“Reagan conservatism” is simply an initial stage of neoliberalism. It inevitably leads to moral collapse in its subsequent stages. I’m sure Reagan himself didn’t anticipate that but not thinking through the consequences of your actions is not conservative.
Since the times of Reagan and Thatcher, neoliberalism has been embraced passionately and excitedly by the Left. (See Leftism Reinvented by the leftist professor Stephanie Mudge). Neoliberalism, with its emphasis on constant change, is natural to the Left and unnatural for conservatism. The reason why we can’t go back to Reagan conservatism is that it’s impossible to replay the initial stage of a process that moved on and mutated. You can’t stuff a butterfly back into her cocoon. Competing with the Left on the field of neoliberalism is a losing game.
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I think the terms “Left” and “Right” are mostly meaningless nowadays. To me saying neoliberalism is left-wing makes no sense. Like you pointed out, it was birthed in part by conservatives, George W. Bush was a neoliberal, McCain, Romney, etc. all neoliberals and so are a large conservative Republicans today. So, all of the sudden neoliberalism is only left wing? Makes no sense.
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It’s the religion of the uniparty.
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The designations Left, Right, Republican, Democrat, don’t have any real significance. There are only strata in each party of neoliberal globalists grading into straight up commie. Every single vote needs to come down to the individual candidate (not the party on the ticket), and his or her track record on working for voters vs. working for globalists.
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And there are so few who are even willing to consider kind of maybe not rushing completely into the next stage as soon as possible.
This is inevitable because neoliberalism feels good to those who are successful in it. It’s addictive, it’s like a drug. It takes a really big person to say, yes, it’s been fantastic for me but look what it’s doing to the people who are less malleable by nature and more attached to others. This kind of introspection is rare. It’s been great for them, so they believe everybody should be able to enjoy it.
Neoliberalism has permeated every aspect of their selves. We are asking them to deny what makes them who they are. And almost everybody fails at that.
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Getting less popular every year, as it leaves more and more of us in the dust.
Not everybody has a name for it. But we know what it looks like.
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We need to make the word “stability” popular again. Permanence, tradition, lifelong attachments, roots. We need to stop experiencing the word “change” as always 100% positive.
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We’re getting there.
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The problem you will immediately face is that all of those are values held by Nationalists. Our elite are all Globalists. They will come down like a hammer on anything even remotely attempting to promote those things because it gets in the way of their one world government.
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That’s exactly the problem. But we are all playing into it in one way or another. People voted for Obama and they’ll vote for Harris. And then not see any connection between that and the result.
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“Reagan conservatism” is simply an initial stage of neoliberalism. It inevitably leads to moral collapse in its subsequent stages. […] not thinking through the consequences of your actions is not conservative.
Magisterial!
@ed To me saying neoliberalism is left-wing makes no sense.
Never heard of Left-wing capitalism? Not only the expression, but the reality itself is very much in vogue. Bezos, Soros, Zuckerberg, Bill Gates: all capitalists. Do you think they’d ever vote for Trump?
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Yes, but for every “Left” wing capitalist that you mention, I can also come up with a “Right” wing capitalist. Are you trying to say capitalism is a left-wing concept? If not, then what the heck is the distinction between those? They all worship money and power, politics and political parties are simply a venue towards that.
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Capitalism has mutated, like it normally does. But it can be stopped and reoriented by human effort. We are not powerless. The wild capitalism of the industrial era was reoriented towards humane working conditions and worker rights. And it was great.
I love capitalism. Capitalism rocks. But it went in a bad direction. Now is the time to stop, reassess and shift it to a more humane model. It was done before and it can be done again.
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Totally, but this has noting to do with “Left” vs “Right.”
Reagan’s capitalism also wasn’t humanitarian, it was entirely pro-business and globalization. It did not mutate into the capitalism we have now, it IS the capitalism that we have now. His trickled down economic theory is what we still have today and is the same crap that Trump/Must and others are still pushing to this day.
The capitalism we should strive for is the American capitalism of the 1950s and 60s, with strong unions, worker protections, and much higher taxes and control over large enterprises.
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I agree, that was the time when capitalism worked optimally. We can at least try to move in that direction.
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Yep, absolutely. But that will require focusing strongly on economic issues rather than social issues. In my view, if you solve the economic issues you solve a lot of the social issues.
For example, people in the 50s, 60s, etc. could easily afford a house on a single salary. This allowed people to establish nuclear family structures which is the bedrock of society. That is not the case anymore, and leading to a lot of unrest and young people being forced to experiment with other things to fill the void that not having your own house, wife/husband, and children leaves.
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See, I’m not a traditional Marxist. I don’t believe that economic factors are definitive. Many people around the world manage to get married and have veritable crowds of children with very little in terms of housing.
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Disney, for example, clearly prefers to have its movies flop at the box office than avoid filling them with neoliberal ideology of the supreme, highly mutable self.
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Mass migration is a great example of neoliberal policy. Reagan started it, now Biden and Harris are expanding what he started. If you are going to hear anti-migration sentiment anywhere today, it will be on the Right.
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“If you are going to hear anti-migration sentiment anywhere today, it will be on the Right.”
Not really. This is exactly what I mean that these “Left” or “Right” labels make absolutely no sense anymore. Unions are or were considered “socialist” and “left-wing” creations that needed to be stamped out at all costs. Unions definitely hate mass immigration, so do most of the working class that used to be the primary base of the Democratic party.
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I think this is why we suddenly have terms like “based” floating around. People needed another label for ordinary competence and sense.
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So is there an optimum point of neoliberalism given that communism is the opposite? (crudely). Just like there is supposedly an optimum point on the Laffer curve for taxation? [I couldn’t actually find a good consensus range for the Laffer curve.]
It feels a little horseshoe to attribute neoliberalism and communism to the left.
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I think the time between the excesses of the wild stage of capitalism were curbed and early 1990s when neoliberalism reached maturity was when capitalism worked optimally.
The Left abandoned the proletariat a long time ago. And it clearly has no interest in the demise of the state apparatus, which is the end goal of communism. The state apparatus abandons its interest in maintaining law and order or defending small-time private property and concentrates on ideological compliance in service of gigantic business interests. We can see this in the clear example of the actions of the British police in recent weeks.
We don’t have a name for this new system yet because it never existed before. People go back to the example of socialism because it’s similar in its imposition of groupthink but that’s a false analogy. Kamala Harris is a communist like I’m an astronaut. I have not found a better word for her than neoliberal.
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“neoliberal globalists”
Neoliberalism is ultimately about turning all relationships into (at least semi-)private economic transactions and destroying existing infrastructure in the name of ‘creative destruction’….
Different politicians attack different parts of society with it in different ways.
Reagan and Thatcher went after government provided social services, while uber and airbnb went after the traditional taxi and hotel industries and blackrock has gone after housing.
the whole thing of elective surgical interventions (and hormone therapy and puberty blockers) are as neoliberal as you can get.
If it’s about wrecking things and commercialising the remains and creating an oligarch class (whether or not you want to call it that) …. it’s neoliberalism.
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That can be a good beginning to a dystopian novel! Who needs zombies 🧟♀️ to scare… not Cliff Arroyo.
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Oh, zombies are definitely part of it!
That is part and parcel of the whole open-borders, no-misdemeanor-enforcement thing. Unlimited cheap mexican synthetic meth + enforcing on drugs and petty theft isn’t worth our police resources = zombie apocalypse.
If it hasn’t hit your town yet, be thankful!
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–I swear this is what comes of telling everybody: “You deserve to be happy, and happiness is in stuff you buy”.
When you can’t afford to buy clothes and shoes anymore, you can probably still put together $30 for some quick chemical braindamage.
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Consuming stuff and consuming people. Consumption has been extended to the humankind.
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It starts with the eminently attractive “you can be whatever you want”, and leads to the scary “you can abandon anything and anyone that constrains your whims including your biological sex.” And as Elon Musk insists, even your unmessed -with un-chipped brain.
None of this makes people happy because humans are simply not capable of sustaining this endless fussing with their physical, emotional and mental states.
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I also like: “You will own nothing and be happy”
The rich elite will own most of the housing, land, etc. while everybody else needs to make do with the scraps.
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Their utopia is permanent rental hell for everybody else.
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Lots of people emigrated from the UK to SA before Thatcher due to the difficulty of finding work. Union jobs were great if you could get one, but the system relied on exporting surplus workers to the colonies.
Post Thatcher, people have been moving to the UK for work, which would indicate that they are doing something right, but they do need to learn how to deal with (and select) immigrants better.
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