Before we get started on the final chapter of this series, I want to take a minute to thank Carlo for sharing his thinking – and writing – about The Resumption of History with us. These posts have led to some great and interesting conversations in the comments. So, Carlo, thank you again!
If another post appears shortly after this one goes up, don’t be alarmed if this post disappears for awhile; it will be back up later.
The Resumption of History: Part 5 — Awakenings
by Carlo Graziani
Part 4, The Sources of American Soft Power ended like this:
I’ve had some conversations with twenty-somethings lately that have left me very concerned, because of the latent bothsidist/whataboutist attitudes underlying such phrases as “to my generation” that precede some observations of near-complete detachment and cynicism. Well, honestly. Who can blame them? We transmitted to them an image of our values based on the neo-liberalism that we learned from Reagan and Thatcher. I’d be cynical too.
On the other hand, perhaps we may now live in a time when it is possible to refocus on what matters.
Channelling Churchill
Such a man, if he existed, would be England’s last chance.
In London, there was such a man.
William Manchester, from the Preamble of The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill. Visions of Glory 1874–1932
That was a very long digression from the narrative, I’m afraid, but I really feel that we need clarity of purpose now, of all times. Because events have called us to that purpose.
When Putin launched his war on Ukraine on 24 February, I was surprised, but I knew other people who were not. There was a wide spectrum of expectations with respect to the outcomes of the war. Some people expected a rapid Russian victory, others did not. There were expectations of disarray in NATO, of a massive humanitarian catastrophe, of rapid Ukrainian territorial concessions. Above all, the most logical, depressing expectation was that of another tawdry, made-for-the-24-hour-news-cycle war, narrated as blood sport in an arena the size of Texas, that would eventually move another post-Soviet border, by a bit.
I don’t know anyone whose expectation was an electrifying moment such as “I need ammunition, not a ride!”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the ex-comic ascended to the Presidency of Ukraine, not particularly popular in his country on the eve of the invasion, would not have been anyone’s favorite choice for “war leader”. He certainly stepped into the role with aplomb, though. It would have been a perfectly easy, even rationally justifiable choice—although probably fatal to the Ukrainian cause—to move his government to the relative safety of Lviv, or even accept a bugout. Instead he chose defiance, and Ukrainians, irrespective of their pre-war views about him, instantly rallied to him with a unanimity that gave the nation hope, resilience—and the strength to counter-punch far, far above its weight class. By this simple act of moral courage, Zelenskyy reminded the West, in one terrible clarifying moment, what freedom really means, what it’s worth, and what it costs.
In that cathartic moment, it was as if the scales fell from the eyes of people all over the world. As if we all woke up simultaneously from the same narcotized dream. Suddenly, NATO is a military alliance with a purpose again. Germany will actually make real, painful economic sacrifices to wean itself from Russian energy sources, and actually rebuild its military, both political impossibilities before Zelenskyy’s Teachable Moment. Finland and Sweden are done with neutrality. So are Swiss bankers. In the US, suddenly, everybody remembers that Ukraine is in fact fighting the same Russia that attempted to subvert our own democracy, and Russia’s agents of influence in the media are finally losing their outsized traction. Even right-wing radio callers want to know how to send money to help Ukraine.
The What, And The Why
We aren’t out of the woods, and we can’t be sure we will catch all the breaks—for example one can still be justifiably worried about the final outcome of the French Presidential election this Sunday, and the possibility of a rump Le Pen-Orban axis inside Europe—but I believe that the clarity of this moment is an irreversible achievement. In this moment, it is finally possible to speak sensibly about who we are, and about why it is necessary that the Putins, the Orbans, the Modis, and so on should be pushed back: We want to live securely in a democratic world of laws.
This is a Power issue, not a Justice issue. “Free enterprise” is nice to have, but is a secondary, negotiable Justice issue, subject to endless modification, as the many nations that govern themselves by means of various perfectly viable forms of social democracy demonstrate. That’s not what we’re talking about. This issue has nothing whatever to do with capitalism. The primary—Power—issue here is that our democratic institutions are to be protected from threats of corruption. Some of those threats are clearly external. Russia is a serial bad actor that has demonstrated time and again its willingness to undermine democratic institutions, in many countries, including our own, because it views them as exploitable weaknesses, and because it frames its own interests in zero-summation with those of the West. Here is the general rule that I believe we should use to think of Ukraine: when a nation chooses to organize itself democratically, another nation acting to subvert that democracy makes war on all of us. How we respond must vary from case to case, but we can never fail to respond. This we cannot compromise on, ever again. That is who we are.
And now, with that recovered memory of our real identity, we can finally understand what happened to us. During the Cold War, the ideological contest between the West and the Soviet Union was also, in a sense, a war for the priority between Power and Justice, between Madison, Jay, and Hamilton on the one hand, and Karl Marx on the other. And despite the fact that the West “won” the Cold War, Marx cleaned those guys’ clocks—no contest, a straight-up ass-kicking. We agreed with the Soviets that the contest was about the superiority or inferiority of capitalism over communism—rather than about the superiority of constitutionalist-style law-limited Power and transparent democratic institutions over the alternatives. We rejoiced when we thought that we had beat them because of our “free” enterprise, and then we set about getting rich.
Think of the irony: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher allowed Marx to set the terms of the debate when they forged the neo-liberal consensus—what mattered was Justice, rather than Power. Which was the wrong result: remember, the problems of Power are prior to those of Justice, and must be addressed first if Justice is to be addressed durably at all. But by picking the grounds on which the war of ideas was to be fought, Marx could just walk away and win anyway. Wherever he is, he must have gotten a chuckle out of that one. With that one slick move, he faked us out of our own most valuable political inheritance.
Well, no more. It’s past time that we focused on living up to the core ideals that make us the West. And on teaching those ideals to our kids. And on transmitting them to the rest of the world, free of the commercial hypocrisy of neo-liberalism. The world needs those ideals, a lot more than it ever needed capitalism.
So, anyway, Volodymyr? Thanks.
All 5 parts, once published, can be found here: The Resumption of History
New Deal democrat
First of all, I want to thank you for putting so much effort into this thoughtful, Big PIcture analysis. I wanted to follow up on my comment last night by putting some further perspective on long term history.
My perspective boils down to, “can an Empire-sized Republic long survive?”
I recently finished reading “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and then went back and compared it with Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens.”
While I was unimpressed by most of “The Dawn of Everything” – most of it was extrapolation and speculation every bit as valid as that by the drunk at the end of the bar – the part that was most convincing was the hard evidence of archeology. There are two important facts that jumped out about the excavations of ancient cities and settlements: (1) the brickwork and construction were every bit as exact and impressive as your best planned modern city or town. These were no hovels or shacks, but well-executed dwellings; and (2) as the authors point out, most of them show no evidence of palaces or any other outsized buildings we would expect to be occupied by rulers. In short, going back 10,000 years, the hard evidence of archeology suggests that most settlements were village-sized Republics, on the order of New England town halls.
As an aside, I thought Harari had the better argument. Graeber and Wengrow think that civilization drives population growth; but the evidence is most consistent with the reverse causation, i.e., population growth drove the necessity for more organized and permanent food production, and for denser and permanent living arrangements. Harari notes just how exponential long term human population growth has been. Only 2500 years ago, during the golden age of Athens or the first Chinese dynasty, human population was only about *1%* of what it is now.
In other words, there is a good argument that historically the default government for most human populations hasn’t been dynasty or autocracy, but rather small-scale Republics, with pre-set rules and public participation (Vindication for John Rawls!).
In political terms, the last 500 years, but especially the last 200 through 1991, were about the displacement of heredity autocracies by Republics on a large, nation-state or empire scale (including those where there are still monarchs, but like QE2, they only reign but do not rule). Before that, only the Roman Republic, its opponent Carthage, and medieval Venice were republics which had ever governed very large or disparate land areas.
The first transformations were the Dutch revolt of 1585 and the ensuing Republic, followed by the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688. But the real turning point, where the transformation scaled up, were the American and French Revolutions, both of which established Republics on very large scales. It took 200 years, but by 1991, all of the *ruling* monarchies had been overthrown, and in almost the entire West, including Latin America and, briefly, Russia, but also in places like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the rule of law – however shakily – was ascendant.
But can Republics also be Empires? As I wrote above, the historical examples going back 1000s of years are few and far between – and two of the three came to bad ends (the exception, Venice, was fading ever since Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, but was not finally overcome until Napoleon. Only 70 years later, it became part of Italy). The British Empire certainly qualifies, but there civic participation was most definitely *not* extended to the imperial vassal states. And now we come to the present, where the US and EU are the modern tests.
But although the major challenge of fascism was defeated in World War 2, beginning in 1989 with Tiananmen Square, the counter-trend of large states or empires being ruled by autocrats began again.* It has since been amplified by Putin’s accession in Russia, and by a host of wannabe autocrats elsewhere. (*Interestingly, the CCP before Xi had a *few* indicia of a republic, albeit an oligarchic one, and like medieval Venice, definitely not a liberal one. It had an election for the supreme ruler – just as Venice had for its Doges – with participation in an election with pre-set rules. And the Chair of the CCP was supposed to serve only one term before stepping down. But in Venice all kinds of checks and balances on the Doge’s power evolved, with several Councils holding most real authority. Needless to say, in modern China, not so much).
In other words, from a large scale historical perspective, we have turned the page into an era where the question is, can liberal democratic Republics survive long once they reach the size of Empires; or must they inevitably fall into tyranny (the ancient cycle long ago proposed by the Greeks on the scale of city-states)? From the internal viewpoint of the US in 2022, I am not too hopeful.
New Deal democrat
“Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher allowed Marx to set the terms of the debate when they forged the neo-liberal consensus—what mattered was Justice [capitalism] rather than Power [the rule of law].”
Exemplified most exasperatingly for me by Bill Clinton, who while visiting China as President, answered some questions from students at Beijing University. I remember him saying that the most important aspect of the US political system was how it enabled “free enterprise.” The Founding Fathers were spinning in their graves. I was so angry at Clinton for this remark I could have spit.
Carlo Graziani
@New Deal democrat: You were more farsighted than I, then. I didn’t see these things at the time.
Omnes Omnibus
Come on, we are watching the wheels come off of the GOP machine as we speak.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s been quite the week.
Omnes Omnibus
Also, I predict that Macron will win a significant victory over Le Pen.
Ohio Mom
@New Deal democrat: Yup, there was a while there where people kept repeating that freedom and free enterprise were linked, you could not have free enterprise without freedom. Maybe autocratic, capitalist China disabused people of that notion.
Nowadays right-wingers endlessly repeat, “We’re not a democracy, we’re a republic.”
Democracy does not get its due.
Carlo Graziani
@Ohio Mom: I hope—I hope—that this can change, now.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Oui. J’espere.
The FTF NYTimes is wanking, but I agree with your take on this.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
Not because they believe the Founders intended a republic, but because it’s another crass opportunity to link their party’s name to their country’s historical greatness and further diminish the “Democrat” Party.
Carlo Graziani
@Omnes Omnibus: , @Elizabelle: I have no take to have on this. Basically I have the NYT. And the experience of being convinced that Trump would lose in 2016. So, what have you got? Share.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle:
Hey Elizabelle, what does the NYT have to do with the comment from Omnes? I must have missed something.
Another Scott
Thanks for this. It’s been an interesting series with a lot of good discussion.
I think that it would be helpful if you define what you mean by “neo-liberal” here (I noticed YY used the term in a few of his comments as well). The context that I see it used in many of my readings often seems to be just a different spelling of the old epithet “neo-conservative”…
The prefix “neo” seems to invite muddled connotations, especially when combined with polar-opposite political categories.
To be clear, I think that you have tried to present your views clearly. It’s just that I really, really don’t think of Reagan and Thatcher as “neo-liberal”. I think of them as reactionary conservatives.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott
Carlo Graziani
@WaterGirl: NYT is “calling” a very close race. Although calling an election in France based on polling is a very different enterprise than it is in the US, and I am not certain that I think very much about the predictive value of the NYT’s political reporting. For myself, I find that a stance of extreme intellectual modesty is the most defensible one at the moment, since I have no feel at all for French politics.
Omnes Omnibus
@Carlo Graziani: Historically, the French vote their hearts and grievances in the first round. Melanchon has said to his voters “Not one vote for the fascist.” Macron slaughtered Le Pen in the debate earlier this week and the polls are showing it. The French promise of Caesar howitzers and the Milan AT missiles to Ukraine indicate Macron’s confidence in his position. Finally, I am a bit of a Francophile, so I refuse to lose faith.
smith
One thing that I think may have been overlooked in your thesis is the fact that Reagan/Thatcherism didn’t arise solely from the Cold War, but was also a reaction to the disruptive culture changes in the late 60s – early 70’s. The various movements of that time were not only concerned with civil rights and stopping the war, but also included strong critiques of capitalism and consumerism, and they scared the bejeebus out of the powers-that-be. The actions they took at the end of history were as much a way to squelch rebellion from within as they were to counter communism abroad, and started well before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The reactionary politics that have steadily gained ascendancy from then to now not only enshrine greed as the highest American value, and assert that some people are too important to be held accountable by laws, they also disavow any notion that you should care about anyone your immediate tribe. It’s all been hippie punching writ large.
The reaction to the war in Ukraine is really interesting from this point of view, and could, I hope, represent a pivot point in our history, as you propose. Why would the intensely tribal people on the American right care if Russia conquers Ukraine? They’re not Ukrainian, they don’t know anyone who is, and certainly couldn’t find Ukraine on the map. Why, especially, should they care given that they were unconcerned to have Putin’s puppet in the White House and his useful idiots scattered throughout Congress? Yet, apparently, they do care, and if they’re dissatisfied with Biden’s actions in many cases it’s because they want him to do more. I think your describing it as “recovered memory of our real identity” is right on target. Watching the Ukrainians fight so desperately to preserve their right to self-determination seems to have jolted a lot of people here into remembering that that’s what we want for ourselves, too. Whether this translates into any long term changes, however, remains to be seen.
New Deal democrat
@Ohio Mom:
It’s noteworthy that several years ago Prof. Brad DeLong, who calls himself a card-carrying neoliberal, admitted that the strategy had failed, and it was time for The Left to pick up the baton. Perhaps even more so, that last week Prof. Paul Krugman, who made his bones championing free trade against protectionism, wrote a column called “Trade and Peace: the Great Illusion,” and said:
“I’m not suggesting a return to protectionism. I am suggesting that national-security concerns about trade … need to be taken more seriously than I, among others, used to believe.”
And yes, the US is a republic. But republics select their leaders either by lot, or else by elections the rules for which are pre-set. In the case of the US, that is supposed to mean elections where every age 18 or older can vote.
Ohio Mom
@debbie: You might be right, “republic” and “democracy” are words obviously related to the two parties’ names.
Some of it is also that they don’t understand the difference between representative and direct democracy and seem to think they are two completely different things — direct democracy is “democracy” and representative democracy is a “republic.” At least that’s what I’ve picked up.
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: I’ve been using it in the sense that you quote. The problem is that the term “liberal” is politically overloaded, and can seem contradictory when applied to political figures such as Reagan and Thatcher. But if you look up the original meaning of the term “liberalism” the contradiction disappears. It’s an artifact of the muddled terminology of American politics. In fact the term has more to do with freedom (“liberty”) than it does with progressive politics.
For the purposes of this essay, I think it is simply easiest to drop the “progressive” association of the term “liberal”. Then “neo-liberal” is just a label for “the not terribly well-thought out fusion of commercial and political values championed by both conservatives and centrist Democrats from the late ’80s onwards”.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
Frankly, they understand very little about anything.
Ohio Mom
@New Deal democrat: Isn’t it that republics are ruled by law with varying degrees of democracy?
We do have some instances of direct democracy, when voters, not their representatives, decide on local levies and state issues — if you are a voter in California, you get to vote on lots of issues.
Then again, in my state, voters can vote for an end to gerrymandering and get ignored by the party in power
Brachiator
Has that much really changed in the US? Republicans, the base and GOP officials, are still in deep denial about Russian attempts to subvert our democracy. Cynical GOP members of Congress have at best weakly assembled behind Biden, and even more cynically assert that Trump would somehow magically prevented Putin from attacking Ukraine. Jaded reporters don’t even bother questioning ties that various conservative politicians have to Russia.
Meanwhile, the degree to which Putin has successfully subverted democracy in the UK by buying off the Conservative Party continues with little notice.
Has Russian influence in the Middle East diminished at all?
European nations have roused themselves, but it is unclear what this means. The world watches as the sickening events continue in Ukraine. Nations have decided to wait and to react to what Russia decides to do next. I suppose this is the only rational choice, but it still leaves Putin in control of events. Russia may be hurt by continuing or increased sanctions, but Putin seems coldly not to care.
I have no idea what this means, especially the continued attacks on neo-liberalism. The world is taking some steps to isolate Russia from the economies of the rest of the world, but otherwise there has been no deep transformation of the economy, and certainly no repudiation of capitalism. Western cynics are pushing the idea of disengaging from China, but this is indistinguishable from the old racist fantasies of white Western nations freely looting the resources and labor of Asia and Africa.
And the question is being asked, what, exactly, does the West have to offer to the world, apart from empty promises and convenient self-serving lies?
Ishiyama
I resemble that remark.
Chetan Murthy
Carlo, thank you for this. For the entire series. For thinking thru this. Have you seen Brad Delong’s Economic History of the Long 20th Century? I feel like you and he might have interesting things to say to each other. He also feels that there’s a sense in which Capitalism has usurped for itself powers and privileges that belong elsewhere, and that the “marketization of everything” has robbed people of rights they once possessed, and that they are angry at being dispossessed of.
Second thought: Throughout your series, I’ve been wondering whether what you write applies to White Americans: whether they’re actually wanting rule of law, whether they even give a damn about Capitalism, or whether all they care about is whether Whites rule over all the dusky-hued masses, and damn the details, damn the philosphy, damn the morality. And frankly, I don’t quite believe that Ukraine’s shining example has changed anything in their minds:
The Ukrainians are White, after all.
Carlo Graziani
@smith: What you’re saying is clearly right, and points to a way in which I should be more careful in which I state what I’m trying to say here. I don’t mean to imply that Reagan and Thatcher were symptoms of the Cold War. Clearly they were part of a conservative response to the cultural forces that you identify.
But I am saying that they had a baleful influence on the ideology of the era that coincided with the end of the Cold War. That influence had the effect of misleading us about what we should value in politics, for three decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. What has happened this week that will matter electorally in November?
New Deal democrat
@Ohio Mom: “republics are ruled by law with varying degrees of democracy”
That’s a fair summary, although in the medieval republics of Italy (Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa) that “varying degree” translated into (frequently hereditary) oligarchy.
Rusty
@Omnes Omnibus: They have stacked the supreme court and the six reactionaries see themselves as a super legislature giving up a thumbs up or down to anything they want. With that power they can tilt the field toward the Republicans, and even if the GOP loses the 6 can continue to seriously impede any Democratic legislation or acts of governance. I am deeply pessimistic about the next decade.
Chetan Murthy
@Rusty: They gerrymander everything in sight they can, suppress voters everywhere they can, and have installed laws to allow them to overturn state slates of electors. And their base shows no sign of turning on them.
I also see no evidence that America is turning from the path we were on a few months ago; indeed, the fact that so many Americans see Biden’s response to … *everything* as shitty, convinces me that the GrOPers really have succeeded in weaponizing everything, turning everything into a partisan issue, and using lies on all of it.
Gin & Tonic
“Germany will actually make real, painful economic sacrifices?”
I’ll believe that when I see it.
Omnes Omnibus
@PJ: The leaks of the McCarthy tapes are pretty clearly just a teaser of what is going to come out of the Jan. 6 Committee over the summer. Just in time for the fall campaigns. The infighting over DeSantis’s attack on the Mouse. MTG and Cawthorn self-immolating. Meanwhile, the benefits of what Biden and the Dems have done in the past 18 months will become more evident. And so on….
Carlo Graziani
@Chetan Murthy: I haven’t dared touch race in this. It’s not that I don’t care—I do, very much. But it’s too charged. It’s a third rail. Last time I casually blundered into a moral argument of that kind of magnitude I fucked up so badly that I can’t imagine trying it, certainly not in passing while going somewhere else.
I want to think that there are enough of us who don’t think the way you describe. There were certainly enough of us to evict Trump, although admittedly not the majority of white people. But, on the other hand, demographic trends over time do seem encouraging.
I’ve never spoken to Brad DeLong, although I have occasionally checked his blog. I see now that you mention it that he has a book out. I’ll order it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Rusty: @Chetan Murthy: I’ve no interest in talking people off the ledge anymore. I’ve offered my opinion. You can do what you want with it.
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: I think you’re right, I certainly hope so.
The latest polls ( I don’t know the track record of French polling) show Macron increasing his lead to 10+ points
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/22/french-election-polls-suggest-macron-pulling-away-from-le-pen-on-last-day-of-campaign?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: You are the anti-Adam. And thank you.
Villago Delenda Est
Reagan and Thatcher were doing precisely what our own plutocrat oligarchs wanted them to do; put justice as a diversion before power, because they hate the Enlightenment and its promise of checks on power and spreading it out to everyone, not just a small elite. These creatures are still with us, and they have yet to be defeated. MLK had it right about who is pulling the strings, and why the working class white man should ally with the black man to bring down the puppetmasters.
Omnes Omnibus
@japa21: Well, my contributions here are usually fairly concise.
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: And to the point. So anti-Adam in a few ways. I should point out, I exclude his latest feats of reporting on Ukraine.
Villago Delenda Est
@kalakal: This is good news. I hope the French pollsters are not incompetent hacks like Rasmussen.
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: What this means is that Qevin will never be Speaker, even if the Rethugs take over the House in the midterms. Rumor has it that both Stefanik and Jordan had a hand in getting Lordy Tapes in the hands of the NYT, sealing Qevin’s doom.
debbie
@Villago Delenda Est:
I am so ready for the in-fighting that’s sure to happen!
PJ
@Omnes Omnibus: The McCarthy thing is business as usual for Republicans – it won’t change anybody’s minds when voting. Nor will the MTG perjury or DeSantis attacking Disney. To date, the press has little interest in the good that Biden has done, and the public even less. Granted, there’s seventh months between now and election day, but unless the press dispenses with the bothsiderism and focuses on defending democracy, I can’t see anything the January 6th committee produces changing anyone’s minds. The Republicans have been the anti-democratic, pro-autocratic party for a while now, and their voters love it.
kalakal
@Carlo Graziani:
Neo liberalism, in the US & UK at least, has very little, if anything, to do with progressive politics. It’s the Manchester Liberalism of Cobden & Bright, stripped of its moral purpose, eg pacifism and anti- imperalism leaving behind only laisse faire economics and anti-protectionism. The LiberalDemocrat party in the UK illustrates this well, it consists of 2 factions. One is pretty much Classic Liberalism – well meaning, middle of the road, socially permissive, with a large dose of knit-your-own-museli right onness coupled with a belief in a regulated market economy. The other Neo-liberal wing is pretty close to US conservatives & centrist Democrats, a very muddled & inconsistent laisse faireism with a IGMFY attitude towards society.
Another Scott
@New Deal democrat:
To play Devil’s advocate:
We had a president in the 1960s who said:
And it was a disaster and a failure in Vietnam, and didn’t help Czechoslovakia in 1968 either.
Lots of people thought that opening up to China would lead to them becoming more democratic. It still might, and beats the alternative (China being poor, insular, quasi-aligned with Russia).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
kalakal
@PJ:
As you say a lot depends on the press. My optimisic side sees this as being a rolling front page daily shitshow for the Republicans. The press will give it a lot of coverage, not because they want to do the right thing but because more importantly ( for them) it will get lots of views. As that toad Moonves said “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,”, in this case it would be good for America.
We already see Republicans starting underbussing each other, we’re going to see a lot more of that, they’re a bunch of feral rats. Finally I think a lot of what Biden has achieved so far will be having a positive effect on people lives in 6 months time, gas prices are already falling, supply chains will be more stable and, let us hope, a Ukranian victory will deliver a massive blow to the anti democratic authoritarians in the US
Any
PJ
@kalakal: I hope you’re right.
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: Thanks, but I still think that it’s a poor term (recognizing that you aren’t redefining it).
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Neo-liberal,Neo-conservative
Reagan was a Goldwater acolyte. One could keep going back (though it’s true that Goldwater, and Taft, and …, we’re never president). He and Thatcher were not constructing a new system, they were breaking an existing one – as reactionaries do.
My $0.02.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
...now I try to be amused
@smith:
This is the second time. In 2004 Ukrainians took to the streets to fight for their democracy in the Orange Revolution. The contrast between it and Bush’s re-election made me want to cry.
The Russians are explicitly trying to reverse the Orange Revolution in this war.
kalakal
@PJ: So do I. That’s my sunny side outlook, I have my darker view too, but I’m not going to let it rule me, that’s what those bastards want and I’m not going to give them what they want.
I really am more optimistic than not, I think Carlo is basically right, this is an important moment when we have the chance to reverse the creeping fascism that has been growing for years. In the 1930s authoritarianism seemed unstoppable, it was stopped at an horrific cost. We, now, thanks to Putin’s megalomania have the chance to stop in the 2020s, hopefully at a far, far less dreadful price in blood though it will still be a high one.
bookworm1398
I’ve agreed with most of the series but the optimism here seems to be overstated. There’s no reason to think the present moment of unity will last more than a few months. I see various political factions already moving to use public sympathy for Ukraine to push their pre existing agendas. We should break ties with Saudi because they are friendly with Russia! No, we should strengthen ties with them to get off Russian oil! People feel there is some moral clarity right now but it won’t last as the propaganda gets into gear.
Aussie sheila
Thanks Carlo for your thoughtful series.
One aspect where we have a slight disagreement might be the efficacy of proclaiming ‘democracy’ as a globally relatable goal.
While everyone posting here understands it’s importance it would be naive to believe that it is not an abstraction, and as such, is not really concrete to people who either have other more pressing concerns, or who think ‘democracy’ means ‘what we have now that suits me best.’
Unfortunately, I believe the end of the Cold War revealed that what people opposed wasn’t lack of democracy, but fear of the ‘other’ for reasons only a few really understood. Unless and until activist politics infuses ‘democracy’ with tangible benefits for the vast majority of people, it won’t ever be the popular rallying cry well meaning people believe it to be. Just watch as democratic rights are dismantled both in the UK and US, as people are are easily swayed by campaigns against immigrants and other people who are easily demonised.
The democratic rights we have now, such as they are, were only won by tremendous struggle from below. Preserving and extending them won’t be any less difficult. Power concedes nothing, and this time is no different. I believe the next decade will be terrible for ordinary people, whatever happens in Ukraine. I truly believe there will be a severe recession and that it will be the last straw for millions of people, especially if the Right blames both Ukraine’s struggle for freedom, as well as immigrants.
Anyway, thank you once again for your thoughtful series.
Carlo Graziani
Thank you all for reading this thing and for your comments, including the criticisms. And particularly for sticking with it throughout the week. I know that it must have been puzzling to figure out where this thing was going as it meandered through its stages. For all of you who had the patience to see the argument through, you have my most profound gratitude, irrespective of whether I have persuaded you of anything.
I’m off to bed. I’ll check in on this thread again tomorrow morning (US Central Time) to see if there is any discussion thet I can contribute to.
sab
Initial impression (I stoppecd reading when you haliogized Churchill.) Then I came back and read your post.
sab
@sab: Very worth reading.
sab
Not a political comment. Very First World. Everytime I wake up in the middle of the night and flail my arms I accidentally clobber a cat sleeping next to me. My cats know this is a risk. They actually compete. Most days are okay. Some days the winning cat gets clobbered.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Truly appreciate all that you have put in to write this thought provoking series!
I don’t actually have too much to add to what I have previously posted. What you have written, as a clarion call of action to like minded individuals, is surely the right course. As a guidance for the US conducting itself in the world, as ideal as it would be, well I have zero confidence in nation-states as viable vehicles for moral advancement. The best way for the US & the “West” to promote liberal democracy is leading by enviable example (which has been when they were the most effective in the past), & not by sanctimonious hectoring or outright coercion.
I also do not agree that solving the Problem of “Power” must necessarily precede solving the Problem of “Justice”, even if I agree it is the priority for the US/UK & many parts of the West right now. The 2 are inextricably intertwined. No power structure will survive for long if it does not deliver material improvements to the population, & material improvements for the population often lead to greater expectations/demands for change in the power structure.
Fundamentally, I think we need to ask ourselves why do human beings choose to organize themselves in the 1st place, to form governments, to try different forms of government. Is it to find expression for some deeply held innate value, or to attain/preserve the physical security/material comfort/ability to live as one wishes?.
Lastly, I will repeat what I said yesterday (unless I am misreading you): IMHO the challenge for liberal democracies is not that the polity & the population somehow forgot their inner liberal core & need reminder, but that a substantial minority of any human population are highly susceptible to illiberal ideas & authoritarianism, as a fundamental psychological condition, & another substantial portion of any human populations are apathetic & will sway w/ the prevailing wind. Right now, due to a perfect storm of converging crises (stagnation/deterioration in standard of living & quality of life for the working/middle classes in much of the developed world due to decades of neoliberal dogma in economic policy, collapse of trust in expertise due to the triumphalist neoliberal consensus among the “experts” proven so harmful, rapidly changing social values, challenge by emerging economies to the historical Western hegemony, incipient disruption from AGW, etc.), illiberal forces can leverage the resultant anxiety & search for security to seize power & reshape the power structure to their liking. The parts of the human population psychologically well-disposed to illiberalism/authoritarianism will be repulsed by your clarion call, & the apathetics need more than a clarion call based on core values to be aroused to action.
YY_Sima Qian
@New Deal democrat: A minor nitpick: A leader of China hold 3 important titles: President (Chairman) of the nation, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, & Chairman of the Central Military Commission, the last being the most significant indicator of real power. (Both Deng Xiaoping & Jiang Zemin held on to being the Chairman of the CMC to wield power behind the scenes. Deng never held the Presidency or General Secretaryship, Jiang handed over the Chairmanship of the CMC to Hu Jintao 2 years after relinquishing the Presidency & the General Secretaryship. When Hu handed all three positions to Xi Jinping at the same time on 2012, it was taken as indication of both Hu’s relative weakness & the CCP regime’s further progress at institutionalizing power transfer. Of the 3 titles, only the ceremonial Presidency had a 2 term limited, the General Secretaryship of the Party & the Chairmanship of the CMC do not, but there is an unwritten convention (& relatively recent one at that, developed during Jiang & Hu years) the leader should not stay for more than 2 terms. When Xi pushed through the change in Constitution to eliminate the term limit of the Presidency, it was a clear signal that he did not intend to abide by that convention, & will eliminate any potential formal constraints, even indirect ones.
As for Clinton’ speech, he knew his audience. Most people in developing economies are primarily motivates by seeking material improvement, democracy in the abstract holds only abstract appeal. The vast majority of people marching around the country in 1989 (which was an entirely urban phenomenon in a country where 80% of the population was rural & who had been the primary beneficiaries of the 1st decade of reform) were protesting against rampant corruption, high inflation, & loss of social welfare. Liberal values such as freedom of speech, thought & association certainly motivated the students & the intellectuals, but they were also protesting against low pay for university graduates & university professors, being assigned work after graduation, the overbearing influence of the work unit on private lives, etc. The CCP regime proceeded to address most of the ills in the following 2 decades (not corruption) w/o liberalizing politically.
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: Thanks for this. It’s a good reminder that politics of an important event (or sequence of events) is rarely distillable into a single word or sentence – especially in the context of another country.
I think that there’s a similar huge backstory and complexity in Obama’s speech in Cairo and the Arab Spring and all that followed.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
Since neoliberalism is the root cause of everything that ails us according to you. Can you define it? Thanks.
Carlo Graziani
@YY_Sima Qian: Hey there.
Let me address this part, anyway:
This made me realize a linguistic pitfall that I could have addressed (this thing could have used a bit more text anyway, amiright :-/ ?) When I write that “the problems of Power are prior to those of Justice” the word “prior” is supposed to evoke “priority”, not temporal order. I did not mean to imply a governance-design process wherein some committe agrees on all the constitutionalism this year, and puts off all bread-and-butter issues (and, lest we forget, civil society law) to later years.
I meant instead to suggest a structural ordering. You can build a robust Justice on top of a solid infrastructure of well-limited Power. But without such an infrastructure, one builds on sand. This is the lesson of a century of purely Marxist governance projects: their Justice designs are among the most ephemeral that humans have ever erected.
You furnish another excellent example in your reply to Scott, with Xi “violating” China’s most recent “unwritten constitution”. China now appears to be pretty firmly under Xi’s control. He may be more competent than not. He may be more public-minded than self-interested. Your understanding of such matters is certainly much better than mine. The point is that whatever failings he brings to the table, China is stuck with them, apparently for the foreseeable future.
I do see that near the end of the essay I wrote “…the problems of Power are prior to those of Justice, and must be addressed first…”. That “first” is a problem, because it does suggest temporal ordering. This is the problem when I try to write something engaging: sometimes I can get quite sloppy.
Carlo Graziani
@schrodingers_cat: Scott quoted a definition at comment #13 that is functionally the same as the one that I use here.
As we discussed in passing in that thread, the confusing and distracting term in the context of US political discourse is that word “liberal”. That word has no connotation of progressivism whatever in “neo-liberal”, and is rather used in it’s older, original sense associated with “liberty” (of a certain kind, of course).
In Italy, left and center-left critiques of US market-driven politics of the past few decades frequently used the word “liberismo”, perjoratively. It’s the same root.
New Deal democrat
@YY_Sima Qian:
I don’t think liberal democracies or republics are at all inherently better behaved than other types of governments: see, e.g., cowboys/Indians, Israelis/Palestinians, Roman Republic/every other tribe or polity in the Mediterranean. When they develop in the hinterlands – both Venice and the Netherlands were founded by populations literally fleeing from invaders out into the salt marshes of river deltas, and then there’s the whole US in North America thing – they do seem to become very prosperous, because there’s no monarch siphoning off a huge share of wealth, and the commercial interests are in control. But of course they are subject to economic stagnation like everywhere else.
The difference (imo anyway) is, to mix cultural metaphors, how can the populace depose a government that has lost the Mandate of Heaven? In republics, “vote the bums out” is a viable solution, until a new regime solves the economic or social problems. I think that voters in the US will continue to do that until one of the parties actually solves the economic malaise of the middle/working class. In the case of the Roman Republic, it took 100 years of the patricians blocking the plebians’ agenda until the latter finally went all in for a demagogic general who showered them with benefits, asking only to be accepted as dictator for life.
Where there is no vote, how then are economic reverses dealt with? There is a whole theory of revolutions that holds they occur after a prior period of prosperity is reversed.
Another Scott
Since DeLong was mentioned, I decided to poke around to see what he has had to say about this.
Someone filed a DMCA takedown request of his slides The Neoliberal Turn. :-/
But there’s a video of a lecture: Why the Neoliberal Turn? (27:22)
Well worth a listen.
Cheers,
Scott.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
I’ll take a stab at this one…
In the last few days, recordings of the Republican leaders of the House and Senate came out which showed shocking disloyalty to dear leader, and it is possible that this may affect MAGA turnout – it sounds like they’re pissed.
This is a scandal that the MSM is giving some airtime to at the moment – and I doubt that the former guy will be quiet about this one either. Fan the flames and get the popcorn – fight, fight, fight!
TupeloPhoney
I was puzzled by this piece, to be honest. Crudely stated, the premise seems to be that the West was essentially bamboozled by the USSR into viewing the Cold War as a battle between communism and capitalism, as opposed to communism vs. liberal democracy. To the contrary, it seems to me that the “freedom = capitalism” framing had been very mindfully and intentionally implemented since 1917 by the West’s ruling class itself (and America’s ruling class in particular) in order to prevent the benefits of socialism being demanded by and accruing to workers; as a safety valve emergency accomodations could be made by the elites as necessary. America’s ruling class was more than happy to ‘heighten the contradictions’ all by themselves, and it’s been working out great for them for lo these 100+ years. I largely agree that the U.S. population as a whole has been hoodwinked, but this has been at the hands of Americans, not Soviets.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
If the GOP loses in Nov (FSM willing), maybe our emboldened Dems will use their majorities to pass some judicial reform that happens to bump up the number of SC justices to match the number of Federal Districts.
We can fight back.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Forgot about the other stuff from the last week… thanks commenters!
In the last week, Republicans fired a warning shot at their new enemies, big business, with Florida’s removal of Disney’s tax incentives for the crime of bucking the party line.
Corporate America on the whole has historically been pretty cowardly, but I wonder how this is going down in the C suites…
Carlo Graziani
@Another Scott: That is worth a listen!
And I laughed out loud when he stuck a knife into Friedman’s understanding of currency markets…
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
This is an important point – it has always been this way, yet progress can be won.
Carlo Graziani
@TupeloPhoney: I wouldn’t say “bamboozled by the USSR” at all. Rather, I would agree with you that the categorical confusions making up neo-liberalism were convenient to powerful, wealthy elites—I believe I wrote as much.
What I’m saying at the end is that the effect was that, as a political culture, we bamboozled ourselves. We thought we put Marxism down, while in fact we were adopting Marx’s essential political-philosophical categories. Instead of turning to our Enlightenment categories, which —I believe and argue— furnish a sounder, safer foundation for political philosophy.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: I actually understood what you mean by “prioritization”, & certainly agreed that resolving issues w/ the power structure has higher priority in the US/UK, I just do not agree that it is applicable as a general rule for all places at all times. The drawbacks of authoritarianism w/ inadequate checks on power is obvious, & history is littered w/ examples. I am personally concerned whether Xi is actually unintentionally digging the grave of the CCP regime (much more so if he goes for a 4th term 5 years hence).
However, not all authoritarianism are the same. Yes, most suffer from short-medium term instability, & even the most functional ones are vulnerable to long term sclerosis (just look at the Chinese dynasties). Looking at democracies over the past few decades, I have to wonder if they too are not equally vulnerable: the immature ones are prone to short-medium term instability, & the more developed/mature ones also susceptible to long term ossification, just over a longer time frame than authoritarian systems. Indeed, perhaps that is the fate of any system of government designed & operated by imperfect human beings. Instead of history marching toward a certain Hegelian/Marxist finality, we actually see cycles at the time scale of centuries.
YY_Sima Qian
@New Deal democrat: I think I am more aligned w/ your views. As for what happens when Mandate of Heaven is lost, well in the Chinese historical context violent overthrow (by rebellion or usurpation) is justified. It is precisely the fear of that outcome that keeps Chinese dynasties relatively well behaved (internally), at least for a while. However, after the good times last a while, complacency sets in and the rulers & mandarin start to take ever greater risks thinking they will always turn out well (as they have in the recent past), & then having to take even greater risks to address the new crises when things do not pan out.
YY_Sima Qian
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Oh I agree. I do not advocate surrender or apathy, I just think we need to be clear eyed about reality, & humble about how others (in different countries, cultures, contexts) perceive it.
schrodingers_cat
@Carlo Graziani: I want your definition. When you say neoliberalism what do you specifically mean with regards to economic policy.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: I think we both recoil against the term, because (among other things) so many Lefty McLeftish types uses it as a cudgel to pound on people on our side of the left/right divide (and help further poison the word “liberal” among the rest of us). It’s kinda like flammable/inflammable/non-flammable in some respects, IMO.
Nevertheless, as DeLong points out in his lecture above, it’s a common term in the political-economic discourse.
“Liberal” has, it seems to me, always meant many things, and creating the term “neo-liberal” to mean arguing against things like government spending is approaching double-think.
Eisenhower Penn State Commencement speech (from June 1955):
tl;dr – It’s probably too late to argue against “neo-liberal” as a term. Treat it as fnord and think about the rest of the argument.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
Speaking of history, …
Very short thread:
Nobody wants to be the sucker who misses out on the easy money. So, 99% chasing easy money end up damaged because they forget that TANSTAAFL. And the cycle repeats.
(via dsquareddigest)
Cheers,
Scott.
Carlo Graziani
@schrodingers_cat: Well, if you refer to Part 1 of the series I wrote this:
TupeloPhoney
@Carlo Graziani: Thanks very much for responding. I appreciate that you won’t have time to re-respond to every rando out there, so I don’t mean to engage you in a back-and-forth, but I had an additional comment. I really enjoyed your thoughtful piece and it gave me a lot to consider. Warm regards, TuPh
What I take to be your central thesis, that positing policital* Enlightenment (rather than libertarian capitalist) ideals against Marixst ones would have been a much better *liberal* response to the Cold War is extremely compelling to me. I’m not sure we have the same view of political culture, however, in that I view a distinct subset of “we” as bamboozling the rest of “ourselves.” Specifically, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher selling out political Enlightenment principles and leveraging Socialism as a foil to further entrench crony capitalism would be ironic only if one believed Thatcher and Reagan held such political principles more dear than the dictates of crony capitalism itself. The evidence for this is mixed.
Perhaps it’s not so much a matter of the West permitting Marx to dictate the field of play for the contest of ideas, as much as Marx simply better predicting how capitalism would likely play out in practice at modern scale. A Soviet-style command economy isn’t the answer to this, but from my perspective as an American much of Western Europe has better leveraged the “threat” of socialism to provide a reasonable balance between economic viability and social justice. Where we might differ is to what extent different power structures in the West viewed at various times worldwide Communism as a threat, and at other times a convenient boogyman useful for domestic political battles. Within that context the “Communism vs. Capitalism” construct can be cynically used to great effect.
*it isn’t clear that Enlightenment ideals weren’t perfectly capitalist — to the extent that they concerned economic organization, afaik Enlightenment thought tended laissez faire; and as I’m sure you know Adam Smith’s writings significantly influenced Marx.
WaterGirl
@TupeloPhoney:
If I had to guess, I would say that Carlo is very happy being engaged in a good faith back-and-forth.
TupeloPhoney
@WaterGirl: Fair enough! Just conveying that I understand he can’t address every instance of incorrectness on the Internet, and an implicit pledge not to follow up with a “you didn’t respond because you know I’m right” comment ;-) I agree with the vast bulk of what Carlo wrote in any event.
Geminid
@Carlo Graziani: Carlo, I appreciate the thought and effort you put into this series. It has generated a lot of good discussion. I have participated little, but that may result from a different sensibility and maybe a different point of view. Yours is more like that of an eagle examining history from several thousand feet up; mine is more like that of a yellowhammer, the state bird of my my birthstate of Alabama. I tend to hop around on the forest floor picking out bugs from the humus and the downed trees.
I notice a lack of attention to women, but this is not a criticism but an observation of an obvious fact. Our political history has been made by men, and our institutions and customs are manmade. The occasional woman leader, like Elizabeth I and Margaret Thatcher, worked within the structures that men dominated before and after their tenure. Those who didn’t, like Joan of Arc, did not fare well.
If we are aware, we can see the misogyny and sexism that keeps women down to the detriment of us all. But these are just the most visible manifestations of the patriarchy that permeates our society and culture. I’d like to think that some future Carlo will be able to describe the political implications of the human race’s liberation from this negative power. It has held us back for millennia. But that will take more than a few generations, I think.
Anyway, thanks!
Carlo Graziani
@TupeloPhoney: WaterGirl is, of course, quite correct. There is no “rando” issue here. I want the discussion. I’ll miss this thread when it finally dies.
It’s hard to come to agreement on large framing issues like this one, though. The framing of what the Cold War struggle was about, to wit that it was about “Capitalism versus Communism/Socialism/Marxism” always bothered me. This was the framing that was of course the received wisdom on the left, and was certainly prevalent in Europe (I grew up in Italy).
But the dimension beyond those capitalistic values—the ones that I eventually came to understand and describe in this essay as Power-limitation values—seemed to me at the same time more profound, yet oddly lacking in natural defenders and propagandists where you might have expected to find them.
In the end, I don’t think those values were deliberately suppressed by a wealthy conspiracy or cabal. I just think we got too comfortable as a society without them, too our loss.
YY_Sima Qian
@Carlo Graziani: Might be a death thread, but sleeping on some of the discussion throughout the series, I am the opinion that it was not actually a mistake for the West to conclude that it won the Cold War because of superiorities of capitalist economic organization & liberal democratic political organization. Both were clearly superior to Communist totalitarianism. To the vast majority of people behind the Iron Curtain, the superiority of the western system was most obvious through the disparity in material wealth & comfort, which in turn legitimized the proclaimed superiority of liberal democratic governance. The same dynamic applied to the Global South. De-emphasizing the superiority capitalism to communism as systems of economic organization meant surrendering perhaps the most compelling case to influencing the rest of the world.
The “West’s” mistake was in conflating the two, as you so eloquent summarized early on. There were 2 distinct (though related) key factors for the outcome, but it was melted into one. The mistake was further compounded by 2 others: 1st in ignoring that superiority to Communist totalitarianism in hindsight was a pretty low bar & by no means should have suggested that the systems in the “West” (of which there was in fact a great variety, but the ones in the US/UK were emphasized due to the relative distribution of power & discursive power of the English language) represented some kind of end of history perfection, 2nd in ignoring that there were/are infinite variety to capitalism & consolidating around the neoliberal (again, promoted by the US/UK) consensus that proved deleterious to the solving of Problems of both Power & Justice. Thus, the failure of neoliberalism, w/ corrosive effect on both Power & Justice became plain for all to see, it served to also delegitimize liberal democracy (at least to a certain extend, certainly delegitimized the sanctimony sermonizing from the US/EU) in many places & in many minds, where liberal democracy was not already deeply entrenched (& even in places where it should have been deeply entrenched).
Carlo Graziani
Out to dinner and live music, will check in again later!
schrodingers_cat
@Carlo Graziani:
In the context of the United States neo-liberal implies a specific set of macroeconomic policies and your quote alludes to vague generalities.
Guardian and other left leaning publications have reduced to neoliberal to an epithet devoid of meaning. Hence my question.
YY_Sima Qian
@schrodingers_cat:
@Another Scott:
@Carlo Graziani:
Likely dead thread, but I will give what I see as the key features of Neoliberalism in practice (whatever the philosophical origin):
A great example of Neoliberalism (& the best kind at that) in action was how the Obama administration administered TARP to rescue the financial industry. The administration was extremely proud of the fact that that they had stabilized the financial system while minimizing risk to the tax payer money (indeed earning a profit in end, efficiency of process), & they should be proud of that as far as it goes, but in so doing they also surrendered leverage over the financial institutions reducing the chance at fundamental reforms to correct structural imbalance & minimize risk of future crisis (banks are still too big to fail & need to to be bailed out over the middle class families to preserve the system, fairness of outcome). This was a strong critique from the Left at the time.
The initial appeal of neoliberalism is obvious, as a “Third Way” alternative between the perceived radicalism of “free market” fundamentalism of Reagan/Thatcher & Communism (or Socialism w/ very high degree of state control/intervention). In practice, however, its abiding faith in the minimally regulated market served to validate/reinforce the assumptions & framing that underpinned “free market” radicalism, it had no answer to the increasing concentration of power & wealth in the hands of a tiny minority, it did not have an answer to the development of de facto monopolies or oligopolies, it did not have an answer to income inequality (other than welfare as a short term band aid), it did not have an answer to addressing the calamitous disruptions caused by AGW, & it did not have an answer to entrenching economic hegemony of the already developed over the developing.
Another Scott
@YY_Sima Qian: Thanks for this.
However, not to relitigate the past, but…
A couple of things:
1) Geithner and a lot of the people around him administered those programs and Obama, rightly, let his cabinet people run their agencies because they’re supposed to understand them better than he did. And the conventional wisdom was that everything would be worse if the banks collapsed so they had to be saved (and not punished to any severe extent for causing the housing bubble and all the rest in the first place). One can argue about that, and I come down more on the Dean Baker side (temporarily nationalize them, etc.), but reasonable arguments can be made for either view.
2) Obama could only do things to the extent that Congress and the Courts permitted. There were lots and lots of stories during the time and in the aftermath that there was no way that things like “cramdown” would ever be approved by Congress, and there would have undoubtedly been years of court battles if he tried. He had less leverage than might have appeared (recall that many of the healthy-ish banks wanted nothing to do with the forced mergers with the basket-case banks because they didn’t want Uncle Sam looking over their shoulder and restricting their pay, etc.). Big structural reforms would have had to be approved by Congress.
Without big majorities of like-minded people, it’s really, really hard for a president to make big changes even in a crisis. Even Roosevelt didn’t get everything he wanted because he had to compromise with conservative Democrats on many issues.
But beyond that, my continuing trouble with the “neo-liberal” term is that how can one (as many Lefty McLeftish types do) paint Clinton as being one if Reagan and Thatcher were the archetypes? Clinton wanted to expand job training, national health care, and all sorts of other government programs, he wanted a big “peace dividend”, he wanted to protect the surplus, pay down the debt, and Gore famously wanted it to go into a “lock box”. Believing that The Market can do good things in its limited sphere isn’t the same as wanting to gut antitrust or gut social spending and all the rest the way Reagan and Thatcher wanted.
Yes, DeLong makes a good point that people were unhappy that productivity growth (and hence wages and standards of living) started to stagnate in the mid-70s and people were dissatisfied. And there were no failures examples that those on the right could point to of things working better under their proposed system, so they could promise the moon without being called on it. And Democrats and the left were on their back foot on how to respond. But I don’t think it then follows that the Democrats became squishy Republicans and all came to believe in some over-arching “neo-liberal” Reaganomic orthodoxy. (IOW, I don’t think that the DLC and the rise of Clintonian triangulation was a foreshadowing of the end of the Republic as some on the left (not you and Carlo) seem to believe.) Signing on to “the era of big government is over” out of political expediency to win an election, or saying “you have to balance your family budget so the federal government should to” as a way to disarm attacks over deficits doesn’t mean that you want to strangle federal social programs the way the RWNJs do. Compromise is not the same as taking up the opposition’s views.
In short, “Neo-liberal” seems to me to be a lazy short-hand that obscures more than it reveals. Maybe that’s my bias and a reflection of not doing enough reading and thinking about it. Dunno.
Thanks again. I appreciate it.
Cheers,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
@Another Scott: There was plenty of deregulation in Clinton years, especially around the finance industry. I do not believe either Clintons (Bill or Hillary) or Obama were/are card carrying neoliberals, if they had dictatorial powers I am sure they would have tried to implement different policies in some areas, but the policies they & D controlled congresses were able to implement ended up being pretty strongly neoliberal. The consensus & conventional wisdom was that strong, too strong to overcome.
I don’t strongly begrudge the Obama Administration for how it handled the financial bailout (indeed, I was pretty supportive of their efforts at the time), stabilizing the system had to be the priority, but we have to recognize the paths not taken & the long term costs of the choices made. Same w/ not prosecuting members of the GWB Administration for war crimes & crimes against humanity, or not prosecuting more of the bankers for their shenanigans, or playing more hardball against the scorched earth GOP obstruction more often. Every instance of accommodation can be defended in isolation, the imperative is always to keep the light on & the machinery of government functioning (or so it always appears), but those accommodates just allow the structural imbalances to slowly accumulate until it reaches crisis & the ball cannot be kicked down the road any more.
Same applied to their foreign policies (though I get the sense that Hillary Clinton is much more interventionist than either Bill Clinton or Obama), there is only so much a president can do to buck the “Blob”.
Carlo Graziani
@Geminid: I do remember feeling some respect, (although not sympathy), for Mrs Thatcher, who was clearly a keen and clear-headed leader, and who had not only shown the strength of will to ascend to power in the male-dominated Tory party, and larger UK political system, but done so by putting the Fear of God in her allies and enemies. That took unusual courage and determination, although her moral instincts were undoubtedly petty.
That respect was by contrast to the pure, unalloyed contempt that was the only possible response to Reagan’s clearly-exhibited imbecility, and for his role as emollient publicist for policies he barely comprehended.
Carlo Graziani
I appear to have triggered a surprising (but not unwelcome!) discussion by invoking the term “neo-liberal” as a shorthand in the essay. That term is not really a technical term at all, and doesn’t seem to have a stable agreed meaning in either economics or politics. To the extent that people have sort of understood what it meant, its meaning has also drifted over time, since YY_Sima Qian’s attribution of TARP politics to neo-liberalism seems no less legitimate than, say, attributing the ATC union-busting of Reagan to the same, and yet that seems almost incoherent.
I helped myself to many lazy shortcuts in this essay. I did give fair warning in the introduction that this was not to be an academic article—had I attempted such an article of this scope, the result would have been a bloated, unreadable, footnote-encrusted monstrosity, much longer, utterly unsuitable for this forum (and given my own competencies, probably for any other). One such shortcut was certainly the term “neo-liberal”. I don’t feel that this was the gravest of the sins that I committed, given the protean character of the term, but it is true that I was in a hurry to get on to other matters, and kept the definition very lapidary.
The ideas that I wanted that term to cover are quite congruent with the DeLong thesis that Scott has pointed to. They have to do with, for example, the developing social consensus on the “evils of big government” (note that this is bullshit, since the US government got steadily bigger, but never mind). Also, for example, with the fact that the radical fiscal and budget theories of the right somehow became mainstreamed, so that many Democrats somehow came to actually believe that budget deficits were dangerous, that the national debt was a source of weakness, and that tax cuts are an engine of growth! We forgot how to regulate monopolies, because regulation became a dirty word. Likewise for financial activity. We decided, as a society, that unions are “Big Unions”, whereas big businesses are somehow nimble and innovative (hollow laugh).
I could go on, but this is turning into a laundry list. I tried to capture in that phrase the idea that perhaps you can infer from the above: in the late 1980s, a neo-liberal society was one that believed itself handicapped when it limited, regulated, or taxed excessively its trade, commerce and finance, and, by contrast, was enriched when it restrained itself from doing so.
Another Scott
@Carlo Graziani: Thank for this.
Ultimately, users decide what words mean, not me, and that’s fine and good.
I think that it’s kinda funny that Noah Smith and DeLong had a back and forth about the term and seem to have yet another view of what it means than our usage here.
What’s that old saw? “Language was invented to hide men’s thoughts.”?
Cheers,
Scott.
TupeloPhoney
@Carlo Graziani: Thanks Carlo — I agree with you about the absence of a conspiracy, certainly. My personal mental model of the “actions of/for the elites” is that certain political narratives &| social organization benefit monied interests more or less, and individuals within a society will organize and conduct themselves to maximize perceived utility within all constraints (including, e.g., limits on gov’t corruption). This “elite action” doesn’t require the Illuminati/Rothschilds/Masons &c. pulling all of the strings or other broadly concerted behavior. It strikes me that the granular nature of these constituencies may tend to make it more difficult to create and maintain a robust just society, particularly when a rising tide of commercial prosperity makes it possible to mollify enough of the population with bread/circuses, a point you and others have made in one form or another.
Following up on my point regarding Enlightenment economics, we on the left often mock the extent to which “freedom” is invoked to practice unregulated capitalism, and as you’ve acknowledged “neo-liberal” is a term with some baggage. I’m not entirely comfortable saying this next bit, because it arguably has ramifications for U.S. politics and law with which I disagree strongly. But it’s not clear to me that taken as a whole, Enlightenment thinkers (or the U.S. Founding Fathers) would have in fact viewed the capitalism-Communism dialectic as a different one than the liberal democracy-Communism dialectic. In other words, from an Enlightenment perspective, it wouldn’t be conflating the two in focusing on the benefits of one or the other aspects of a free, liberal society. While I personally don’t believe that Reagan argued in good faith for much of anything while he was alive, there is a philosophical foundation for the notion that the two are related.
TupeloPhoney
@Carlo Graziani: At the time I was too callow and full of the arrogance of youth to have any kind of nuanced view, and it was easy enough to lump Thatcher in with Reagan. While I appreciate it’s silly to draw any historical conclusions from popular entertainment, your description was compelling to me in view of Gillian Anderson’s portrayal of Thatcher in “The Crown” (a Netflix production). I can’t say I liked Thatcher, but there was a vulnerability in the portrayal and on some level…if there had to be a toxic reactionary Tory Prime Minister propping up an adled Reagan, I guess I was rooting for her?