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Neoliberalism is a political philosophy, actually a continuance and redefinition of classical liberalism, influenced by the neoclassical theories of economics. The central principle of neoliberal policy is untrammeled free markets and free trade. The prime global advocate is the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, whose self-defined trade and commerce mandate is to break down barriers to international trade and investment so that all countries can benefit from improved living standards through increased trade and investment flows.
In the United States, neoliberalism can also refer to a political movement in which members of the American left (such as Michael Kinsley, Robert Kaus, Mickey Kaus, and Randall Rothenberg) endorsed some free market positions, such as free market economics and welfare reform.
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Quotations
the rule of the market
cutting public expenditure for social services
deregulation
privatization
Encyclopedia
Neoliberalism is a political philosophy, actually a continuance and redefinition of classical liberalism, influenced by the neoclassical theories of economics. The central principle of neoliberal policy is untrammeled free markets and free trade. The prime global advocate is the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, whose self-defined trade and commerce mandate is to break down barriers to international trade and investment so that all countries can benefit from improved living standards through increased trade and investment flows.
In the United States, neoliberalism can also refer to a political movement in which members of the American left (such as Michael Kinsley, Robert Kaus, Mickey Kaus, and Randall Rothenberg) endorsed some free market positions, such as free market economics and welfare reform. This term should not be confused with new liberalism, which is also used in the United States.
Policy implications
Broadly speaking, neoliberalism seeks to transfer part of the control of the economy from state to the private sector, to bring a more efficient government and to improve economic indicators for a nation. The definitive statement of the concrete policies advocated by neoliberalism is often taken to be John Williamson's "Washington Consensus", a list of policy proposals that appeared to have gained consensus approval among the Washington-based international economic organizations (like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank). Williamson's list included ten points:
- Fiscal policy discipline;
- Redirection of public spending from subsidies ("especially indiscriminate subsidies") toward broad-based provision of key pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment;
- Tax reform broadening the tax base and adopting moderate marginal tax rates;
- Interest rates that are market determined and positive (but moderate) in real terms;
- Competitive exchange rates;
- Trade liberalization liberalization of imports, with particular emphasis on elimination of quantitative restrictions (licensing, etc.); any trade protection to be provided by law and relatively uniform tariffs;
- Liberalization of inward foreign direct investment;
- Privatization of state enterprises;
- Deregulation abolition of regulations that impede market entry or restrict competition, except for those justified on safety, environmental and consumer protection grounds, and prudent oversight of financial institutions; and,
- Legal security for property rights.
History
Earlier systems
Arguments that stress the economic benefits of unfettered markets, in line with neoliberalism, first began to appear with Adam Smith's (1776) Wealth of Nations and David Hume's writings on commerce. These writings were directed against the Mercantilist ideas that had been dominant during the previous centuries, and served to guide the policies of governments throughout much of the 19th century.
Nevertheless, statist ideas slowly began to regain a following amongst the intellectuals that had rejected them during the early Enlightenment. State interventionism increased towards the end of the 19th century; in the United States the Progressive Era saw an accelerated movement to re-institutionalize government controls over the economy.
With an intellectual and political foundation in place, the onset of the Great Depression and the rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union led to increased support for government economic control as a means of securing rapid industrialization.
Embedded liberalism
The term embedded liberalism refers to the economic system which dominated worldwide from the end of World War II to the 1970s. argues that at the end of World War II, the primary objective was to develop an economic plan that would not lead to a repeat of the Great Depression during the 1930s. Harvey notes that under this new system free trade was regulated "under a system of fixed exchange rates anchored by the US dollar's convertibility into gold at a fixed price. Fixed exchange rates were incompatible with free flows of capital." Harvey argues that embedded liberalism led to the surge of economic prosperity which came to define the 1950s and 1960s. The problem with this term however, is that it is an unfettered Americanism in that liberalism around the globe refers to market-oreiented political organizations that advocate capitalism.
Across much of the world, the work of John Maynard Keynes, which sought to formulate the means by which governments could stabilize and fine-tune free markets, became a highly-influential approach. Within the developing world, several developments – among them decolonization, a desire for national independence and the destruction of the pre-war global economy, and the view that countries could not effectively industrialize under free market systems (e.g., the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis) – encouraged economic policies that were influenced by communist, socialist and import substitution precepts.
The period of government interventionism in the 1950s and 1960s was characterized by exceptional economic prosperity, as economic growth was generally high, inflation was contained, and economic distribution was comparatively equalized. This era is known as les Trente Glorieuses ("The Glorious Thirty [years]") or "Golden Age", a reference to many countries having experienced particularly high levels of prosperity between (roughly) World War II and 1973.
Collapse of embedded liberalism
David Harvey notes that the system of embedded liberalism began to crack beginning towards the end of the 1960s. The 1970s were defined by an increased accumulation of capital, unemployment, inflation (or stagflation as it was dubbed), and a variety of fiscal crises. He notes that "the embedded liberalism that had delivered high rates of growth to at least the advanced capitalist countries after 1945 was clearly exhausted and no longer working." A number of theories concerning new systems began to develop, which led to extensive debate between those who advocated "social democracy and central planning on the one hand" and those "concerned with liberating corporate and business power and re-establishing market freedoms on the other. Harvey notes that by 1980, the latter group had emerged as the leader, advocating and creating a global economic system that would become known as neoliberalism.
Some argue that the strains which occurred were located in the international financial system, and culminated in the dissolution of the Bretton Woods system, which some argue had set the stage for the Stagflation crisis that would, to some extent, discredit Keynesianism in the English-speaking world. In addition, some argue that the postwar economic system was premised on a society that excluded women and minorities from economic opportunities, and the political and economic integration given to these groups strained the postwar system.
Post-1970s economic liberalism
Chicago School
The Chicago school of economics describes a neoclassical school of thought within the academic community of economists, with a strong focus around the faculty of University of Chicago, some of whom have constructed and popularized its principles.
The school emphasizes non-intervention from government and rejects regulation in laissez-faire free markets as inefficient. It is associated with neoclassical price theory and libertarianism and the rejection of Keynesianism in favor of monetarism until the 1980s, when it turned to rational expectations. The school has impacted the field of finance by the development of the efficient market hypothesis. In terms of methodology the stress is on "positive economics" that is, empirically based studies using statistics to prove theory.
Approximately 70% of the professors in the economics department have been considered part of the school of thought. The University of Chicago department, widely considered one of the world’s foremost economics departments, has fielded more Nobel Prize winners and John Bates Clark medalists in economics than any other university.
Those who attend to the Chicago School prefer some form of competition law, school vouchers, a central bank, intellectual property and prefer Milton Friedman's negative income tax as a replacement to the existing welfare system, arguing that it is simpler and has fewer of the perverse incentives of "government handouts".
According to the Fraser Institute's Index of Economic Freedom and The Economic Freedom of the World report, issued by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, the seven countries with the most free economies in the former index are currently the following: Hong Kong, Singapore, Ireland, Australia, United States, New Zealand and Canada (all of them former constituents of the British Empire).
United Kingdom
Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister with a mandate to reverse the UK's economic decline. Thatcher's political and economic philosophy emphasised reduced state intervention, more free markets, and more entrepreneurialism. She once slammed a copy of Friedrich Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty down on a table during a Shadow Cabinet meeting, saying, "This is what we believe." Thinkers closely associated with Thatcherism include Keith Joseph, Enoch Powell, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. She was the first female ever elected and served as British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990.
Thatcher's political and economic philosophy emphasised reduced state intervention, free markets, and entrepreneurialism. She vowed to end what she felt was excessive government interference in the economy, and did this through privatizing nationally-owned enterprises selling public housing to tenants. After the James Callaghan Government had concluded that the Keynesian approach to demand-side management failed, Thatcher felt that the economy was not self-righting and that new fiscal judgements had to be made to concentrate on inflation. She began her economic reforms by increasing interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thus lower inflation. In accordance with her less-government intervention views, she introduced budget cuts and reduced expenditures on social services such as health care, education, and housing. She also placed limits on the printing of money and legal restrictions on trade unions.
In January 1982, the inflation rate had dropped to 8.6% from earlier highs of 18%. By 1983, overall economic growth was stronger and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970. The term "Thatcherism" came to refer to her policies as well as aspects of her ethical outlook and personal style, including moral absolutism, nationalism, interest in the individual, and an uncompromising approach to achieving political goals.
After the 1983 election, the Conservative majority expanded, Thatcher continued to enact her economic policies. The UK government sold most of the large national utilities. The policy of privatisation, while anathema to many on the Left, was a main component of Thatcherism.
Since Thatcher resigned as British Prime Minister in 1990, UK economic growth was on average higher than the other large EU economies (i.e. Germany, France and Italy). Additionally, since the beginning of the 2000s, the UK has also possessed lower unemployment, by comparison with the other big EU economies. Such an enhancement in relative macroeconomic performance is perhaps another reason for the apparent "Blatcherite" economic consensus, which has been present in modern UK politics for a number of years.
In 2001, Peter Mandelson, a Member of Parliament belonging to the British Labour Party closely associated with Tony Blair, famously declared that "we are all Thatcherites now."
In reference to contemporary British political culture, it could be said that a "post-Thatcherite consensus" exists, especially in regards to economic policy. In the 1980s, the now defunct Social Democratic Party adhered to a "tough and tender" approach in which Thatcherite reforms were coupled with extra welfare provision. Neil Kinnock, leader of the Labour Party from 1983-1992, initiated Labour's rightward shift across the political spectrum by largely concurring with the economic policies of the Thatcher governments. The New Labour governments of Tony Blair have been described as "neo-Thatcherite" by some, since many of their economic policies mimic those of Thatcher.
Most of the major British political parties today accept the anti-trade union legislation, privatisations and general free market approach to government that Thatcher's governments installed. No major political party in the UK, at present, is committed to reversing the Thatcher governments reforms of the economy. Such a convergence of policy is one reason that the British electorate perceive few apparent differences in policy between the major political parties.
Moreover, the UK's comparative macroeconomic performance has improved since the implementation of Thatcherite economic policies.
Scandinavia
Scandinavian countries have embraced many neoliberal policies.
In Sweden, Carl Bildt's government program was one of liberalizing and reforming the Swedish economy as well as making Sweden a member of the European Union. It initiated the negotiations for Sweden's accession to the European Union. Carl Bildt signed the accession treaty at the European Union summit of Corfu, Greece on June 23, 1994. Economic reforms were enacted, including voucher schools, liberalized markets for telecommunications and energy as well as the privatization of publicly owned companies. The Bildt government made it possible for counties to privatizate health care (although few did this), contributing to liberalizing the Swedish economy. Privatization of state owned companies and deregulation on business were also carried out by the following social democratic governments.
On the Economic Freedom of the World, Iceland had the 53rd freest economy in 1975 and it was one of the poorest countries in Europe. In 2004, it had the 9th freest economy and it was one of the richest. In 2007, Iceland was ranked as the most developed country in the world by the United Nations' Human Development Index. As a direct result of economic liberalizations, however, the Icelandic economy has recently gone into a state of near-total collapse.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Prime Minister of Denmark and the leader of Venstre, has written books advocating minimal state. Denmark is a European leader on economic freedom indices.
Denmark has ranked as the world's 11th most free economy, of 162 countries, in an index created by the Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation, the Index of Economic Freedom 2008.
United States
The Administration of Ronald Reagan governed from 1981 to 1989, and made a range of decisions that served to liberalize the American economy. These policies are often described as Reaganomics, and are often associated with supply-side economics (the notion that policies should appeal to producers, in order to lower prices, and therefore make products more affordable, rather than consumers, in order to cultivate economic prosperity).
During Reagan's tenure, the economy recovered and grew during Reagan's remaining years in office at an annual rate of 3.4% per year. Unemployment dropped and inflation significantly decreased. Average real wages were stagnant, however, as inequality began to grow for the first time since the 1920s.The policies were derided by some as "Trickle-down economics," due to the significant cuts in the upper tax brackets. There was a massive increase in Cold War related defense spending that caused large budget deficits, the U.S. trade deficit expansion, and contributed to the Savings and Loan crisis, In order to cover new federal budget deficits, the United States borrowed heavily both domestically and abroad, raising the national debt from $700 billion to $3 trillion, and the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the world's largest debtor nation.
Hong Kong
Milton Friedman described Hong Kong as a laissez-faire state and he credits that policy for the rapid move from poverty to prosperity in 50 years. Much of this growth came under British colonial control prior to the 1997 resumption of sovereignty by the People's Republic of China. Central banking, school regulations, environmental regulations and government ownership of housing are examples of economic intervention in Hong Kong.
A 1994 World Bank report stated that Hong Kong's GDP per capita grew in real terms at an annual rate of 6.5% from 1965 to 1989, a consistent growth percentage over a span of almost 25 years. By 1990 Hong Kong's per capita income officially surpassed that of the ruling United Kingdom.
Hong Kong has been consistently ranked as the world's freest economy since 1995 in the American Index of Economic Freedom. It also rated first in the Fraser Institute's 2007 "Economic Freedom of the World" report..
Chile
The Miracle of Chile is a term coined by Milton Friedman to describe dictator Augusto Pinochet's support for liberal economic reforms in Chile carried out by the "Chicago Boys." Their implemented economic model had three main objectives: economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation. These market-oriented economic policies were continued and strengthened by successive governments after Pinochet stepped down. At the time, Milton Friedman stated that the Chilean experiment was "comparable to the economic miracle of post-war Germany."
According to the 2007 Index of Economic Freedom, Chile is the world's 11th "most free" economy today. Chile is ranked 3rd out of 29 countries in the Americas and has been a "regional leader" for over a decade. Chile had GDP growth of 6.1% in 2004, and has averaged a 4.0% annual increase in GDP over the last five years for which data is available.
Currently, Chile is one of South America's most stable and prosperous nations. Within the greater Latin American context it leads in terms of competitiveness, quality of life, political stability, globalization, economic freedom, low perception of corruption and comparatively low poverty rates. It also ranks high regionally in freedom of the press, human development and democratic development. Its status as the region's richest country in terms of gross domestic product per capita (at market prices and purchasing power parity) is countered by its high level of income inequality, as measured by the Gini index.
The experience of Chile in the 1970s and 1980s, and especially the export of the Chilean pension model by former Labor Minister Jose Pinera, has influenced the policies of the Communist Party of China and has been invoked as a model by economic reformers in other countries, such as Boris Yeltsin in Russia and almost all Eastern European post-Communist societies.
Canada
In Canada, these policies are often associated with Brian Mulroney, Mike Harris, Ralph Klein, Gordon Campbell and Stephen Harper.
Ralph Klein, known for supporting the development of Alberta's vast oils and natural gas reserves, is credited with reinvesting large amounts of Provincial Government oil revenue gained through taxation back into the Provincial economy while reducing the Provincial Government's role in the direct development and sale of fossil fuels. His detractors argue that his particular brand of neoliberalism has allowed for the exploitation of Alberta's voluminous and monetarily valuable supplies of fossil fuels through political bullying as a majority leader while ignoring the poor performance of other sectors of the economy (reducing economic diversity), and to seemingly deliberately cause irreparable damage of, and devaluation to the value and integrity of the local environment. His efforts to privatize Canada's Universal Health Care System in Alberta have been strongly opposed on all points of contention.
Australia
In Australia, neoliberal policies have been embraced by governments of both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party since the 1980s. The governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating from 1983 to 1996 pursued economic liberalisation and a program of micro-economic reform. Stress was laid on national competition policy, privatisation of government corporations (including the Commonwealth Bank), reform of factor markets, floating of the currency, and reductions in trade protection. However, much of this reform policy had been developed earlier by the Liberal Party administration of prime minister Malcolm Fraser in which John Howard had served as treasurer.
Keating, as federal treasurer, implemented a compulsory superannuation guarantee system in 1992 to increase national savings and reduce future government liability for age pensions. The financing of universities was deregulated, requiring students to contribute to fees through a repayable loan known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and encouraging universities to increase income by admitting full-fee-paying students, including foreign students.
When the Liberal Party returned to power in March 1996 under prime minister John Howard, the programme of economic liberalisation was continued with the privatisation of more government corporations, notably the sale of the telecommunications provider Telstra, and the Reserve Bank of Australia was made independent of the government. A 10% Goods and Services Tax GST (similar to European VAT) was introduced and a series of reforms was enacted to deregulate the labour market. The Labor government of Kevin Rudd which succeeded in 2007 has purported to roll back some of Howard's labour-market reforms but is generally continuing on a neoliberal course, including the provision of public funds to guarantee corporate finances, eg, for the private banks and motor retailing corporations dependent on foreign loans which were withdrawn during the financial crash of 2008.
Japan
The largest privatization in history was Japan Post. It was the nation's largest employer and one third of all Japanese government employees worked for Japan Post. Japan Post was often said to be the largest holder of personal savings in the world. The Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi wanted to privatize it because it was thought to be inefficient and a source for corruption.
In September 2003, Koizumi's cabinet proposed splitting Japan Post into four separate companies: a bank, an insurance company, a postal service company, and a fourth company to handle the post offices as retail storefronts of the other three. After privatization was rejected by upper house, Koizumi scheduled nationwide elections to be held on September 11, 2005. He declared the election to be a referendum on postal privatization. Koizumi subsequently won this election, gaining the necessary supermajority and a mandate for reform, and in October 2005, the bill was passed to privatize Japan Post in 2007.
New Zealand
The term Rogernomics, a portmanteau of "Roger" and "economics", was created by analogy with Reaganomics to describe the economic policies followed by New Zealand Finance Minister Roger Douglas from his appointment in 1984.
The policies included cutting agricultural subsidies and trade barriers, privatising public assets and the control of inflation through measures rooted in monetarism, and were regarded in some quarters of Douglas's New Zealand Labour Party as a betrayal of traditional Labour ideals. The Labour Party subsequently retreated from pure Rogernomics, which became a core doctrine of ACT. The Labor Party leader planned to create a 15% flat tax in New Zealand, and to privatise schools, roads and hospitals, which was moderated by the Labour cabinet at the time, although the resultant reforms were still generally considered radical in a global context. After Douglas left the Labour party, he went on to co-found ACT in 1993, which regards itself as the new liberal party of New Zealand.
Since 1984, government subsidies including those for agriculture have been eliminated; import regulations have been liberalised; exchange rates have been freely floated; controls on interest rates, wages, and prices have been removed; and marginal rates of taxation reduced. Tight monetary policy and major efforts to reduce the government budget deficit brought the inflation rate down from an annual rate of more than 18% in 1987. The Deregulation of government-owned enterprises in the 1980s and 1990s reduced government's role in the economy and permitted the retirement of some public debt, but simultaneously massively increased the necessity for greater welfare spending and has led to considerably higher rates of unemployment than were standard in New Zealand in earlier decades. However, unemployment in New Zealand lowered again by 2006-2007, hovering around 3.5% to 4%.
Deregulation created a very business-friendly regulatory framework. A survey 2008 study ranked it 99.9% in "Business freedom", and 80% overall in "Economic freedom", noting amongst other things that it only takes 12 days to establish a business in New Zealand on average, compared with a worldwide average of 43 days. Other indicators measured were property rights, labour market conditions, government controls and corruption, the last being considered "next to non-existent" in the Heritage Foundation and Wall Street Journal study.
In its Doing Business 2008 survey, the World Bank (which in that year rated New Zealand as the second-most business-friendly country worldwide), gave New Zealand rank 13 out of 178 in the business-friendliness of its hiring laws.
New Zealanders have a high level of life satisfaction as measured by international surveys; this is despite lower GDP per-head levels than many other OECD countries. The country was ranked 20th on the 2006 Human Development Index, which also accounts for non-economic factors such as literacy and public health, and 15th in The Economist's 2005 worldwide quality-of-life index. The country was further ranked 1st in life satisfaction and 5th in overall prosperity in the 2007 Legatum Institute prosperity index. In addition, the 2007 Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranked Auckland 5th place and Wellington 12th place in the world on its list.
South Africa
South Africa’s GDP has grown since the beginning of the new government system in 1994, which ended the rule of apartheid in South Africa. A cause of this rise in GDP has been the implementation of neoliberal policies inside South Africa to direct the South African market to a freer market. Another result of these free market policies have caused a decline in employment that started after the new government in 1994, which caused an incline in South Africa's poverty level. As a result inequality still exists today that was once under apartheid.
Global spread
Chronic economic crisis throughout the 1980s, and the collapse of the Communist bloc at the end of the 1980s, helped foster political opposition to state interventionism, and in favor of free market reform policies. From the 1980s onward, a number of communist countries initiated various neoliberal market reforms, such as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under the direction of Ante Markovic (until the country's collapse in the early 1990s), and the People's Republic of China under the direction of Deng Xiaoping.
Reach and effects
Neoliberal movements ultimately changed the world's economies in many ways, but some analysts argue that the extent to which the world has liberalized may often be overstated. Some of the past thirty years' changes are clear and unambiguous, like:
- Growth in international trade and cross-border capital flows
- Elimination of trade barriers
- Cutbacks in defense spending, although it is unclear whether these reductions are associated with neoliberalism or the peace dividend that was supposed to accrue at the end of the Cold War
- Cutbacks in public sector employment
- The privatization of previously public-owned enterprises
- The transfer of the share of countries' economic wealth to the top economic percentiles of the population.
Other changes are not so apparent, and are debated in the literature:
- Reduction in the size of governments. Governments do not appear to have shrunk wholesale. With the exception of exceptionally high-spending governments, government expenditures (as a percentage of GDP) appears to have stayed the same since 1980. Most of the cuts to government spending appear to have been a temporary phenomenon that took place during the 1990s.
- Social welfare spending. Many governments have generally spent more on health, education, social security, welfare and/or housing. However, populations have increased and populations have aged in affluent countries. As well, some of these services (such as health care and education in the U.S.) are also very inefficiently organized.
Support for economic liberalism
Living standards
Proponents of neoliberalism argue that:
- Higher economic freedom has a strong correlation with higher living standards.
- Higher economic freedom leads to increased investment, technology transfer, innovation and a responsiveness to consumer demand;
- Many developing countries' governments had mismanaged or exploited their economic dominance during over the mid-century
- Many government attempts to micro-manage their economies using things like tariffs, public investment, etc. were often misdirected, poorly timed, poorly implemented and bore undesirable, unanticipated consequences; the claim by many neoliberals is that a government is incapable of managing a social system as huge as a national economy;
- Government-owned enterprises and public entitlements were losing a lot of citizens' money.
- During the 1970s, state-controlled economies proved unresponsive to economic shocks, and much of the world endured a sustained, high-inflation recession until markets were liberalized (though proponents still note that liberalization itself is only one of several factors in the recent return to prosperity; other factors include technological developments and the end of the Cold War).
Happiness
Higher economic freedom, as measured by both the Heritage and the Fraser indices, may suggest a higher self-reported happiness for some people.
Peace
There is some correlation between higher economic freedom and peace. According to a report by the pro-free market think tank the Cato Institute, economic freedom is around 54 times more effective than democracy (as measured by Democracy Score) in diminishing violent con?ict.
Political freedom
In Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Friedman developed the argument that economic freedom, while itself an extremely important component of total freedom, is also a necessary condition for political freedom. He commented that centralized control of economic activities was always accompanied with political repression.
In his view, voluntary character of all transactions in a free market economy and wide diversity that it permits are fundamental threats to repressive political leaders and greatly diminish power to coerce. Through elimination of centralized control of economic activities, economic power is separated from political power, and the one can serve as counterbalance to the other. Friedman feels that competitive capitalism is especially important to minority groups, since impersonal market forces protect people from discrimination in their economic activities for reasons unrelated to their productivity.
In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek argued that "Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends."
It could also be realistically theorized that a less influential government, weakened by the over-empowerment of the economy, would result in the formation of coercive market elements that could not be easily controlled even as they cause harm to the economy, citizens and the environment. Rationalized by the idea of the corporation as a individual with all the rights normally associated to the average citizen, in essence the corporation is allowed to become an above average equal to the citizens of the nation (as it has great power in the economic sphere as well as equal civil rights in jurisprudence reality), within the scope of this rationalization the state is seen as infringing on the rights of the entity in the same way personal rights can be recognized as having been violated by state limitations to the freedoms given to every person.
State-centric approach
The state-centric approach to neoliberalism is not critical, but it concurs with the critical approach that neoliberal ideas are really just laissez-faire liberal prescriptions that overthrew Keynesianism. State-centric theorists hold that neoliberalism is "the attempt to reduce the role of the state in the market through tax cuts, decreases in social spending, deregulation, and privatization." However, the state-centric approach argues that state actors were the political entrepreneurs who formulated neoliberalism – rather than, as critics of neoliberalism would claim, capitalist political organizations, and economists and economic departments, think tanks, and politicians all supported by class-conscious capitalists. State-centric theorists argue that neoliberalism spread because it fit the voters' preferences best; they disagree in this with the critical approach, which maintains that neoliberal framing and policies were propagated by well-heeled, highly organized political machines that insisted to the public, "There is no alternative". State-centric sociologist Monica Prasad (2006) further argues that neoliberalism became dominant where the (federal) tax structure was progressive, where industrial policy was "adversarial" to business, and where welfare was associated with the poor. She asserts this was the case in the U.S. and U.K., relative to France and Germany. However, in France and Germany, taxation by the national government was regressive, industrial policy favored business, and the welfare state was widely recognized to benefit the middle class; consequently neoliberalism was not as favored by either business or the middle classes in these two countries as it was in the U.S. and the U.K. in particular. Prasad's analysis suggests that neoliberalism has been a corrective to policies that favored the working class over capitalist interests, and it was championed by autonomous state actors. However, most political sociologists would agree that only strained methodological choices would allow U.S. policy especially to be portrayed as favoring the working class over capitalist interests, even in the New Deal; state autonomy theses are generally very vulnerable to more class-sensitive historical research, especially in the case of the U.S.; and methodological choices, such as the omission of social democratic countries from her analysis, contribute heavily to Prasad's conclusions.
One of the differences between classical liberalism and neoliberalism is that while the former called for reducing the role of the state to a minimum and replace it by private capital the latter seeks to expand the role of private capital through the state, making it authoritarian and a dedicated facilitator of its interests.
Opposition to economic liberalism
- Anti-sovereignty: globalization and liberalization is argued by leftist and nationalist critics to have subverted nations' ability for self-determination;
- Exploitation: critics of neoliberal policies consider capitalistic economics to be exploitive;
- Environmental costs: more transportation, more industrial production occurs in unregulated markets;
- Increase in corporate power: some anti-corporate organizations believe neoliberalism, in difference to liberalism, changes economic and government policies to increase the power of corporations and large business and a shift to benefit the upper classes over the lower classes.
Anglo-American
"The standard neoliberal policy package includes cutting back on taxes and government social spending; eliminating tariffs and other barriers to free trade; reducing regulations of labor markets, financial markets, and the environment; and focusing macroeconomic policies on controlling inflation rather than stimulating the growth of jobs," reports economist Robert Pollin (2003). Arising out of a rejection of the class compromises embedded in previous liberal political-economic policies, including Keynesian and Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs), neoliberal theory, institutions, policies, and practices are not regarded as politically neutral by their opponents. Their criticisms of neoliberalism are often historical materialist, bringing economic inequality into sharper focus.
Economists remind us that free markets are theoretically efficient, not that they are considered fair by all people, and this distinction is a foundation of the critique of neoliberalism. Opponents critique neoliberalism's alleged effects on wages, working class institutions, inequality, social mobility, working class well-being, health, the environment, and democracy.
Opposition and critics
Notable opponents to neoliberalism in theory or practice include economists Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen, and Robert Pollin, linguist Noam Chomsky, geographer David Harvey, and the anti-globalization movement in general, including groups such as ATTAC. Critics of neoliberalism and its inequality-enhancing policies argue that not only is neoliberalism's critique of socialism (as unfreedom) wrong, but neoliberalism cannot deliver the liberty that is supposed to be one of its strong points. Daniel Brook's "The Trap" (2007), Robert Frank's "Falling Behind" (2007), Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson's "Social Murder" (2007), and Richard G. Wilkinson's "The Impact of Inequality" (2005) claims high inequality is spurred by neoliberal policies and produces profound political, social, economic, political, health, and environmental constraints and problems. The economists and policy analysts at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) offer inequality-reducing social democratic policy alternatives to neoliberal policies. In addition, a significant opposition to neoliberalism has grown in Latin America, a region that has been seen only limited implementation of neoliberal policies. Prominent Latin American opponents include the Zapatista Army of National Liberation rebellion, and the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba.
Some critics view neoliberalism as both an economic and political project aimed at reconfiguring class relations in societies. They allege that many "core countries" middle class and "labor aristocracy" families have become constrained by the cascading costs created by the conspicuous consumption of goods and services encouraged in the system, as a result many are losing allotments of time once used for personal development, recreation, family, community, and citizenship as a result of lower wages and inflation coupled with a decrease in the amount of or opportunity for advanced formal education and/or training. Moreover, they claim workers have been so heavily disciplined by capital and the capitalist state that, as Alan Greenspan said, they are "traumatized" and unable to politically moderate capitalist aggression. Daniel Brook's "The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America" (2007) describes the anti-democratic effect of decreased middle class welfare. The massive U.S. military-industrial complex adds an extra layer of repression to working class "traumatization," according to , making resistance and inequality-reducing policy innovation seem unfeasible to most workers. A "traumatized" working class allows the capitalist class absolute reign, which Harvey claims – citing the economic crises of 1873 and the 1920s – to be disastrous for economies around the globe, states, and working class people; though, he points out, on average capitalists were not negatively impacted by these crises.
Critics of neoliberalism sometimes refer to it as the "American Model," which they claim promotes low wages and high inequality. According to the economists Howell and Diallo (2007), neoliberal policies have contributed to a U.S. economy in which 30% of workers earn "low wages" (less than two-thirds the median wage for full-time workers), and 35% of the labor force is "underemployed"; only 40% of the working age population in the U.S. is considered adequately employed. The Center for Economic Policy Research's (CEPR) Dean Baker (2006) has argued that the driving force behind rising inequality in the United States has been a series of deliberate, neoliberal policy choices including anti-inflationary bias, anti-unionism, and profiteering in the health industry. However, countries have applied neoliberal policies at varying levels of intensity; for example, the OECD has calculated that only 6% of Swedish workers are beset with wages it considers low. John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006) of the CEPR have analyzed the effects of intensive Anglo-American neoliberal policies in comparison to continental European neoliberalism, concluding "The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of income inequality, high relative and absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration. At the same time, the available evidence provides little support for the view that U.S.-style labor-market flexibility dramatically improves labor-market outcomes. Despite popular prejudices to the contrary, the U.S. economy consistently affords a lower level of economic mobility" than all the continental European countries for which data is available.
Critics of neoliberalism examine the political foundations of the neoliberal project as well as its economic foundations. One of the most famous moments in neoliberal political history occurred when then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan's advisers successfully lobbied for the deregulation of the thrift industry, by convincing Reagan that deregulation would lead to increased growth and investment. Reagan signed the deregulation bill in 1982, saying, "All in all, I think we've hit the jackpot." Columnist Joe Conason has argued that "The best reckoning of the costs of his benign intentions is a trillion dollars." While Reagan and the United Kingdom's Margaret Thatcher laid the groundwork for working class demobilization, through eliminating collective assets by discounted sales to the private sector, enacting policies to diminish labor unions, and promoting militarization, other politicians have steadily continued the neoliberal tradition.
According to , neoliberalism under the U.S. Bill Clinton administration steered by Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin was the temporary and unstable policy inducement of economic growth via government-supported financial and housing market speculation, featuring both low unemployment and low inflation rates. This unusual coincidence was made possible by the disorganization and dispossession of the American working class. Santa Cruz history of consciousness professor Angela Davis and Princeton sociologist Bruce Western have supported the position that the high rate (compared to Europe) of incarceration in the U.S. specifically 1 out of every 37 American adults is in the prison system heavily promoted by Clinton administration, is the neoliberal U.S. policy tool for keeping unemployment statistics low, while stimulating economic growth through the maintenance of a contemporary slave population and the promotion of prison construction and "militarized policing." The Clinton Administration also embraced neoliberalism by pursuing international trade agreements that would benefit the corporate sector globally (normalization of trade with China for example). Domestically, Clinton fostered such neoliberal reforms as the corporate takeover of health care in the form of the HMO, the reduction of welfare handouts, and the implementation of "Workfare."
claims that neoliberalism is a global capitalist class power restoration project. Neoliberalism, he argues, is a theory of political-economic practices that dedicates the state to championing private property rights, free markets, and free trade, while deregulating business and privatizing collective assets. Ideologically, he suggests that neoliberals promote entrepreneurialism as the normative source of human happiness. Harvey also considers neoliberalization a form of capitalist "creative destruction," a Schumpeterian concept. This indicates that while neoliberalism is a critical concept with a critique of capitalist class relations, it is not strictly a Marxist concept; the Marxist term for neoliberalism is "primitive accumulation."
Harvey (2000) claims that neoliberalism has become hegemonic worldwide, sometimes by coercion. Neoliberalism has had the support of large debt restructuring organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which were encouraged to promote neoliberalism in order to revitalize capital accumulation. Opponents of neoliberalism argue that neoliberalism is the implementation of global capitalism through government/military interventionism to protect the interests of multinational corporations.
European and Latin American Opposition
Neoliberalism and globalization are considered to be related to one another. While generally theorists describe neoliberalism as the contemporary version of capitalist expansionism, linked to shifting global power and restoring profit rates, some theorists argue that the terms "globalization" and "neoliberalism" must be rigorously separated and that culture should be the primary lens through which the concepts are understood. “Free markets and global free trade are not new, and this use of the word (neoliberalism) ignores developments in the advanced economies…Neoliberalism is not just economics: it is a social and moral philosophy, in some aspects qualitatively different from liberalism.”
One Euro-Latin American perspective critical of neoliberalism focuses upon the manner in which neoliberalism becomes habitually embedded in the economic system itself, as where German author Paul Treanor argues that the ideas derived from neoliberalism (and neoliberalism itself) are more of a philosophy and should not be perceived as just an “economic structure.” For example, a neoliberal would perceive the world in a “term of market metaphors” and when members of a society commonly refer to countries as companies, that civilization would then be deemed a neoliberal instead of a liberal culture. Yet Treanor also recognizes continuity between historical liberal and contemporary neoliberal cultures. “(W)hen this is a view of nation states, it is as much a form of neo-nationalism as neoliberalism. It also looks back to the pre-liberal economic theory - mercantilism - which saw the countries of Europe as competing units. The mercantilists treated those kingdoms as large-scale versions of a private household, rather than as firms. Nevertheless, their view of world trade as a competition between nation-sized units would be acceptable to modern neoliberals.”
Two of Treanor's collaborators, Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo García, find that neoliberalism is a collection of economic policies that has spread its ideals from country to country over the last 25 years. They claim that neoliberalism clearly treats its poorest citizens badly, by allowing for the increased disparity of the distribution of wealth ("the rich get richer, while the poor get poorer"). Highlighting ideology, Martinez and Garcia explain the difference between neoliberalism and liberalism by pointing to liberalism's association with class compromising ideology, stating that “"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Right-wing.” However, they further argue that this liberal social contract was broken by the elite political movement which included neoliberalism in the U.S.
See also
External links
- by Chris Harman in International Socialism journal
- by Dag Einar Thorsen and Amund Lie of the University of Oslo
- by Paul Treanor
- by D Rodrik, F Rodriguez. NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2000.
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- at The New School's Economics Department's History of Economic Thought website.
- Adam Curtis' The Trap (television documentary series) (2007) provides a critical anti-managerial view on the genesis, rise, and impact of neoliberalism. It uses a history of ideas approach to the subject.
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- with John Shields and Bryan Evans, Ryerson University, Toronto.
- Pierre Bourdieu
Online lectures
- , David Harvey at the University Channel
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