Ok here is a picture of the OPEC building with the logotype sign on the parapet.
Can somebody from the left please post up a link in the comments to a picture of the neo-liberal building with the name up on the parapet like this OPEC building has please?
15 comments:
Continued from the other thread ...
Well Matt, but BOTH issues (the concept of "War on Terror", ie. the left saying "you can't do war on terror lol") are deeply political. The labels are used to frame the debate on what issues are on the table and what we should be focusing on, neocons love to use "war on terror" concept because it gives them carte blanch to carry on a perpetual war in foreign soil. You are right about the parallelisms, we use 'neoliberalism' to frame the set of policies which are wrongly being pushed as TINA and we want to confront.
You can't attack neoliberalism directly, but you can attack the policies, I think most politicians are attacking the model and policies, not the branding (which is what you are complaining about). You don't see "neoliberalism" being mentioned on mass media outlets or by politicians (not even people like Corbyn or Sanders AFAIK, I haven't seen it either now in Spain from Podemos now that they have jumped to the national stage after the initial rise of the party, as they are trying to gain traction with the general public).
On alternative media or by academics you can/will see it used often because that's what we do with neologisms, they 'condensate' concepts in single words, it's an economic use of the language. But for mass consumption what is being attacked is the policies which then are identified as neoliberalism.
I think what economists like Bill Mitchell or Steve Keen do is this, they first frame the debate focusing on a different set of issues and highlighting what is wrong the stablishment policies driven by false assumptions, then they are branded as neoliberalism for language economy reasons.
The closer you got to a "neoliberal building" are probably things like the IMF HQ, the ECB in Frankfurt, the BIS HQ, and the different institutions implementing and promoting those policies. Sure they don't have 'neoliberal HQ' written in the front door but... And the different national executive branches conducting the policy.
https://cryptome.org/eyeball/cia-hq-history/pict45.jpg
In the 1960s, usage of the term "neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet’s economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It had not only become a term with negative connotations employed principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.[2] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused directly into the English-language study of political economy.[2] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing.[18] The impact of the global 2008-09 crisis has also given rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks developmental alternatives.[19]
Wikipedia
During the military rule under Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) in Chile, opposition scholars took up the expression to describe the economic reforms implemented in Chile after 1973 and its proponents (the "Chicago Boys").[2] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused directly into the English-language study of political economy.[2] In the last two decades, according to the Boas and Gans-Morse study of 148 journal articles, neoliberalism is almost never defined but used in several senses to describe ideology, economic theory, development theory, or economic reform policy. It has largely become a term of condemnation employed by critics. And it now suggests a market fundamentalism closer to the laissez-faire principles of the "paleoliberals" than to the ideas of the original neoliberals who attended the colloquium. This leaves some controversy as to the precise meaning of the term and its usefulness as a descriptor in the social sciences, especially as the number of different kinds of market economies have proliferated in recent years.[2] In the book Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction, published by Oxford University Press (2010), the authors argue that neoliberalism is "anchored in the principles of the free-market economics."[14]
According to Boas and Gans-Morse, neoliberalism is nowadays an academic catchphrase used mainly by critics as a pejorative term, and has outpaced the use of similar terms such as monetarism, neoconservatism, the Washington Consensus and "market reform" in much scholarly writing.[2] Daniel Stedman Jones, a historian of the concept, says the term "is too often used as a catch-all shorthand for the horrors associated with globalization and recurring financial crises"[31] Nowadays the most common use of the term neoliberalism refers to market-oriented reform policies such as "eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers", and reducing state influence on the economy especially by privatization and fiscal austerity.[2] The term is used in several senses: as a development model it refers to the rejection of structuralist economics in favor of the Washington Consensus; as an ideology the term is used to denote a conception of freedom as an overarching social value associated with reducing state functions to those of a minimal state; and finally as an academic paradigm the term is closely related to neoclassical economic theory.[2] The sociologists Fred L. Block and Margaret R. Somers claim there is a dispute over what to call the influence of free market ideas which have been used to justify the retrenchment of New Deal programs and policies over the last thirty years: neoliberalism, laissez-faire or just "free market ideology."[32]
Other academics, such as Susan Braedley and Meg Luxton, assert that neoliberalism is a political philosophy which seeks to "liberate" the processes of capital accumulation.[13] American professor of political science and Democratic socialist Frances Fox Piven sees neoliberalism as essentially hyper-capitalism.[33] Robert W. McChesney, American professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and co-editor of the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review, claims that the term neoliberalism, which he defines as "capitalism with the gloves off," is largely unknown by the general public, particularly in the United States.[34]
Ibid.
In 1955, a select group of Chilean students (later known as the Chicago Boys) were invited to the University of Chicago to pursue postgraduate studies in economics. They worked directly under Friedman and his disciple Arnold Harberger, while also being exposed to Hayek. When they returned to Chile in the 1960s, the Chicago Boys began a concerted effort to spread the philosophy and policy recommendations of the Chicago and Austrian schools, setting up think tanks and publishing in ideologically sympathetic media. Under the military dictatorship headed by Pinochet and severe social repression, the Chicago boys implemented radical economic reform. The latter half of the 1970s witnessed rapid and extensive privatization, deregulation, and reductions in trade barriers. In 1978 policies that would reduce the role of the state and infuse competition and individualism into areas such as labor relations, pensions, health, and education were introduced.[2] These policies resulted in widening inequality as they negatively impacted the wages, benefits and working conditions of Chile's working class.[52][53] According to Chilean economist Alejandro Foxley, by the end of Pinochet's reign around 44% of Chilean families were living below the poverty line.[54] In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein argues that by the late 1980s the economy had stabilized and was growing, but around 45% of the population had fallen into poverty while the wealthiest 10% saw their incomes rise by 83%.[55]
Two decades after it was first used by pro-market intellectuals in the 1960s, the meaning of neoliberalism changed. Those who regularly used the term neoliberalism in the 1980s typically applied it in its present-day, radical sense, denoting market fundamentalism.
In 1990 the military dictatorship ended. Hayek argued that increased economic freedom had put pressure on the dictatorship over time and increased political freedom. Many years earlier, in The Road to Serfdom (1944), Hayek had 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."[56] The Chilean scholars Javier Martínez and Alvaro Díaz reject that argument pointing to the long tradition of democracy in Chile. The return of democracy had required the defeat of the Pinochet regime though it had been fundamental in saving capitalism. The essential contribution came from profound mass rebellions and finally old party elites using old institutional mechanisms to bring back democracy.[57]
Ibid.
LOL Tom those people dont even know what it is.... and where is the sign on the roof?
Isn't one of Mirowski's rules of Neoliberalism that they deny there is any such thing as Neoliberalism?
Something you want to tell us Matt? 😊
What in the world are you talking about? There is also no building that says "Capitalism Central headquarters" on it. Does that mean there is no such thing as capitalism?
Dan ask 10 people what Capitalism is and you'll get 10 different answers...
Here is David Harvey an alleged expert: ""Capital is not a thing but a process in which money is perpetually sent in search of more money."
Then go ask 10 people what "money" is and youll get another 10 different answers... and so on...
Meanwhile darling of the left Venezuela under the Chavez people are participating in a global cartel to rig the price of the most important energy resource on the planet and they ignore that and instead rage against some other abstract/nebulous concept they conjure up 'neo-liberalism'...
Lot of words to describe the status quo.
Matt,
They may be participating in a cartel but they aren't calling the shots. They had almost 20 years to diversify their economy, to prepare for the situation they find themselves in i.e. low oil prices.
Neoliberalism is a political movement that began in earnest in the 70's and really took off in the 80's with Reagan and Thatcher. It involved mainly the undermining of the labor movement, the deregulation of capital both domestically and across borders, and the aggressive involvement of corporate business in the political system.
You can get a bunch of slightly different definitions of communism too, but that doesn't mean that there was no such thing as the international communist movement in the 20th century.
Harvey gets Neoliberalism wrong. It's isn't just financial capitalism.
Andy the guy has been teaching Marx for over FORTY YEARS...
Dan I actually read Reagan's autobiography ... I'm pretty sure you didnt ;) ... he does not mention neo-liberalism in it... he was in the 90% bracket and once he made enough to get into the 90% for the year he and all the others stopped working for the year and all the support people got laid off... this is what motivated him to propose all the "less taxes/govt" policies he went on to advocate and eventually implement...
Did anyone ever hear any capitalists call themselves "capitalists"? No, I didn't think so.
I guess it follows then that there is no such thing as capitalism.
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