Good Evening Friends,



We were defining the term neoliberalism, as the geographer and author, David Harvey gives us to understand it in his book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Now, I admit that I haven't read it yet, I've only viewed the YouTube video of the same name, in which Dr. Harvey discusses the thesis of his book. However, if he is half as good a writer as he is a lecturer, then the book itself is certain to be enlightening as well as accessible.



Neoliberalism. The 'neo' comes from their [the ideology's proponents] adherence to neo-classical economics (whatever that is); the 'liberal' part was added because 'they' took the ideas of freedom and liberty that were really born in the eighteenth century, very seriously.



Harvey says that neoliberalism, as a concept of political economy, is complicated with many variations. But, broadly, neoliberalism is the belief that human well being will be maximized when a society moves to a system of unrestricted free markets, free trade, galvanized around doing whatever is necessary to create and maintain an optimal business environment; which will mean, of course, that everyone will benefit, society as a whole will prosper.



Neoliberalism tends to call for deregulation, the removal of standards and accountability that are seen as chains binding the soaring spirit of the individual and stifling innovation, and the like. The regulations are seen as an imposition of 'individual' liberty. By the way, I hear that the right-leaning Supreme Court has just ruled that corporations has First Amendment rights just like people and may therefore spend as much money, directly, as they want in political campaigns.



To some of you, this may sound like crass materialism and greed. But we have learned how inseparably intertwined the ideological or spiritual is with the material. Here, I must elucidate a point made by Dr. Rick Wolf. He says that from 1820 to 1970, the profits of the American industrialists, as well as the real wages of workers, rose unfailingly every decade. This was so with workers wages, even during the Great Depression, because prices (which real wages are measured against) fell a little more.



This level of sustained national prosperity was, perhaps, unprecendented, never duplicated anywhere else. The American working class developed an exceptionalist view of themselves with respect to the rest of the world. They tended to expect never-ending "growth" in the economy; and growth of prosperity from generation to generation. Children will do "better" than their parents, whose grandchildren will surpass them all, and so on and so forth.



A working class such as this, says Wolf, can be forgiven for coming to see their sense of self worth, their sense of success in life, by what they have: their possessions, goods, stuff, bling. What car? What mall? What house? What neighborhood? And so forth. So, the American working class, as well as Americans generally define themselves by what they have. Man is the desire to become God, after all. Remember what I said about class mimicry. All classes tend to mimic the effects of the classes above themselves. This very fact explains the black market volume of "counterfeit" goods, and so forth.



Neoliberalism tends to seek to keep taxes - on business especially - to a minimum. Taxes, after all, are a yoke, punishing initiative, "de-incintivizing innovation." Taxes, therefore, are, by their nature, in their view, an oppression of the freedom of the 'individual,' - to make money, thrive, prosper.

Neoliberalism seeks the world over for the most "flexible" labor markets. They find these more flexible labor markets in the developing world, and use the existence of these to pressure the domestic labor market to be more flexible. Government mandates about the minimum you can pay workers or what level of minimally decent working conditions must prevail at the factory, hamper the creativity of the 'individual.' The environment? Concerns about the environment are just another distraction, hampering the neoliberal capitalist from expressing himself.

Neoliberalism aggressively seeks out new markets around the world. It is the neoliberal thrust upon the globe, which is called 'globalization.' Neoliberalism seeks to break down 'trade barriers' of other countries with potential customers for American products and resources that American corporate interests would like to get a piece of.

Neoliberalism scoffs at policies of other countries that it sees as protectionist, or neo-mercantilist, we might say. Such "protectionism" cuts off American capitalist from foreign markets, and therefore oppresses the freedom of the neoliberal capitalist. Such a "regime" must be, by definition, anti-freedom - and the population of such a country might require "liberation."

Neoliberalism is capitalism, the old capitalism freed from the restraints of the regulatory and social welfare policies of the New Deal, Fair Deal (under Truman), the Great Society (under Johnson), and some relatively progressive policies of Richard Nixon. Capitalism had been "free" before Franklin Roosevelt, suffered a period of oppression, but then was free again under Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and beyond? In this connection we can think of neoliberalism as the new liberation or new freedom of capital to make a profit.

Remember, capitalism had an accumulation crisis in the late seventies. The defeated World War Two powers, Europe and Japan had recovered by the mid 1970s and put their industry to work to make their goods better or cheaper - in some cases both - than American industry. The good times (between 1945 and 1975 when American capitalism had no competition as Europe and Japan had to rebuild their societies by buying American goods) had stopped rolling. Other things happened too, but for the sake of time, we shall skip mention of them. The point is that there was a profitability crisis for American capitalism in the seventies.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the neoliberals (Milton Friedman, Friedrich von Hayek, and others), having lain in wait in their right-wing think tanks since the 1940s, thought they had their champion... and the rest is history.

David Harvey says that we should be aware of the extent to which, all of us - in a strange way - are neoliberals, how the society as a whole has absorbed the neoliberal ethos.

When New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman famousy said, that two countries that both had a McDonald restaurant in them, never went to war - this is an expression of the neoliberal ethos. It is the idea that economic interdependence somehow insured peace between nations.

Fareed Zakaria's use to often say that, with non-democratic countries, the way you build democracy is to focus on building civil society first, with no small part of it being the creation and economic empowerment of the middle classes. At this point, these middle classes, can now pressure government to act in a way that is accountable, transparent, and govern by some kind of rule of law.

This, also, in my opinion, is an expession of the neoliberal ethos. With money, the emergent middle classes in developing nations, might pressure the government into giving them their "freedom."

Neoliberal theory says that just as there should be little or no government regulation and taxes stifling the capitalist's creativity, there should be o government intervention - when things go wrong for the capitalist. The state is, at best (mind you, I say, at best), the state role should be to make sure there is a "fair playing field." But mind you, many have noticed, including David Harvey, that there has always been a huge gap between neoliberal theory (argued passionately by the theoretical free marketeers) and neoliberal practice (as executed by working, "in the trenches," practicing capitalists.

Let me just close with this, now. It is in this gap that we see the ways in which the capitalist ruling class try to escape capitalism. We see the ways in which New Money tries - and mostly succeeds - in becoming Old Money. And in this gap between theory and practice, we see the root of financial and economic crisis in capitalism - the mass stampede of New Money bourgeoisie to break out of capitalism.

This naturally makes capitalism unstable, in the same way mass, concerted efforts of inmates to break out of a prison, causes the particular institution to be unstable. What I'm saying is, that in the same way an inmate wants to break out of jail, so too, do the oligarchy feel trapped by capitalism, as counterintuitive as that sounds.

This prison break on the part of the oligarchic capitalist class primarily takes the form of financialization, these days, and a focus on branding, as well as massive, forceful movement in the direction of what former bank regulator, William K. Black, calls "control fraud."

Control fraud is the accounting and other fraud that is generated by seemingly legitimate organizations. This sub prime situation is an example of what Black considers control fraud. According to Black, an FBI investigation has found that eighty percent of the fraud that happened in this housing crisis, was initiated by lender action. And so on and so forth.

Alright, I'll go on with this tomorrow.

wingedcentaur