The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History — Joseph E. Stiglitz

For 40 years, elites in rich and poor countries alike promised that neoliberal policies would lead to faster economic growth, and that the benefits would trickle down so that everyone, including the poorest, would be better off. Now that the evidence is in, is it any wonder that trust in elites and confidence in democracy have plummeted?...

Trickle down or pissing on?

I am not sure about his blanket recommendation to restore Enlightenment values. Enlightenment values led to bourgeois liberalism in which economic liberalism dominates social and political liberalism. Neoliberalism was simply the extension of bourgeois liberalism globally though yet an other empire in thin disguise.

Bourgeois liberalism prioritizes economic liberalism over social and political liberalism based on the assumption that the former is a necessary condition for the latter two. The outcome of this is capitalism, which encompasses free markets, free trade and free capital flows, as the driver of the system. The term "capitalism" reveals that this assumes that capital will be favored over the other factors — labor, that is, people, and land, that is, the environment. The outcome was predictable unless one was wearing blinders. 

So-called democracy was a casually, even though the "democracy" of the Enlightenment was not actually government of the people, by the people and for the people, but rather representative "democracy" in which class structure, power, and wealth are determinative. That's what "bourgeois liberalism" means. Enlightenment thinkers were fearful of "the rabble" and "mob-rule," after. 

This view has persisted. John Maynard Keynes was a proponent of it, for example. See Bruce Bartlett, "Keynes Was Really a Conservative." 

“The class war,” said Keynes, “will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.”

This attitude is reflected presently in the resistance of the bipartisan Establishment that holds the reins of power jointly, passing them among themselves over election cycle, to the rising tide of populism that seeks to unseat them. This is also the attitude of the "deep state" that is now opposing populist-elected President Donald Trump in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK.

As far as Enlightenment values go, the American founding fathers, held up as the epitome of Enlightnment values, saw now problem with including slavery in the US Constitution, and Thomas Jefferson, not only a slave owner but also a slave breeder, saw no contradiction in penning, "All men are created equal..." in the Declaration of Independence. George Orwell would later lampoon this sentiment with, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," in his satirical allegory Animal Farm.

We don't need a return to Enlightenment values that were flawed from the beginning and now represent that Western values that the Empire and its vassals are trying to impose through neoliberalism. We need to revisit those values in terms of the 21st century. The 18th century is long past. It was an advance at the time, but looking back to it is not the way forward now.

Project Syndicate
The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History

Joseph E. Stiglitz | University Professor at Columbia University, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and former Chief Economist of the World Bank