This presented a problem for disaffected socialists after the collapse of the Soviet Union, both ideologically and politically. They could no longer deny that central planning was a failure, and that their popularity was waning. This led critics of the "neoliberalism" of Reagan and Thatcher, and newly disaffected socialists and social democrats like Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gerd Schröder, to re-brand as free market progressives. They tried to push it as a global movement. It's odd; though they were explicitly critical of the supply-side economics of Reagan and Thatcher, they are somehow considered in the same pantheon as Reagan and Thatcher, with neoliberalism flowing through them.
Personally, I take a different approach. I would call their agenda and the period since Thatcher and Reagan (and perhaps Bush Sr.) "neosocialism", because it better represents the spirit of its architects and reflects their turn away from the Old Left socialism into what Bill Clinton called the New Democrats, or what Blair called New Labour. This political triangulation flows right into "compassionate conservatism" of Bush Jr. and David Cameron. Tony Blair stood in front of the International Socialist Congress in ‘97 and pleaded for a "modernized social democracy", and this modernized social democracy prevails. — NOS4A2
Philosophically, Michel Foucault’s idea of Biopolitics and “Left Governmentality” are worth checking out. Some say he was flirting with neoliberalism in those lectures. — NOS4A2
Obama's bailing out of the banks after the 2008 crisis was a conspicuous neo-liberal move. Cornel West described Obama as a 'black mascot of Wall Street.' The point, I guess, is that liberalism seems inescapable.
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