Monday, August 5, 2013

Philip Mirowski — The Thirteen Commandments of Neoliberalism

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, the neoliberal project stood out from other strains of right-wing thought in that it was self-consciously constituted as an entity dedicated to the development, promulgation, and popularization of doctrines intended to mutate over time. It was a moveable feast, and not a catechism fixed at the Council of Trent. It is very important to have some familiarity with neoliberal ideas, if only to resist simple-minded characterizations of the neoliberal approach to the financial crisis as some form of evangelical “market fundamentalism.”
The Utopian
The Thirteen Commandments of Neoliberalism
Philip Mirowski | Carl Koch Chair of Economics and the History and Philosophy of Science, and Fellow of the Reilly Center, University of Notre Dame

7 comments:

Matt Franko said...

Neoliberals are allied with Anarchists????? Cmon this guy is off his rocker...

This whole thing is a 1800 year long libertarian civil war.... Which thankfully looks like it is in its last days....

Unknown said...

[11] THOU SHALT TRUST THE BANKERS

Yep, but the MMT folks, instead of seeking to euthanize the banks after all the hell they've caused over the centuries, merely wish to make their thieving less obvious and traumatic to the victims. But even that will prove unstable unless God is mocked except He isn't.

Tom Hickey said...

By Anarchists Mirowski means anarcho-capitalists aka Libertarians and Randian Objectivists.

Hayek brought together the socio-economics of Austrian economics and neoclassical economics in founding the Mont Pelerin Society as a political movement to promote the market society as opposed to the welfare society as the most effective and efficient way to advance human development. It's basically social Darwinism.

The goal of extreme anarchists of left and right is to get rid of the coercive state as the principle of government and replace it with voluntary organization. The different between right and left is over the role of private property.

LIbertarians and neoliberals agree over the primacy of private property and in principle on limited government.

However, neoliberals recognize that institutions and who controls them count. Hence this seek to achieve and maintain political control and to overthrow regimes that oppose their view of the market state, all in the name of freedom and democracy, of course.

Ralph Musgrave said...

F.Beard, I agree that MMTers don’t have much to say about how banks should be re-organised (except Warren Mosler). However, there are hundreds of economic problems out there, and if some group like MMTers concentrate on a fairly narrow set of problems, that’s OK by me.

As for Mirowski’s idea that neoliberals claim “Thou shalt trust bankers”, that’s ridiculous. Neoliberals, like everyone else, are well aware that there’s something seriously wrong with banking. Many of them favour drastic changes to the banking industry, e.g. abolishing fractional reserve banking.

Unknown said...

Ralph,

There are hundreds, thousands, millions of economic problems but is it likely that a government-backed counterfeiting cartel is not a major root cause?

Seriously, if we stubbornly refuse to create money ethically, why shouldn't God pull the plug on our society?

Unknown said...

Please let it be these guys are not goin away they're spreading their neoliberal neoclassical poison into the climate change crowd and they remove classes that don't fit with their ideology

Unknown said...

Hang them all from tots federal subsidized hemp rope that'll be a fitting demise I get my personal mission for the general public to understand all this hogwash I hope they want their blood back