I haven't read enough Klosterman to have an opinion, but isn't Holt an (erstwhile?) Heidegger guy? The name is familiar.
10 years doing a spot on BBC Wales seems worth (semi-?)giving up being a philosopher!
I've always wanted to see Wales, but not for ten years. I was thinking maybe a month would be enough.
I'm surprised that the Welsh are sufficientlyl interested in life in America to watch it on TV for ten years.
I once got stuck in Wales for four days, but that was a different Wales. It was a long four days.
You're going to need a bigger boat.
1: I think you're thinking of Richard Polt.
I'm puzzled by this:
He seems to think that "antagonist" means the opposite of "protagonist"
Uh, doesn't it? At least in certain contexts?
11. It doesn't in the usual Greek usage, which is to do with actors: the protagonist plays the most important character(s); the deuteragonist plays the next most important; and the tritagonist does the sort of gravedigger/third murderer stuff.
But you may well be right in other contexts.
I mean, most students in North America -- at least in Klosterman's generation, surely -- will have learned Freytag's theory of dramatic structure in grade school. Wherein the "antagonist" is defined as the chief opponent of the "protagonist."
Speaking of hate; I've been puzzled for a while about why Hillary supporters are so often mad at Bernie supporters. I think part of it is that hippie punching always has a lot of appeal. It is natural to resent people who adopt a morally superior pose, especially if you think they might be right, but here are some additional reasons:
"I've been puzzled for a while about why Hillary supporters are so often mad at Bernie supporters."
It's not a big mystery. It has to do with the number of Bernie supporters who have gone spiralling down the rabbit hole of absurd anti-Clinton conspiracy theories, outright hate and straightforward lies. I was initially pro-Sanders but I'm fucking sick of it by now; I'm "blessed" with the presence of more than a few Sandernistas in my social network feeds and it's gotten beyond stupid.
Also: because Clinton supporters are, to within a small margin of error, also Obama supporters, and Sanders thinks Obama should have been challenged for the nomination in 2012 because he had done such a terrible job. "It is a good idea for our democracy and for the Democratic Party--I speak, by the way, as an independent--that people start asking the president some hard questions about why he said one thing during his previous campaign, and is doing another thing today on Social Security, on Medicare," he said in 2011.
A very large percentage of Sanders supporters, meanwhile, did not vote for Obama in 2008 or 2012, because they were too young.
17- So you're saying the grand bargain was a good idea and you were glad Obama was trying to make that deal with the Republicans?
The "grand bargain" is the sort of thing that's unavoidable when your legislature is controlled by nutcases. I'm kind of sick of would-be American "progressives" who appear not to understand how their political system works. If they don't want stuff like the "grand bargain" happening, they should be devoted to mobilizing for midterm elections, not slagging off Obama.
I'm surprised to hear it was unavoidable since somehow we avoided it.
I wish more people would show up for midterms too, but I don't think getting more progressive policy would be that simple actually.
14: Jesus Christ, how many times does this need to be explained? We all know at least one dipshit Sanders supporter who's befouling our Facebook with gibberish.
"I'm surprised to hear it was unavoidable since somehow we avoided it." Given that GOP obstructionist insanity was so extreme that compromise had to get even more minimal just to keep the lights on, but the basic point stands.
Of course getting more progressive policy is more complicated than just getting turnout in the midterms, but that is a first step. Progressives should basically not be kidding themselves that Obama could realistically have delivered more progressive reality by sheer fiat, or for that matter that Sanders could do so. These are people governing a large, unwieldy coalition of progressives, conservatives and "centrists" in the teeth of an extremist and entrenched right wing movement.
[I long ago figured out that Obama is a) probably smarter than I am and certainly knows his job better than I do and b) that if he'd tried to govern the way I had fantasized about him governing, the American political system would have gone BOOM years ago.]
22- I get it you hate Sanders and his supporters because they are dumb and dumb people are worthy only of hate.
I was just teasing you. I understand.
Many of them are smart, sadly. Maybe only smart people are worthy of hate? Fuck it, I'll hate everyone and let God sort it out.
There is a difference between dumb, slow and ignorant. One can be ignorant without being slow, or slow without being ignorant, or both ignorant and slow but not dumb.
I'm ignorant about lots of stuff (inc. South Africa, knitting, music, ice hockey), as is everyone. I don't think I'm slow, but I'm sure I would seem slow to a group of sufficiently bright people. But "dumb" is a kind of stolid refusal to accept reality and learn, because it's more fun just to be wrong over and over again.
Many of them are smart, sadly.
Or at any rate just smart enough to think they understand certain things better than they do. Same reason the most intransigent breed of conservatives are the educated ones.
I like Jim Holt more, but Klosterman isn't so bad, unless you happen to be a young aspiring writer who thought his pop culture interests and affable tone meant that he would help you, too, get attention and money. (Gawker used to tag Klosterman entries with "pulling up the ladder," which I thought said more about Gawker than Klosterman.) I like when Klosterman makes fun of Bill Simmons to his face and Simmons doesn't notice.
28: I would characterise that as not ignorant or slow, but dumb.
I hear a lot of stuff about how Sanders supporters believe nonsense, and I'm sure there is some nonsense out there, but I don't see any arguments here showing it up as nonsense.
If this primary didn't see some cheating it'd be the first election I'm aware of in the US that didn't. That doesn't mean that it made a real difference much less that all the accusations are true, but like I said, no one here has engaged with the substance.
No one is obligated to satisfy me and I'm too lazy to try to solve the case myself, but I'm not satisfied that the Sanders people are dipshits and don't know what they are talking about. Maybe the people in my facebook feed are better than the ones on your facebook feed, or maybe you should be willing to make a real argument.
Seconding 13. Also, "antagonize" has a meaning that strongly supports that reading.
I mean, a more sophisticated [reader] understands that the protagonist isn't necessarily the hero, which kind of flips the role of the antagonist, but virtually everyone inKlosterman's audience would immediately identify eg Bruce Willis as the protagonist of Die Hard and Tim Roth as the antagonist. That there are other frameworks doesn't make the common one incorrect, just incomplete or perhaps simple.
31: I really don't want to get into this, but as one super-obvious, and seemingly ubiquitous, example of nonsense, Sanderite beliefs about superdelegates and caucuses are garbage. A. The latter is at least as anti-democratic as the former, and B. in the absence of superdelegates, Clinton would have clinched the nomination in late April, likely in PA. Believing that superdelegates were somehow hindering Bernie late in the race was nonsense, sustainable only within a bubble of, per ajay, dummies.
I think the fixation on Wall Street is probably nonsense as well (it's a major locus of what's wrong in America and with our economy; it's not THE locus), but I'd put that in the category of reasonable disagreement.
I don't know what "argument" is there is to be had with people who think it's solid political strategy for their boy to hang around acting like he can dictate the Democratic platform after he lost the election. At a certain point you're either capable of figuring out what losing an election means or you aren't.
And what else is left to "make a real argument" against, exactly? Think pieces at Paste affecting to grandly psychoanalyze the Clinton base? Variously vague and nutcase claims about "voter suppression" and supposed Clintonite fraud, or Google's secret plan to boost her search results? Maybe the various memes circulating that claim fictitious policies on behalf of Clinton, like cutting Social Security? The truth is that the vast bulk of what remains of pro-Sanders sentiment -- even the parts that their proponents think look "reasonable" outside the echo chamber -- just look like a seething morass of hate, resentment and delusion. It's not tempting to engage with that.
OT, but closer than other threads would be.
This is why I say that "neoliberal" is used to mean nothing more than "thing I don't like":
NYT finally "discovers" neoliberal management -- cost containment by attrition: Rights you can't afford to exercise, treatments you won't live to receive, learning conditions too arduous to persist.This is someone I don't know on FB describing an article about call centers being intentionally frustrating. And "neoliberal" here has nothing to do with Austrian-style free market purity, nor to do with DNC-style use of markets to (try to) achieve public good provision. It literally just means... I don't even know. "The ugly truth of capitalism"? "The fallen state of man"?
But I'm sure this guy is very pleased with his skewering of both neoliberalism and the NYT.
"The kind of management that results from and/or is promoted by neoliberal free-trade-no-unions style policies"?
I mean, given the things that that sentence lists it probably counts as that anyway.
13 hours to Juno orbital insertion burn! (Engine by Moog, as in the synthesisers; science by Southwest Research Institute; spacecraft by Lockheed Martin; shoes, model's own.)
37: nice try, but I don't buy it. I don't think 30% unionization or higher tariffs would somehow result in hyper-responsive call centers. Indeed, Verizon is a non-international company with unionized call centers; has anyone ever suggested that they have better customer service for these reasons (well, maybe better than Comcast, famously the worst, but that's only one competitor).
I genuinely think we'd be better off if people stopped using neoliberal as an empty epithet and started properly naming the bad premises behind capitalist problems (I don't think "ugh capitalism" achieves anything); in this case, the problem is most likely the "consumer benefit" model of antitrust enforcement.
I think the early complaints about superdelegates had some legitimacy to them. The "invisible primary" for funding, experienced staff, and volunteers is dictated by publicity, and it was bullshit for all the commentators to tell Bernie he was such a loooozer because he was already behind by 400 delegates. But if you're going to complain about coverage of the race you might as well complain about the color of the sky. Anyway I think the main problem was always that Bernie himself didn't expect to win until he started doing better than he thought so he didn't have the organization in place to capitalize. That's totally on his team, not the fact that you need such an organization to win.
virtually everyone inKlosterman's audience would immediately identify eg Bruce Willis as the protagonist of Die Hard and Tim Roth as the antagonist.
JRoth, I'm not angry with you, but I am deeply, deeply saddened.
Engine by Moog, as in the synthesisers
Apparently synthesizer Moog's cousin?
41: Thank you.
I don't think"hate" is the right word at all. It's a simple truth, though, that either Clinton or Trump is going to be the next president. That which weakens the one strengthens the other. It's thus pretty exasperating to have folks actively and intentionally weakening Clinton, on a claim that, well, surely she'll beat Trump anyway, so why not 'tell the truth' about her.
I'm as amenable to change on I/P policy as anyone here, I suppose, but it's clearly madness to kiss off single issue voters in the platform.
I like klosterman but his new book is bad. The sections on science are particularly bad. He does not know what he is talking about. He does get a bunch of quotes from famous people.
neoliberal is a perfectly reasonable concept
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
A neoliberal is someone who believes that the era of big government is dead.
I like klosterman but his new book is bad. The sections on science are particularly bad. He does not know what he is talking about. He does get a bunch of quotes from famous people.
neoliberal is a perfectly reasonable concept
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
A neoliberal is someone who believes that the era of big government is dead.
Nobody's complaining that the dictionary doesn't have a reasonable definition of "neoliberal."
Yeah, the problem is that in practice the word has been emptied of all meaning. That's how the Tory Brexit people can argue in favor of quitting the EU because it's big government, and yet the Lexit people can argue that the EU is neoliberal. At this point it's just left-wing speak for "I don't like it." The Yankees are neoliberal. Euro 2016 is neoliberal. Only a neoliberal would disagree with this comment.
48 Just that no one is ever allowed to use it.
JRoth, I'm not angry with you, but I am deeply, deeply saddened.
Oh my God.
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NMM to The Campbell Apartment.
Site of my wonderful Unfogged send-off party a little over a year ago.
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There are so many places to put our efforts between now and November, and beyond.
50: You're free to use it if you're trying to bullshit.
I look forward to you guys limiting your vocabularies to words that have never ever been misused.
Criticism of its use in general, as opposed to specific cases of misuse, is concern trolling.
One of my sobrinos is learning "Ode to Joy" on the piano. I sent a video clip to my brother with the note: "Preparing for the next viewing of Die Hard."
All this reminds me that neither Adam Tooze nor his editor know what "begging the question" means.
"Neoliberal" has actually now become a pretty useful word because you know immediately that as soon as someone uses it he/she is bullshitting. It's like "free enterprise system" or a number of other immediate markers of pontificating bullshit. Saves time.
And yet, some uses of "neoliberal" actually do not come from bullshitters.
True. There are also morons, and people who were writing before 2015.
It's funny that Neb is adamant that the current usage of "literal" is fine, and that those who hold to the old usage are foolish, but seeks to hold the line on antique "neoliberal".
As to 56 & 57, it really is important, if you're reading the news of the day, to understand that, at a first estimate, "neoliberal" means "thing I don't like". If you think otherwise, you're wasting your time trying to do thinking that the author has not, 49 being a prime example. It's not that it's never used correctly; it's that there's no way to tell (in nontechnical contexts) whether the author means the two historic meanings or the current nonmeaning.
You have a better chance of rehabilitating Nimrod.
64.last: which would be tricky since they cut the wings off all of them.
34: people who think it's solid political strategy for their boy to hang around acting like he can dictate the Democratic platform after he lost the election. At a certain point you're either capable of figuring out what losing an election means or you aren't.
I actually don't buy this. Sanders has had an effect on the Democratic party platform. In particular, raising the minimum wage to $15/hour* is a Bernie notion; and raising the cap on Social Security taxes -- an entirely obvious idea the Democratic party hasn't done nearly enough to promote -- isn't something I've heard Hillary endorse before. Though to be fair, I could be wrong.
It's not as though Sanders should wither away and die because he 'lost' the primary election.
* For what it's worth, a national $15/hour minimum wage is not something I necessarily support myself. Regions differ, cost of living differs, etc. Nonetheless I respect the push: you don't shift the narrative unless you push.
Truly, we are all in their debt for that important and meaningful work.
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NMM to Abbas Kiarostami.
What a fucking shit year 2016 has turned out to be.
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Yeah, this particular year should make periodization in the arts a little easier going forward: it's doing its best to be the end of some era. Ambivalent emoticon.
I am in the process of downgrading this year from its previous rating of "really pretty good" after this weekend. It feels like an inflection point past which the costs of the job are starting to outweigh the benefits. Thanks everyone for putting up with my logorrhea. It should even out again soon.
Criticism of its use in general, as opposed to specific cases of misuse, is concern trollingneoliberalism.
And here I thought we were done with stupid arguments about Sanders now that he's fading back into irrelevance.
Neoliberalism is the belief that usage of the term neoliberalism should not be regulated.
I don't expect we'll ever see the end of stupid arguments about neoliberalism.
56: You're welcome to stand athwart history shouting stop, but plenty of words have been hollowed out of their meaning to become vague superlatives: sublime, terrific, awesome, even the word "awe" itself. "Neoliberalism" is the negative image of it. It's like when people started using "bourgeois" as a criticism -- "that's so bourgeois". Once upon a time this probably meant something specific, but now it's kind of a joke.
65: It's not just that context matters. Context is now everything. Adding the word "neoliberal" now contains no information. The most you can say for it is that it's a smarter-sounding "right-wing". It has no usefulness as an analytic category beyond that.
Do people actually use the word "neoliberal" in real life? I don't think I've ever heard it except online.
You're with us or against us, teo.
My breaking point was a discussion in the comments at Crooked Timber about the neoliberal Tories versus the neoliberal EU. It was like an outtake from Bill and Ted trying to figure out how to learn how to play guitar.
You're with us or against us, teo.
Wait, which side is the neoliberal one again?
78.2 Dude, your mistake was reading Crooked Timber comments.
Feel gutted about Kiarostami. What a loss.
80: It's neoliberalism all the way down.
79: I know what it used to mean, but it just doesn't mean that anymore. Monbiot is engaging in wishful thinking. People know what "deregulation" means, or "free trade" or "capitalism", because these all have clear meanings. People won't state the Mont Pelerin definition of neoliberalism because it's died out. It doesn't mean "era of big government is over" anymore, either. The war is over, and the good guys lost.
Anyway, what does calling it "neoliberal" buy you? I think of 5 terms off the top of my head that convey the same thing without being as ambiguous: "libertarianism, "right-wing economics", "supply-side economics", "trickle-down economics". I'm not saying we shouldn't dig up Hayek's grave and shit on his corpse.
81: I heard about a conversation second-hand about someone who couldn't understand how you can be anti-Brexit and yet simultaneously anti-TTIP, because after all aren't the EU and TTIP equally neoliberal?
The whole point of neoliberalism is that's everywhere, innit? It's basically of Weber's "iron cage of rationality" thesis, updated for an age with fewer bureaucrats and more bad software.
There's a funny Billy on the Street episode where he runs into Holt and ends up chasing him down the street screaming "gay gay gay!" Something like that. It's pretty funny.
There's a funny Billy on the Street episode where he runs into Holt and ends up chasing him down the street screaming "gay gay gay!" Something like that. It's pretty funny.
84 is pretty good example of how it means nothing now. The whole point of neoliberalism is that you can construe it to mean whatever you want for the conversation. It's certainly not what Hayek or the Washington Monthly guy meant by the term.
Right-wing, supply-side, trickle-down, and voodo economics are all synonyms for Reaganesque tax policy. Libertarianism is close but they use the language of human rights rather than technocratic welfare optimization to sell their philosophy.
87: Maybe, but I do think there's something that needs a name: the feedback loop between the retrenchment of the welfare state that the OG neoliberals advocated and the ways in which schools, hospitals, and pretty much any contemporary social institution are increasingly managed with the methods and assumptions of for-profit market firms.
67: Sanders had his effect, rather, and it's run its course, especially given what his campaign has deteriorated into.
There's nothing left to be gained, since the NeverClinton movement he supposes that he's holding as a trump card is melting away far faster than the Clinton diehards in '08 did, and in the likely event that Warren becomes the running mate it will probably collapse entirely. All that's left now is to hang on and pretend he's playing kingmaker as his "revolution" withers away around him, its remnants getting more bitter, more slanderous and libellous against Clinton, more deluded and more paranoid and more dedicated to digging up dead horses and whacking at them with every passing week. Given that, I think it actually is far preferable for him to wither away and die, or rather to just let it go and admit that he lost -- not 'lost,' but lost -- and walk away with whatever is left of his dignity intact.
88 was me. I'm not wedded to the word but it does convey a sense of the continuity of economic philosophies between the DLC and New Labour and earlier laissez faire economists. And it pisses off Tigre.
Also "neoconservative," the record of which c. 2000 - 2007 probably accounts for the current popularity of "neoliberalism" as a term of abuse. Maybe it's "neo" that now means, "something bad that I don't like," and the succeeding word just vaguely gestures at what kind of thing?
I think 91.1 is correct on Sanders. I like Jamelle Bouie's analysis that Sanders had a fair amount of leverage in the immediate aftermath of the primaries but blew it by holding out too long. I also think that his supporters' rapid movement to Clinton shows that the Sanders campaign was never as much of a cult of personality as some of his detractors have claimed (or as much as he himself may have thought).
Maybe it's "neo" that now means, "something bad that I don't like," and the succeeding word just vaguely gestures at what kind of thing?
Someone at CT, I think Quiggin, had an interesting post a while back about how in current use "neo-" as a prefix has negative connotations while "post-" has positive connotations. I forget if there was any substantial analysis beyond this observation.
the likely event that Warren becomes the running mate
Pleasepleaseplease. I remember not being impressed with her speech delivery when she was last running, but either she's gotten a lot better or I was seriously delusional. She's really good.
It's interesting that the White House is not allowing Cabinet members to speak at the convention. That seems to imply strongly that the VP pick is not going to be one of them.
95: right, like "neolithic" and "postfeminist." I'm not sure that's a robust theory.
Alternate (obvious) point: before the current set of "Sanders has blown it" concern troll articles we saw the "Sanders is destroying the party they'll never come together now" hysterical pieces. The progression from one to the other is exactly what someone - like Sanders - who pursues progressive or even just liberal policies and is worried about what the Republicans would do if they won the election would want to see.
The Clinton/Obama thing died off quickly because, personality presentation aside, they were very similar and there weren't any longstanding grudges between the two factions prior to that contest. That's really not true with Sanders/Clinton, and a quick endorsement followed by "now it's all over and we're friends!" would have been jarring and probably not as effective as a tapering off as things cool down and the diehard Sanders supporters can still hold onto the fact that they'll be going into the convention with the ability to negotiate for things.
Also given that we've already seen him get a bunch of stuff he and his supporters wanted it's a bit of a stretch to claim that he's blown his chance to, you know, get a bunch of stuff he and his supporters wanted.
Clinton proposed forgiving student loan debt of entrepreneurs
Neoliberal is a good shorthand of why she would do something like that. The private sector is awesome. Everything is great as it is and we just need to tweak a few things in a way that does not expand government that much.
Neoliberal is distinct from social conservatism so if all you care about is having someone socially liberal to pick a Supreme Court Justice they are fine
99: Sure, in terms of substantive outcomes this may well have been the right way for Sanders to proceed, and it certainly seems to be working out fine in any case. Pieces like the one in 94 may overstate how much ego investment Sanders has in being able to take credit for stuff, but on the other hand both his behavior during the campaign and his past history as a legislator do suggest that he cares a lot about that.
anglo Americans who want Scandinavian levels of social spending are naturally going to be pissed at the 70s/80s free marketers who prevented this. If you want Scandinavian levels of social spending you have to fight those who oppose it. And those guys are neoliberals. That is their name.
99: From the useful article teo linked in 94:
"In the most recent poll from ABC News and the Washington Post, Clinton leads Trump 51 percent to 39 percent, expanding her previous lead by 5 points, as Trump has seen a complete collapse in his support. And what's driving the move toward Clinton? Democrats and independents who supported Bernie Sanders. In May, 20 percent of Sanders supporters said they would back Trump over Clinton in the general election. In June, that number is down to 8 percent. Overall, 81 percent of Sanders backers have rallied to Clinton, surpassing the 74 percent of Clinton supporters in 2008 who fell in behind Barack Obama. By any measure, the Democratic Party is unified."
This puts more explicitly why I don't think Sanders has much of anything left to bargain or apply pressure with. And it's why I think his remaining supporters are basically stewing in their own bile for nothing. Their numbers and influence are only going to shrink further given how obvious it is that the essential business of the day is going after Trump.
I look forward to critiquing post-neoliberal late capitalist discursive modes.
I'm not sure how that quoted bit counts for anything. At best you're pointing out that Sanders doesn't have much more to gain because this is the tail end of the negotiation/wind-down process. And he's already gained a fair bit of influence that he'll keep for a while (e.g., the people he now has on the committees leading up to the convention, the delegates he's bringing to it, and the extent to which we're seeing people from his campaign getting picked up for more campaign work). I mean, what would bigger concessions look like at this point in the campaign?*
I have trouble believing that that shift would have happened so cleanly or easily if Sanders had announced he was out and wouldn't be doing anything more after the CA primaries: that's exactly the sort of thing that would have made tensions worse. We would have seen the shift either way, I'm fairly certain, but it's happening very cleanly and easily right now and the only thing that I can see causing trouble for it is, well, the media commentators looking to attack Sanders right now.
*As far as I can remember from 2008 the big concessions to the Clinton campaign didn't really show up obviously until later on - there was speculation, but nothing as obvious as "you get to take seats away from the DNC and put your own people in them."
I don't think Sanders has anything to gain by holding out that he can't get right now. I don't think he can get anything right now that he couldn't have gotten on May 1. What can he get doing what he's doing that Elizabeth Warren can't get, by doing what she's doing? (And I don't expect her to be the VP candidate . . .)
See I think the whole opposition model is wrong: I don't think you get more by playing Hamlet, but rather that you do better by suiting up and taking the field.
I guess I think Sanders' leverage, such as it ever was, was killed in Nevada. The convention there proved that you can't make a deal with the Sanders campaign, because he either won't or can't make it stick, and if things consequently go south, he's not going to hold his underlings accountable. What kind of deal do you make with someone who can't deliver? How hard do you pander to people who boo Barbara Boxer?
The 2008 campaign proves the opposite point for which it is commonly cited in these discussions. Clinton behaved badly in the closing month, after it was clear she couldn't win, and while she came around, way too many of her supporters didn't. The racism her folks mainstreamed has haunted Obama from the start. It worked out, but with assists from McCain, the financial collapse, and Sarah Palin, and Republican fatigue after two terms.
Trump's principal argument against Clinton is "corruption."
and I see the word in my social media feed quit a bit from the folks still in Bernie or Bust mode.
107- People have been talking loudly about Clinton and corruption for 25 years. I really don't think given how much attention is paid to Sanders supporters that they do or even could add significantly in any dimension to that narrative.
If Trump becomes president, I'm blaming Clinton and Clinton supporters, not Sanders or Sanders supporters.
108: The logical thing to do given that Sanders stopped being a factor when he lost and most of his movement left him.
I would still like to see Sanders and Sanders supporters suck it up and face facts, though. Too much stupid from too many people who would normally know better.
91: I really don't want Warren as VP. I'd like to keep her as my Senator.
Forget it Roger, It's Chinatown.
And it's dangerous, the rage and hate and desire to exterminate the Left will only accelerate over the next year as they try to rationalize their complicity. I mean physically RL dangerous.
Always good to see Capt. "Obama will be an unstoppable tyrant" weighing in. Don't worry your pretty little head, bob, Bill will keep his woman in line, remember?
Judging by how quickly and thoroughly the comments veered off into BS vs HRC it's clear that no one around here gives a flying fuck about Chuck Klosterman. Not surprising.
I just want to note that, surprisingly, I got 66.
114: CK is one of those people who was already big (in some circles) before I was even aware of him, and so a lot of people had strong feelings that made me wary. I read his stuff and wasn't struck either way, so I just let him be.
People have been talking loudly about Clinton and corruption for 25 years. Rightwing hacks and the mainstream press have been doing this. Until recently, liberals opposed this talk, including (or especially) places like Salon and MoveOn. Now places like that are screaming about corruption. There's a difference between one's enemies making accusations and one's allies doing so.
If you want Scandinavian levels of social spending you have to fight those who oppose it. And those guys are neoliberals. That is their name.
So you're saying that the Brexit vote really was neoliberals vs. neoliberals? I was wrong, it is a helpful, illuminating term.
It's about the difference between big-N Neoliberals and small-n neoliberals.
115: you have almost been forgiven for the Tim Roth/Alan Rickman thing, which angered three key Unfogged constituencies: British people, fans of 1980s action films, and Alan Rickman fangirls.
Judging by how quickly and thoroughly the comments veered off into BS vs HRC it's clear that no one around here gives a flying fuck about Chuck Klosterman. Not surprising.
I hadn't heard of him, or at least not enough to remember him, until he was on the Daily Show the other day.
"So you're saying that the Brexit vote really was neoliberals vs. neoliberals? I was wrong, it is a helpful, illuminating term"
Plenty of races are neoliberal versus neoliberal. neoliberal is the establishment position. Not every bad thing is neoliberal. neoliberals can pick good supreme court justices and be intersectional or whatever.
"So you're saying that the Brexit vote really was neoliberals vs. neoliberals? I was wrong, it is a helpful, illuminating term"
It divided the Tory party 50/50, so sure, maybe it was.
Fargo Rock City is good. Klosterman's new book is bad though.
It would be nice if everyone would define what they themselves mean by it before they use it. I do find it a confusing word.
I noticed on Twitter that the hardcore Hillary Clinton fans seemed to decide one day that the word "neoliberal" is some sort of slur, probably anti-semitic, that disqualifies anyone who uses it. I never figured out what sort of new meaning it's taken on, but I guess if "liberal" means two opposing things on the two sides of the Atlantic, and "neoliberal" is supposed to only apply to the meaning of "liberal" that's used in Europe, confusion was bound to happen.
It would be nice if everyone would define what they themselves mean by it before they use it. I do find it a confusing word.
And really that definition should be phrased in terms of what possible sense experiences would count as verifying the existence of an instance of neoliberalism. While we're at it, I'd like to see something similar for modernism, socialism, spirituality, existentialism, and "soft penalty".
It's funny that Neb is adamant that the current usage of "literal" is fine, and that those who hold to the old usage are foolish, but seeks to hold the line on antique "neoliberal".
I missed this before. WTF are you on, or on about? It's not as if I think using "literal" literally is incorrect; I just think there's nothing wrong with using it figuratively (apparently you have never understood this to my mind utterly simple, simpler even than its opponents, position). Similarly (actually not similarly but let's be as charitable as possible, I guess), I completely acknowledge that it's possible to use "neoliberal" vapidly. I just have the surely unsurprising opinion that it's also possible to use it non-vapidly. I liked this paper and this bit in particular:
Far from trying to preserve society against the unintended consequences of the operations of markets, as democratic liberalism sought to do, neoliberal doctrine instead set out actively to dismantle those aspects of society which might resist the purported inexorable logic of the catallaxy, and
to reshape it in the market's image. For neoliberals, freedom and the market would be treated as identical. Their rallying cry was to remove the foundation of liberty from natural rights or tradition, and reposition it upon an entirely novel theory concerning what a market was, or should be. They could not acknowledge individual natural rights, because they sought to tutor the masses to become the agent the market would be most likely to deem to succeed. The market no longer gave you what you wanted; you had to capitulate to what the Market wanted. All areas of life could be better configured to behave as if they were more market-like. Gary Becker, an MPS member, for example, proposed a market-based approach to allow for socially optimal level of crime, and advocates a revolutionary extension of marginal calculus to include the "shadow costs" and benefits associated with all of "children, prestige or esteem, health, altruism, envy, and pleasure of the senses".
127: I think "neoliberalism" is a bit different from "modernism" or "socialism". Or even "liberalism." People call themselves modernists or socialists. People call themselves "liberals" even if it isn't particularly clear what they mean when they do that. As near as I can tell, nobody calls themselves a "neoliberal"*. It's an attempt by one group to define another in their their terms.
* Except for a small set of people studying international relations.
126.1 Same here. It's the new hate. It's weird.
If neoliberalism means anything at all, it certainly can only refer to people who are pro-EU. Neoliberal, whether you mean it as a slur or not, means people similar to Tony Blair.
Except that whatever Tony Blair believed was not at all similar to what the Mont Pelerin society or whatever believed, so the term can't even get that straight.
128: Am I mistaken that you think people who insist that only old-literal is correct are ridiculous? Are you not, on the subject of "literal", essentially a descriptivist who acknowledges that the word can no longer be limited to its original meaning?
Current usage has decimated the literal meaning of literal.
Actually, I think that the figurative use of "literal" is parasitic on its original meaning and is not actually a new meaning at all. And you know what? If someone said "'neoliberal' is never used as an empty term of vituperation" or if someone said "in all its uses, 'neoliberal' denotes, at the broadest, a style of thought with a traceable lineage with in outline the following sorts of commitments …"—I would think both those someones ridiculous.
Is there something hard to understand about the belief that a technical term can be debased in popular discourse but still retain utility and reference among some of its users? Does that just totally beggar belief?
Apparently there is something hard to understand about my beliefs about the word "literal", but I'm not quite sure what, since your reactions to it seem to be more blank stares than anything else.
132: Which is the reason the term is so abused: as Corey Robin uses it, it basically means everyone to his right, and so you get to lump in people who think that some road projects should be done by private contractors with people who don't believe that roads should be publicly owned at all. And they're all equally to blame for the coal miners of Britain being out of work and bitter towards foreigners.
135: I don't even disagree with (what I take to be) your beliefs about literal, so I'm not sure where "blank stares" come in.
Is there something hard to understand about the belief that a technical term can be debased in popular discourse but still retain utility and reference among some of its users? Does that just totally beggar belief?
I think it's perfectly common for technical terms to become debased. I think that it's very hard to do anything useful with it once that's happened, unless the technical use is, indeed, very technical. I'm sure there are plenty of scientific terms that are debased in public discourse ("black holes" come to mind), yet retain use in scientific circles because it's pretty easy to distinguish between a tweet and a scientific paper. But there's not really a "technical" distinction between popular political discourse and e.g. Jacobin, in which one can safely presume that the latter will be using the term carefully.
And I honestly don't know whether the blockquote in 128 is referring to the Mont Pellerin Society or Washington Monthly. It seems to ascribe extraordinarily grand ambitions to a guy who was basically Michael Kinsley Sr.--"an entirely novel theory concerning what a market was, or should be. They could not acknowledge individual natural rights, because they sought to tutor the masses to become the agent the market would be most likely to deem to succeed"--but it also sounds a bit more like it's describing DNC policy than Hayek.
Since you've read the whole thing, can you tell me which it is?
As near as I can tell, nobody calls themselves a "neoliberal"*. It's an attempt by one group to define another in their their terms.
Well, this isn't quite right. Certainly there have been people who self-described as neoliberals. DeLong may still. However, the difference seems to be that what they themselves say about neoliberalism is only relevant insofar as it supports the critic's thesis. That is, if Jon Chait says, "I was a neoliberal, and neither I nor any of my peers thought X," that's irrelevant, (because it's denial or misdirection or a failure to understand the underlying truth); but if he once wrote something in favor of (bad thing) Y, that's proof that neoliberalism is all about Y.
Come to think of it, it's exactly the pattern that conservatives used to attack liberalism. Liberals were all closet commies, just as neoliberals are all closet Hayekians.
I'm sure there are plenty of scientific terms that are debased in public discourse ("black holes" come to mind)
I would say that doesn't debase it. If I use the word black hole in a figurative sense, e.g. "Ted's office is a black hole; give him an assignment and you'll never see it again" I don't think that reduces the understanding of "black hole" in the scientific sense. If non-scientists started calling galaxies or stars or whatever "black holes", that'd be different.
Contrary to that and in agreement with your main point, I think meaningful debasement happens when the technical topic at hand is part of informal discourse by non-specialists. So I think "neoliberal" is meaningfully debased in that I have no clue what it means and I try to shy away from using it as I believe it causes confusion. Sometimes I can get the intended meaning by context, but it isn't always clear. Returning to astronomy, I think "meteor"/"meteorite"/"meteoroid" and maybe "asteroid" are to various degrees debased in informal discourse and context must be used to determine what the speaker means. Probably also "perigee"/"apogee".
it also sounds a bit more like it's describing DNC policy than Hayek.
It's almost like modern politics is suffused with the spirit of neoliberalism.
141: I was trying to decide if "black hole" really counted; even aside from its metaphorical usage, I get the impression that the popular scientific understanding of the concept is pretty far off from the actual science. But anyway, your examples are better.
It's almost like modern politics is suffused with the spirit of neoliberalism.
Or that rhetorically lumping together two dissimilar thing can imply greater similarity than exists.
Did you know that both Lenin and Reuther believed that capitalist factory owners ruthlessly exploit their workers? It's almost like midcentury politics was suffused with the spirit of communism and/or trade unionism.
You're welcome to read the link for yourself, JRoth, if you like. It's readable, non-technical, and interesting. I'm not sure why you'd rather get it second-hand from me, or why I, who last read the whole thing months and months ago, should do you the favor of re-reading it just so I can answer your questions.
As for whether it's referring to the MPS or the Washington Monthly, well, interesting question, since it explicitly identifies Becker as an MPS member when describing his proposal. But look, let's go on a few sentences: "Gary Becker, an MPS member, for example, proposed a market-based approach to allow for socially optimal level of crime, and advocates a revolutionary extension of marginal calculus to include the "shadow costs" and benefits associated with all of "children, prestige or esteem, health, altruism, envy, and pleasure of the senses". Becker even proposes an economic model of the "dating market": one consequence of which is the proposition that polygamy for successful, wealthy men can be politically rationalized. And voila! Here is an article in the Sunday New York Times doing just that, as if it were real news.9 Classical liberals like Mill or Michael Oakeshott would be spinning in their graves".
It's, again, almost as if this view of the markets and individuals is highly prevalent among many many people among our current elites. (More of them, and more central to our politics, and along more dimensions than Lenin and Reuther, Jesus put some effort into your trolling.)
Indeed, I provided a link precisely to make it easier for the curious to read it for themselves.
Yes but the term is now used, primarily if not exclusively by self-important morons, to describe both Gary Becker and people who were literally exactly opposed to Gary Becker. If you want to say "influential aspects of libertarianism are stupid," then say that. And also "suffused with the spirit of" is basically a concession that the term has become completely meaningless. We're all suffused with the spirit of basically all of world history! I am suffused witht he spirit of the middle ages, the French Revolution, the Japanese Shogunate, and religious advances first made in Catal Huyuk. DEEP BRO.
"Unfogged is a black hole. Mention neoliberalism there and you'll never return except as high-energy x-rays."
And also "suffused with the spirit of" is basically a concession that the term has become completely meaningless.
Well … no, it isn't?
We're all suffused with the spirit of basically all of world history!
No we aren't, in any interesting way? To the extent that it's true, it's not worth pointing out (because it's true only insofar as anyone living at any time must be suffused with the spirit of everything that came before, meaning, I suppose, that the present is conditioned by the past—indeed, deep!). Supposing that I meant to say something, and not just flap my fingers on my keyboard, I must, then, have meant something more substantial, right? I don't think the people at Jacobin, for instance (and put aside whatever else you think of them) are suffused with the spirit of neoliberalism. But I do think that the DNC has a basically neoliberal outlook.
Supposing that I meant to say something, and not just flap my fingers on my keyboard, I must, then, have meant something more substantial, right ... but I do think that the DNC has a basically neoliberal outlook.
And, you've taken yourself right directly into "who gives a shit," which is why the word does, currently, convey some useful information.
Yes but the term is now used, primarily if not exclusively by self-important morons, to describe both Gary Becker and people who were literally exactly opposed to Gary Becker.
But what about the uses by people who aren't self-important morons?
The reason for the perhaps overly namby-pamby "suffused with the spirit of" was simply that I meant to suggest that a way of conceiving of the relations of state, market, and individual, apart from particular policy recommendations that might be seen to follow from that, is ascendant among elites. They swim as it were in that water. And that isn't a dilution of the term to meaninglessness since alternatives are conceivable and are even actual among other (non-elite) communities.
Anyway, the French Revolution and the Japanese Shogunate were real things that we can meaningfully discuss and if you think that neoliberalism is on a par with them, that seems like a change of heart from you.
There are certainly "real" things about politics one can discuss, including Gary Becker! And his (almost nonexistent, but maybe somehow sort of existent) influence on the current DNC. The problem is that the use of this word isn't helping anyone understand anything about them.
You shall know the neoliberal by these 3 signs
1) denies being a neoliberal
2) denies the existence of neoliberalism
3) ridicules those that use the term
But be not dissuaded! Yell at him unceasingly, "Neoliberal! Neoliberal! Neoliberal!"
Soon he will melt.
I honestly don't know what to make of 151. The outlook described in the blockquote in 128 is a recognizable thing that even that great opponent of the term "neoliberalism", JRoth, thought was reminiscient of the DNC. That outlook by its content and origins deserves to be called neoliberal. Is the idea that since Becker wasn't a registered Democrat, it's absurd to think that the DNC could possibly have anything to do with neoliberalism? Or what?
you've taken yourself right directly into "who gives a shit"
Why is that? Is it just fundamentally off the table to entertain the possibility that people who disagree strongly may nonetheless share certain baseline assumptions about the way things work, or to lament the possibility that there are few or no viable options on the table that do not share those baseline assumptions?
Gary Becker! And his (almost nonexistent, but maybe somehow sort of existent) influence on the current DNC
Becker sure had nothing to do with the idea of the subject as entrepreneur.
Neoliberalism is the substance I am made of. Neoliberalism is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire
156 - no, it's because the discussion is so hopelessly and tendentiously imprecise as to not be worth bothering with at all.
"Opeepionated" is great.
Strongly disagree with 159. Nosflow is making good points.
"reminiscient" I guess is as adjective for people with great recall?
"If neoliberalism means anything at all, it certainly can only refer to people who are pro-EU. Neoliberal, whether you mean it as a slur or not, means people similar to Tony Blair."
Thatcher was for leaving the EU
True, Blair and Thatcher were directly opposed on the issue of EU membership, but they, Michel Foucault, Gary Becker, Walter Mondale, ReRun from "What's Happening," Friedrich Hayek, Alfredo Garcia, Leka Anwar Zog Reza Baudouin Msiziwe Zogu, and many others have been infused with the spirit of neoliberalism.
Are neoliberals Golden State Warrior fans or Cleveland Heat fans? There can only be one.
165: Cleveland Heat? Lebron has been playing the same team all along in your reality?
Wait, what? How is Thatcher of all people a neoliberal? She's just a conservative. Neoliberalism was the Clinton/Blair center-left response to Reagan/Thatcher. You people are crazy.
Wrong - it's the descendants of the Mont Pelerin society! It's late stage capitalism! It's Al Gore and Al Gore's robotic nemesis from bizarro Earth! It's everything around us and nothing at all!
I mean I am literally balls deep in neoliberalism RIGHT NOW
Strongly disagree with 159. Nosflow is making good points.
Quick take: (1) I agree with JRoth that there are many casual uses of "neoliberal" which don't clarify anything. (2) I agree with nosflow and Barry Freed that it's possible to use it in a way which does refer to a recognizable collection of beliefs*. (3) That even when the term is being used carefully it's still not obvious what the presumed alternative would be.
[That last point is probably too brief, but it's something that I've been mulling over lately -- I understand the frustrations with the quote-unquote mainstream neoliberal views, and I have a general sense of what people would prefer, but I also feel very vague about what left-critics of neoliberalism see themselves as working towards as a political alternative]
* Though I would disagree that the DLC is well-described by this, "Far from trying to preserve society against the unintended consequences of the operations of markets, as democratic liberalism sought to do, neoliberal doctrine instead set out actively to dismantle those aspects of society which might resist the purported inexorable logic of the catallaxy, and
to reshape it in the market's image. For neoliberals, freedom and the market would be treated as identical." But my disagreement depends on the question of when differences of degree become differences of kind. I think that DLC politicians want to dismantle some policies which check markets, but I don't think they believe that "freedom and the market" are identical.
You can already see on this thread why its a confusing term. Unfoggetarian and lemmy caution are clearly using the Washington Monthly term, and not the vague Weltanschauung that everyone else has in mind.
We used to have a pretty good term for the economic system we lived in. We called it "capitalism". Perhaps you've heard of it? What does "neoliberalism" buy you as a term over "capitalism"? There's obvious continuities between 1850 and now -- if anything the immediate post-war era was the outlier. The best you can say is that it evokes that return.
But now that everything is neoliberalism, it has been emptied of all analytic force. Was the Iraq War neoliberalism? Is Obamacare? Was Poland joining the EU an example of neoliberalism? Who gives a shit?
What the DLC and the Mont Pelerin Society have in common is that they promoted market-oriented solutions, in which case why not just say "market-oriented"?
I thought the Clinton/Blair thing already a fine name (third way, right?). I've never heard of it being directly equated with neoliberalism like that.
174: The Clinton/Blair definition was literally the only definition of neoliberalism I knew until the 2000s.
174: See, that's the problem. I've seen that identity made frequently. While Wikipedia's page on the Third Way quotes a BBC report saying that "Anthony Giddens of the LSE the Third Way rejects top down socialism as it rejects traditional neo liberalism", we have this Very Short Introduction on Neoliberalism with a chapter entitled Second-wave neoliberalism in the 1990s: Clinton's market globalism and Blair's Third Way. Similarly, This Huffington Post article on neoliberalism and the Democratic primaries explains the Third Way as an explicit co-opting of the right's neoliberal message:
The Reagan/Thatcher neoliberal revolution kept Democrats out of the White House, and kept the Labour Party out of power in London, for three whole electoral cycles; and by the end of the third of those, leading politicians in both parties had come to the same view. They had decided that their only way back to power was to meet Reagan- and Thatcher-shaped electorates on neoliberal terms. Under Bill Clinton's leadership in the United States, and that of Tony Blair in the United Kingdom, each center-left party abandoned their earlier and more progressive sets of policies in favor of an explicit acceptance of, and accommodation with, the major tenets of the new conservative orthodox.
On the other hand, there's a quote in this Jacobin article that expresses uncertainty as to what the Third Way is but conclused that it's probably to the left of neoliberalism:
If the Third Way lies between communism and capitalism, it is merely a new name for democratic socialism peculiar to the British. . .. If, on the other hand, the Third Way involves finding a middle way between social democracy and neoliberalism, then this approach is not mine.
176: to be pedantic, if it's second-wave it's not the identification I was talking about.
To be pedantic as well as obtuse and uncharitable, by "identity" I meant "a close similarity or affinity"; by your "identification" I took you to mean "the action or process of identifying someone or something or the fact of being identified"; and I understand "identifying" in that definition to include the second definition of "identify" I found on a popular search engine, to "associate (someone) closely with; regard (someone) as having strong links with."
I was responding to Upetgi who said "neoliberalism was Clinton/Blair".
Ahh, I gotcha. Sorry, I should be less snippy.
So it turns out that applying a prefix to a word with two distinct meanings doesn't result in a word with a single, well-defined meaning? Wait until the boffins in the language lab hear this!
What maybe you should have said is that it's redundant for nosflow to tell us that he is being pedantic.
182 (and the rest of this thread): Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
I'm just pissed that I wasted my Leka Anwar Zog Reza Baudouin Msiziwe Zogu reference in this thread. I'd been saving that up for later but it just kind of came out.
183: As I've said to Ludwig so many times, "Fuck you! Are you trying to kill the blog?"
I'd been saving that up for later but it just kind of came out.
Happens to lots of guys.
Wait, I thought it was generally agreed that the DLC "we are liberals, but, like, new ones, not Dukakiseased Mondalean losers" usage of "neoliberal" was distinct in origin from the broader and, it seemed to me more international, use of neoliberal, which I initially associated with things like the anti-globalization movement.
DLC usage: end welfare as we know it, but don't end it completely
international usage: completely restructure your economy and political institutions because the 'F' in IMF stands for "fuck you, you have to service your debt before anything else", and we've got a slate of public-private arrangements all ready for you to adopt that are easily glossed as deregulation and privatization but enroll the government in the background as a risk absorbing enforcer
But this conversation seems to be proceeding along the line that there can only be one usage, as if John Stuart Mill and Eugene McCarthy must be the same kind of liberal or else liberalism is a meaningless word.
if John Stuart Mill and Eugene McCarthy must be the same kind of liberal or else liberalism is a meaningless word.
That's confusing in and of itself, but it's made way worse with "neoliberalism" because (a) the word is more unfamiliar and thus pompous (b) it's not a "neo" version of EITHER Mill or Eugene McCarthy.
What is the difference between a neoliberal and a liberal in the "international usage"?
117 "Until recently, liberals opposed this talk,"
-I'm sure some did. But all my friends and family throughout the 90s were liberal or left and all of them were aware and talked about the Clinton's corruption. You may think we were a unique bubble. But I don't. To this day I meet new liberals regularly who; think the Clintons are corrupt, and say they wont vote for her.
189: I think what people who get called but don't necessarily call themselves neoliberal claim they believe is supposed to be an updated version of "classical" liberalism, isn't it? But if I were using the terms I'd say neoliberalism places more emphasis on the state and liberalism on the individual.
international usage: completely restructure your economy and political institutions because the 'F' in IMF stands for "fuck you, you have to service your debt before anything else"
A surprising number of people believe this, despite things like this
The International Monetary Fund wants Greece's creditors to forgive a portion of the country's debt, a move which could cost Germany up to 17.5 billion euros. With general elections approaching next year, Chancellor Angela Merkel is adamantly opposed to such a move.
and this
With Greece on the verge of receiving yet more aid from its international creditors, thanks to German lawmakers overwhelmingly backing the deal Wednesday, experts have challenged assertions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the country's debt is unsustainable without a massive restructuring.
and this
The International Monetary Fund has set off a political earthquake in Europe, warning that Greece may need a full moratorium on debt payments for 30 years and perhaps even long-term subsidies to claw its way out of depression. "The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date," said the IMF in a confidential report.
and this
The Europeans badly want the fund to be part of Greece's bailout and to contribute money to it. But Christine Lagarde, the IMF's managing director, says her support is conditional on two things: a credible deficit reduction plan and a decent slug of debt relief. Hardline EU governments, led by Germany, have resisted this idea
to the point where it seems that beliefs about what the IMF actually is and does are completely impervious to reality.
192- To be fair the IMF has spent decades generally on the side of creditors and is now just telling them 'You can't get blood from a stone,' rather than taking the side of debtors.
Whether or not that's an accurate characterization of what the IMF does is a separate question from whether people associated it with neoliberalism. But the context I remember hearing it was people talking about South America or the Caribbean in the late 90s/early 2000s, not Greece and the EU, recently.
The difference between "being right about stuff, but wrong by twenty years about when it happened and whether it's still happening" and "being wrong" is a fine one.
In any case, the IMF is not a blindly pro-creditor institution. If anything, it is an abnormally pro-US institution. http://ipeatunc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/there-is-no-technocracy-dammit.html That has led it to be pro-creditor at some points (like when the creditors are mainly US banks) and pro-debtor at others (like when the debtor is a government which the US would like to keep in place). It also serves, in fiscal terms, the same purpose that the CIA's drone fleet serves in military terms in north-west Pakistan: it provides a convenient cover of supposed force majeure for the government to do stuff which its population does not like.
America is the most corrupt nation in the world. One thing that was interesting that the article doesn't discuss is what I am convinced is one of the reasons that generals who lose wars are so valuable. In a nation in decline putting a good spin on that decline is one of the most valuable services. Keep Shining That Turd General America Depends on You!
A brief perihelion close to the shining sun of rationality and we're away off again for another long stay in the Kuiper Belt.
"That's confusing in and of itself, but it's made way worse with "neoliberalism" because (a) the word is more unfamiliar and thus pompous (b) it's not a "neo" version of EITHER Mill or Eugene McCarthy."
What is the non-confusing term for people who continue the reagan/thatcher project of constraining the welfare state? People who complain about the term "neoliberal" basically want it to be replaced with nothing. Don't point out that the US has done almost nothing to expand the welfare state since 1980 or so. Why talk about the impossible.
Didn't the welfare state increase under Clinton (EITC), Bush II (Medicare Part D), and Obama (PPACA)?
If we're talking Reagan/Thatcher, I would say "trickle-down economics".
What is the non-confusing term for people who continue the reagan/thatcher project of constraining the welfare state?
"Conservative"
"Thatcherite"
"Reaganite"
Okay, but what's the non-confusing term for people who continue the reagan/thatcher project of constraining the welfare state while explicitly saying that their intent is to benefit the poor and needy, claiming that the welfare state was doing more harm than good?
The straightforwardly conservative position is that benefits should be cut because they're an unaffordable drain on good taxpaying citizens for the benefit of worthless layabouts. The people Lemmy was asking about tend to explicitly claim that, e.g., welfare recipients will be much better off after their benefits are cut, and cutting benefits is a humanitarian endeavor.
Okay, but what's the non-confusing term for people who continue the reagan/thatcher project of constraining the welfare state while explicitly saying that their intent is to benefit the poor and needy, claiming that the welfare state was doing more harm than good?
"Thatcherite".
Just calling it straight up conservative (or Thatcherite/Reaganite) misses the privatization of public assets and services to replace welfare state functions. The whole ideology of using market based mechanisms to achieve social policy goals.
204 And that being seen as the only legitimate way of doing so.
And also the audience it's trying to convince. Thatcher and Reagan were trying to pull together support from people who were already opposed to the existence of the welfare state. The people we're talking about (call them Clinton and Blair, but that whole class of people), are trying to get votes from people who support the welfare state, and want needy people to get the services the actually need, but can be convinced that privatization and so on are the way to do it.
206 This is why this odd pushback on neoliberal seems so harmful and even stupid to me. That's a pernicious ideology. It's a real thing and it needs to be named to be effectively fought*. Now I'm sure a better term could be found other than neoliberal which has a rather confused history but it's served in that role and people here making the big stink about it haven't offered anything in its stead nor do they seem to acknowledge the reality or history behind it (but on occasion, and reluctantly).
*And it's not all in the past of the 1990s. Rheeism certainly seems to fit the bill with regard to education policy.
Wait wait, Thatcher was all about the privatisation of public assets and services, to replace welfare state functions and indeed all sorts of other state functions, on the explicit grounds that they would be more efficient and effective. Thatcher started with the low-hanging fruit, which was state-owned industry, of which there was a hell of a lot.
But there is no useful division between "let's sell off Royal Ordnance; government has no place in making rifles, and RO will be more efficient in the private sector, allowing us to equip our soldiers more cheaply" and "let's set up privately-run hospitals; government has no place in providing health care, and the hospitals will be more efficient in the private sector, allowing us to buy healthcare more cheaply".
The other strand of Thatcherism was "ending dependency culture" - the idea being that people were loafing around on the dole when what they should do is get on their bikes and go and look for work (direct quote). That was cutting welfare spending, as in transfer payments, directly, on the argument that it would help the recipients.
"Neoliberal", on the other hand, is also used to talk about free-trade type agreements and even the EU single market, which were definitely not a core part of the Thatcherite project, and which have much wider support from a lot of people who would disagree with Thatcherism.
209: I'm not sure if you're not seeing the distinction I'm trying to draw, or if you're seeing it but disagreeing that it exists. When Thatcher said that sort of thing, the implicit, but clear, message was that "Sure, some of them will starve, but those are the really worthless ones, so fuck them. Starving is what they deserve." Mostly, to support Thatcher, you probably had to believe that cutting services might benefit the worthy poor, by encouraging them to be worthier, but would injure the unworthy poor, which was what should happen to the as a matter of justice, and that sense of justice was a big part of her appeal.
The ideology I'm talking about is repackaged to appeal to people who genuinely don't actively want to starve the unworthy poor: the pitch is that everyone who needs services will across the board be better off if they're privatized/marketized/eliminated. It's not far off Thatcherism as policy, but it's wildly different as politics.
207: Again, see the comment that started the discussion in this thread, 36: does that guy's usage (and he's not just some random jerk, he was approvingly cited by a respected, ancient and still-occasional commenter here) have sweet fuck-all to do with what you're describing? No it doesn't, it just means, "thing I as a lefty dislike." That's who your beef should be with, because they're the ones taking the name for the thing that needs naming and applying it at random like a toddler pissing on the wall.
And that's on top of the fact that the "neoliberal" in "neoliberal IMF" really isn't identical to Clinton/Blairism. They're both vaguely pro-markets, which is why not-as-sophisticated-as-they-think-they-are leftists like Robin are happy to lump them together, but if you think it's important to name your enemy, calling all your enemies the same term shouldn't be the solution.
It's not far off Thatcherism as policy, but it's wildly different as politics.
I think that the pro-"neoliberalism" faction considers this a distinction without a difference. I mean, that's Sandersism, right? A vote for either Clinton is a vote for Reagan, full stop.
As someone who's closer to the inside of that faction than you are (not attached to the specific word, but I think it denotes something in practice), not exactly. That is, calling it 'neoliberalism' identifies it as distinct from conservativism/Reaganism/Thatcherism in its stated goals (and in the goals that are probably fairly sincerely held by a fair number of its adherents; there are people who are good-faith adherents of 'neoliberal' policies who genuinely agree with me about desirable outcomes), but implies that the past and probable results of those policies are going to be pretty close to those of conservative/Reagan/Thatcherist policies.
212: Unless they think it's a distinction without a difference, in which case they are devaluing the word intentionally to push their perspective. I find this to be an annoying and confusing technique often used on the left, but perhaps I'm unusually dense in being bothered by it.
Anyway, I agree with pretty much everything JRoth says. However, aren't we, myself included, being a bit shittier to each other than normal? I'll be thankful for the election, or whatever event will reduce the narcissism of small differences, to come.
And that's on top of the fact that the "neoliberal" in "neoliberal IMF" really isn't identical to Clinton/Blairism.
Right, and unlike everyone else in the thread, apparently, I've always understood those to be distinct usages, as I wrote in 187.
However, aren't we, myself included, being a bit shittier to each other than normal? I'll be thankful for the election, or whatever event will reduce the narcissism of small differences, to come.
Word.
215: We are not, dalriata, and I plan to be even shittier to you than I have been so far. You'll rue the day you thought we'd reached max shittiness!
219: Thorn, you're such a nice, understanding, and thoroughly with-it person that your Shithead Mode must be a full Jekyll/Hide inversion. I will be on my guard against unexpected non-consensual exsanguination.
conservative policies also include things like hating gays, minorities, and abortion which non-conservative neoliberals don't sign on for. neoliberal is restricted to the economic sphere which is what it makes a useful term to describe non-conservative neoliberals .
If non-conservative neoliberals want to not be called neoliberals they should propose some government-based solutions for things. (Clinton's new tuition plan is a good step here)
Here is an article entitled "Why I was wrong about Welfare Reform":
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/opinion/sunday/why-i-was-wrong-about-welfare-reform.html?_r=0
and you assume it would be about getting rid of welfare reform but no it proposes long term birth control. A middle path between giving poor people money and forced sterilization apparently.
||
Saw this on a profile on Twitter:
"I'm a RINO = Reasonable, Informed, and NON-ORANGE"
This election, I tell you.
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207: "Market-oriented". Boom. Done.
That seems even vaguer and less directly applicable. It's also something that would immediately result in "yes, but is this actually market oriented and in what sense (etc.)" discussions the second it was ever used in any context.
I mean, replacing a name for an overall ideology and group of people with a description* of a kind of policy that they typically support for some but not necessarily all things just seems like asking for trouble.
*Yes I know Opinionated Bertrand Russell.
I'm venting in this old thread since it's basically therapy for me, and probably not interesting to anyone else.
Latest dumb usage of neoliberal that I just saw on FB: "It is a very, very good thing that Brexit won. The EU is a horrible, undemocratic, right-wing, neoliberal institution, and at this point anything that weakens the EU is a good thing (even if done for the wrong reasons)."
Someone on CT also argued that it's neoliberalism that makes you think it's okay to not have children.
it's neoliberalism that makes you think it's okay to not have children.
I just had to see that again. Oh dear!
I want to slice your vas deferens.
I think maybe Corey Robin is calling me a Nazi.
Did somebody break the internet today? It works fine here, but I can't get about half the sites I read to load.
It's probably our shitty network. The local IT people reject technocratic solutions.
IS it not okay to not have children?
If you support sweatshops and union-busting, then sure.
But if I don't have children they can't work in sweatshops or be shot by Pinkerton's.
But you live on a chess board with 64 squares, half white and half black. You are not free to go and live on a blank chessboard.
From link in 230. This person seems deeply confused.
240: It's just possible this commenter is an omniscient god and I'm the one that's confused.
238.1 That's one of my favorite Star Trek episodes.
The squares of our board are threescore squares and four; and if by strength of bishops they be traversed diagonally, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon privatized, and we fly away.
238: But even in their wildest imagination, they're still on a grid. The neoliberalism is coming from inside the house!
238: The white squares are the baby-making squares, while the black squares are the neoliberal squares. What square do you want to be on?
244: If you're a bishop, you have no choice.
A blank chessboard is just one (white) square of a much larger chessboard.
MIND. BLOWN.
A knight can only move to a white square if it's been married by a bishop. And what if all the bishops are dead? WHAT THEN?
That would be a neat rule: once a game, you may move a bishop one square rectilinearly. Probably need to restrict it to not allow capture by it, though.
249: You think you can change just change the rules?
Think of it this way: you are not free
250: Neoliberalism was invented in India sometime in the first millennium BCE. It slowly made its way to Europe, where after local modifications it became modern Western neoliberalism. It also spread east, again with local changes--for example, cannons move differently from how they attack. This is called "neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics."
Neoliberalism was a creation of the Song Dynasty until carried East by the Mongols. It entered Europe with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople.