If you are following the debate about what neoliberalism is in terms of a behavioral definition instead of a conceptual one, this is a good read. It contends that neoliberalism is based on conceiving freedom in terms of consumers' freedom of choice in markets as the "new politics." It takes the meaning of "consumer society" to a new level.
Jacobin
How Neoliberalism Reinvented DemocracyAn Interview With Niklas Olsen
Poorer people, longer working hours, minimum welfare state, stress throughout school to get the best grades otherwise you're worthless, massive debts, one in ten people on antidepressants, a slave to work, a slave to the boss. Neoliberalism - the new freedom!
ReplyDeletePlenty of choice, but no freedom, only slavery, and no money to buy anything.
ReplyDeleteMake a mistake at work and you could lose your home and be on the street. So Neoliberalism = FEAR. Just what the capitalist class want. They don't want unions.
Spend extra time at the office, work for free, take work home - that's the good life. Life is work. Home life is unimportant.
Companies used to be big on training, but then many discovered that the workforce would train themselves in any new technology as they were fearful that they might fall to the bottom and get booted out otherwise. So they would do courses in the evenings, buy books, and go on the internet until they had a better idea. Companies could downsize their training divisions and save money.
When I first read about that, I thought crikey, that happened to me. The technology at my work went through the roof but we never got any training. I was highly qualified and yet I struggled with the new technology. So I went online and downloaded manual after manual and printed many of them off, and I spent hours reading them at home. But I became overwhelmed and retired from work in the end with stress and fibromyalgia. It was all work and no play. Luckily with all the extra hours I did I could pay off my mortgage.
There was once four electrical engineers where I worked, but in the end there was only me, but the amount of electrics and electronics we had to work on skyrocketed. I had no one to ask for help, and if I couldn't figure something out quickly the management would to blame me. There was no one else to compare me with. The pressure was enormous. I think they knew this but didn't care. They knew I was highly qualified with higher tech but they wanted more. They thought that with pressure they could get more out of me.
The same thing happened to a colleague in another division. He was all alone and he started to struggle. He was the same age as me and we did our training together at the same college. We had both been in the company from leaving school. I got medical retirement, but he struggled on and got the sack.
3 months before I left they brought in another electrician. He was a young eastern European who had the stamina of am ox. He was prepared to work hard and put everything into it. He said he was the best where he came from.
ReplyDeleteHe was good and then I left. Now, every few months he rings me to say how much he hates it there. He's all alone and no one appreciates him. They are always on at him.
I met the storeman the other day who told me the management hate the new electrician. They say he guesses and orders parts which don't solve the problem. The storeman said he was also fed up with him. None of them are able to appreciate how hard the job has become.
I put a post out here a little while back from the Reason site which is very neoliberal and fundamentalist capitalism. They were interview a professor of economics who was left wing but he argued for more free markets and less regulation saying it would empower working people and help break up the monopolies and cartels.
ReplyDeleteWeird, how many of the left became free market Thatherites. Claire Fox is a British Marxist communist who converted to neoliberalism. She as awful as she argued for libertarianism, but she still claimed to be a communist.
Such a strange inversion. How could the left champion Reaganism and Thatcherism, the very opposite of left?