American Nightmare: the Depravity of Neoliberalism
American Nightmare: the Depravity of Neoliberalism
by Michael Welton
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/04/american-nightmare-the-depravity-of-neoliberalism/
Deciphering the meaning of Neo-liberalism as a historical force and societal form requires the energies and know-how of a sagacious sleuth like Hercule Poirot. Wendy Brown, a philosophy professor at UCLA (Berkeley) and author of Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalisms Stealth Revolution, has a Poirot intellectual sensibility and acuity that sees what most of us cannot.
Those of us who have written on neo-conservative politics and neo-liberalism as an economic form have illuminated many dimensions of something new that has emerged out of the collapse of welfare state liberal democracy in the West over the last five decades.
But putting all the pieces of this intricate puzzle together and detecting not only particular patterns but also the logic underlying neo-liberalism is a complex task.
What is the connection between the US Empires contempt for law and truth-telling and neo-liberalism?
And how is it that citizens can be so passive in the face of evident government prevarication, endless spinning of false narratives, the evisceration of democratic morality and countless corporate and government scandals?
Continued:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/04/american-nightmare-the-depravity-of-neoliberalism/
merrily
(45,251 posts)Neo conservatives are a lot more like conservatives than neo liberals are like liberals. In fact, neo liberals are more like conservatives than they are like liberals.
The welfare state began collapsing in 1965? Who knew? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society
"Free market" or corporate welfare?
fredamae
(4,458 posts)Republican Wing of the Dem Party.
merrily
(45,251 posts)Teddy Roosevelt's wing of the Republican Party was its left wing. Neoliberals are considerably to Teddy's right, if you adjust for changes in time.
fredamae
(4,458 posts)TIME TO PANIC
(1,894 posts)Hepburn
(21,054 posts)eomer
(3,845 posts)Neoliberalism is a school of economics that advocates free markets as the solution to everything. It has nothing to do with the liberalism of US politics except that they both include the word "liberal".
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)Aware that the mere restoration of some ragtag social welfare state spiced with a pinch of climate change rhetoric is a dangerous delusion, Brown slices through the bramble bush of esoteric terminology to enable us to see that neo-liberalism carries a social analysis which, when deployed as a form of governmentality, reaches from the soul of the citizen-subject to education policy to practices of empire. Neo-liberal rationality involves extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social actors, even as the market itself remains a distinctive player.
Neo-liberalism ruthlessly sets out to subvert democracy
Neo-liberalism is a project requiring ruthless construction: plotting, planning and execution of the animating visionin every domain of life. Donald Gutsteins detailed study of Harperism: How Stephen Harper and his thank tank colleagues have transformed Canada (2014) hit me between the teeth.
Good god! This guy moved stealthily and incrementally according to a master plan: to dismantle Canadian democracy and free the society for total corporate domination without citizen recourse. It was systematic! It was devilish! He did it behind closed doors and in the twilight under our noses! Voter ignorance permits these bastards to blast the world back into the medieval era of serfdom and anti-enlightenment beliefs and degrading practices.
This intention to subvert liberal democracy has not been fully grasped by those on the left. Thats Browns wake-up call. And it is a salient one. It may provide us clues to understanding puzzling elements of the contemporary world such as lying without consequences, total absence of moral principle underpinning actions, abject inconsistency, utter hard-heartedness towards the vulnerable and contempt for democratic deliberation and international diplomacy.
KoKo
(84,711 posts)to help those who need to bookmark to read later.
tecelote
(5,122 posts)"Good god! This guy moved stealthily and incrementally according to a master plan: to dismantle Canadian democracy and free the society for total corporate domination without citizen recourse. It was systematic! It was devilish! He did it behind closed doors and in the twilight under our noses!"
It's already happened here... right under our noses!
America also needs to vote for change. We can do that by voting for Bernie.
A right leaning Democrat isn't going to change much.
We need a real liberal that will start to build an America for Americans.
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)Vincardog
(20,234 posts)And destroy democracy.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Subvert and destroy the very concept of rule of the majority!
How can I do that, you may ask? Indeed, you may!!
And once done, there will be no one left on the earth who will. See?
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
tecelote
(5,122 posts)"Proud Member of the Reality Based Community"
In other words, afraid of change and fine with the status quo.
Part of the problem not the solution.
Vincardog
(20,234 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Samantha
(9,314 posts)"He did it behind closed doors and in the twilight under our noses! Voter ignorance permits these bastards to blast the world back into the medieval era of serfdom and anti-enlightenment beliefs and degrading practices."
Again, TPP....
Sam
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)I've got a copy of the TPP. It's posted - final version and in full - on the internet.
Would you like to see it?
Just click on the link: https://medium.com/the-trans-pacific-partnership
navarth
(5,927 posts)Thanks you guys.
1norcal
(55 posts)Thanks new thinking, this book has similar potential it seems to me as Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine." Thanks again.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)It closes a loop for me that I've been trying to solve since the Clinton impeachment kicked off. My question has been how do fundamentalism and corporatocracy fit together?
haikugal
(6,476 posts)K&R and bookmarked.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)While some particular policies are on the face of them similar, at the heart of the 'new liberal'- the 'Third Way' - is the application of real 'social justice' philosophy.
Considering 'capitalism' as the unequivocal and unchallenged prevailing economic system in America, the Democratic Party has sought ways to mitigate the excesses of 'capitalism' through government social programs and progressive taxation.
The difficulty facing 'social justice' policies rests in the success of the Republican Party to brand the Federal government as a bloated, excessive, bureaucratic failure and progressive taxation as a socialist 'plan' for redistribution of wealth.
Conflating 'neoliberalism' as 'the new liberal' is just another cheap shot at misdirection.
There is 'neoliberalism' represented by the pictured Reagan and Thatcher. I know of no Democrats remotely in the same ball park by any factual reckoning!
Phlem
(6,323 posts)Nice try though.
TIME TO PANIC
(1,894 posts)A must-read for anyone supporting the establishment candidate.
Phlem
(6,323 posts)hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)Rebkeh
(2,450 posts)I heard an interview on The Majority Report earlier this year that covered this topic, it was eye opening. It's disconcerting how so many lefties seem to be unaware.
A week or so later Salon published a short but similar piece but it didn't make much of a splash. I hope this one does, it needs eyeballs. As many as possible.
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/democracy_cannot_survive_why_the_neoliberal_revolution_has_freedom_on_the_ropes/|
The interview was with Nicole Aschoff the week of May 14, 2015, if you are a MR member and have access to the archives.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)colsohlibgal
(5,275 posts)The ideas of Bernie used to be more mainstream democrat than where HRC is. That is how far right on economic issues we are now. It will be a long way back if there is a way back....the MSM is a partner to Neo Democracy these days, the days of Uncle Walter and Edward R Murrow are gone.
Judi Lynn
(160,219 posts)DaveT
(687 posts)I am not sure that I agree with every point the reviewer makes or attributes to Wendy Brown, but this is an excellent explication of how the last three decades have played out in the erstwhile Free World.
Neoliberalism is an idea that almost all the functionary class around the world has internalized as "being realistic" or "growing up." It is the reification of the Economics 101 "model" of homo economicus. Back in 1972 when I took that course at the University of Texas, the textbook and the professor both went to the trouble of mocking the concept, and stressed that it was an analytical tool of extremely limited usefulness.
The guy teaching the class dismissed the concept as a preposterous projection of hedonism upon humanity, confusing the "rational" idea of grabbing everything you could possibly grab with how any normal human being deals with life.
The anti-democratic method and practice of neo-liberalism reached its reductio ad absurdam with Citizens United. The Supreme Court used its power to overrule democracy to establish the Constitutional Fact that a corporation is a "person." But, the laws that govern corporate governance require the human beings who run one to check their humanity at the door. In fact, they can be sued for betraying their trust of office by NOT acting like a hedonist with no heart at all.
Corporations do not die. They can't be drafted. They can't go to jail.
It is an echo of Mary Shelley. We create a new form of life and it turns on us.