
Misunderstood: they are officially paid by people renting a flat, but the economic burden falls squarely on the land lord. As a little thought experiment reveals: if you have two otherwise identical properties next to each other, but one comes with a 100 quid a week higher council tax, you can bet that the one with cheaper council tax will go for 100 quid more rent.
robc
Apr 27 2020 at 9:47am
Wouldn’t it then make sense to switch the council tax to being paid by the landowner, to avoid the confusion? It changes absolutely nothing, of course, but would seem to be good marketing.
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
Apr 25 2020 at 10:01am
Carissimo,
Brilliant as usual. I myself cannot stand to read The Guardian, and will rely on you to bring me the news. I should do better, and engage with my many friends on the left who believe in the terror of neo-liberalism. Before covid 19 we had an active seminar at my house every Sunday evening in Chicago with my leftie friends, so I was instructed weekly. But as to “people who after all care about ideas and are passionate about their own, do not understand that others may be passionate about other ideas,” the problem is that the left believes that people who do not agree with it are simply evil. Wayne Booth called it “motivism”: “Aha, Professor, I see that you are motivated by self-interest!” It’s all of a piece with Marxist materialism. On the right, and especially we liberals (not on the right, but float innocently above the usual spectrum), the assumption is that The Enemies are simply stupid or sadly misinformed, and need gentle education–not a re-education camp such as the left favors when it really gets in power.
Love,
Deirdre
Matthias Görgens
Apr 26 2020 at 12:40am
Bryan Caplan put the matter quite clearly in his Myth of the Rational Voter: one person’s vote has such small influence on themselves, that in practice political opinions are all about signalling. Voting is just another form of expressing and opinion.
People are usually reasonably clever when spending their own money, or deciding on a job for themselves.
When people vote with their feet instead of at the ballot box they also usually display a much better understanding of economics. (However when merely talking about moving, pure signalling applies.)
So we don’t need to assume that people who have weird political ideas are stupid. There’s just no mechanism to temper the signaling with reality.
Dennis Sheehan
Apr 28 2020 at 1:26pm
I will agree to read The Guardian if the lefties will agree to read Professor McCloskey’s latest book, Why Liberalism Works. It’s exactly the gentle re-education they need!
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