It’s interesting that people who detest Reagan and Thatcher feel nothing nearing that degree of opprobrium towards Clinton and Blair who not only continued Reagan’s and Thatcher’s deregulation but magnified it to an extraordinary degree.
Weirdly, Carter who started it and Clinton who took it to extraordinary heights are never really blamed for neoliberalization like Reagan who was not the first nor the last to do it. Reagan was the most open and honest about it while Carter and Clinton hid behind slick speeches about how much they cared. To me, that would be a reason to despise the Cs and respect the R but, apparently, people prefer to be lied to.
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Maybe because neoliberalism has brought tremendous prosperity to the world beyond what most people understand. China, for instance, got 770 million humans out of poverty thanks to it. That’s feat unheard of in human history.
It has probably ran its course and a better alternative should be found, but I don’t see why act like it has been this horrible thing for the world as a whole.
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The pre-1970 capitalism did the same thing without such high costs. The Marshall plan is a great example. Or the New Deal.
I’m completely pro-capitalism. It’s this brand of capitalism that I don’t like.
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Pre-1970 capitalism was addressing a wholly different world and needs. The way I see it, neoliberalism was addressing an increasingly globalized world, where pre-1970 capitalism did not scale up to address the needs of the new era. This necessitated better integration, cooperation, and getting along.
The way I see it, it’s a true shame that did not work out. It was a nice narrative for the world; now I ask, what’s the new narrative? what story do we tell ourselves to keep us going?
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That’s a good point, and Gerstle would agree. He thinks that the neoliberal era is over and, as you say, we need a new story. I haven’t gotten to the end of the book yet, so I don’t know why he thinks it’s over. I’m not seeing any proof but I need to keep reading.
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“He thinks that the neoliberal era is over”
I kind of do too… a lot of what’s going on now is not part of the neoliberal agenda (which was more equal opportunity in terms of destruction). I think we’re in the beginning of a new paradigm, basically neo-feudalism (I don’t have a catchier name for it but that seems accurate enough).
The problem is we don’t have the vocabulary to talk about it yet but pretty much everything out there now (MAGA, ‘multipolarity’, ‘wokeism’ ‘transhumanism’) is about hierarchies based on inherent value, like the new emerging class/caste system you wrote about earlier.
The remnants of the neoliberal order are being used to implement and cement the new system in place and will be discarded as soon as they’re no longer necessary….
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The New Deal was a response to the Wall Street crash of ’29 and the most important reforms remain, particularly federal insurance of bank deposits and willingness to intervene in a financial crisis. This happened in 2008 and again with the covid stimulus. These are only temporary responses to a crisis. It is not possible for people to remain on the government payroll indefinitely.
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There’s a certain kind of leftist who constantly complains about Bill Clinton. However, I haven’t heard much from this crowd since Trump got elected.
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“haven’t heard much from this crowd since Trump”
Trump is what leftists have instead of god…. he gives their lives meaning.
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Trump is their alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the meaning of all living things.
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