He rejected both social justice and the welfare state, both of which are regnant in social democracies.

Ah yes, the incredibly healthy and definitely not dying welfare state, which has not been dismantled piece by piece and is most definitely not bleeding out on the killing room floor of 'social democracies' everywhere, especially in the name of austerity all over the globe. And 'social justice', that regnant form of justice which is definitely enshrined in neoliberal justice systems everywhere and has also not been under withering attack from every possible angle in recent times. One would of course have to be a complete fucking moron to not notice the ascendency of these things!

Don't you know that people are poor because of the welfare state? If companies don't have to employ people, they won't. Governments create artificial scarcity in labour markets through the administration of welfare, and since they're less efficient at allocating human resources than markets they always run at a loss. Moreover, if companies didn't have recourse to the state, there would be no regulatory capture! And wealth would be much more liquid, flowing free like business. As it stands, the state is a bastion of corruption and creates shortages where really there are none.

(it's so easy... so easy...)

Amazing arguments.

Don't take our word for it, just read.

"Even though Blair’s New Labour came to power on the basis of a social-democrat agenda which included redistributive social policies and expansionary economic policies, it seems that instead of reversing the neoliberal consensus of the time, New Labour under the premiership of M. Blair actually maintained such consensus and mostly followed in the footsteps of its predecessors."

https://www.academia.edu/5373503/Blair_s_New_Labour_and_the_power_of_the_neoliberal_consensus

"For some, the landslide victory of the Labour Party in 1997 held the promise of a reversal of the socio-economic transformation of Britain that had been achieved through nearly eighteen years of Conservative government. But it did not take long for the Blair government to disappoint these hopes. For, in many ways, the three successive Labour Governments under Blair’s continuing authoritarian plebiscitary tutelage have deliberately, persistently, and wilfully driven forward the neo-liberal transformation of Britain rather than halting or reversing it."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312167931_New_Labour_or_the_Normalization_of_Neo-Liberalism

One of the more interesting turns in the literature on neoliberalism that I've noticed is a recognition of a gap between neoliberalism-as-theory and 'really existing neoliberalism', where the latter has outrun the former in ways utterly unseen by it's promulgators. Wendy Brown puts it succulently:

"Instead of being insulated from and thus capable of steering the economy, the state is increasingly instrumentalized by big capital— all the big industries, from agriculture and oil to pharmaceuticals and finance, have their hands on the legislative wheels. Instead of being politically pacified, citizenries have become vulnerable to demagogic nationalistic mobilization decrying limited state sovereignty and supranational facilitation of global competition and capital accumulation. And instead of spontaneously ordering and disciplining populations, traditional morality has become a battle screech, often emptied of substance as it is instrumentalized for other ends." (In The Ruins of Neoliberalism)

Elsewhere, Michel Feher notes that the ascendency of finance means that it's become increasingly hard - per neoliberal theorizing - to approach markets as entrepreneurs, insofar as it's speculation, and not entrepreneurship that ultimately rules the roost: "Neoliberal reforms purported to fashion individuals who would rely on utilitarian calculus - rather than on collective bargaining and vested rights - to maximize their income. By contrast, the subjects of financialized capitalism tend to wager their prosperity on the continuously rated value of their assets - material and immaterial - that make up their capital... Contrary to their conversion to the entrepreneurial ethos, the subscription of economic agents to the dictates of financial markets does not deactivate the polarity between employers and employees without fostering another kind of conflict - one that involves the allocation of credit and that pits investors against the investees who depend on their largesse". (Rated Agency)

In other words, the model sold to people as the best way to get by in life under neoliberalism - you're a utility maximizing individual capable of rational decisions in a fully transparent information landscape! - is simply not fit - is utter garbage - for a world in which it's a literal case of making wagers - betting, gambling - on mostly unknown and unknowable futures that is the key driver of wealth creation in the modern economy. It's the ascendency of the 'animal spirits' (Keynes) that the price mechanism was supposed to put into abeyance.

Anyway, the point of all this is that the traditional distinction between state and market - the one acting as a bulwark on the other - is simply no longer conceptually feasible. The state - which is in debt everywhere around the world - is beholden to (extra-democratic) financiers' interests and is simply incapable of playing the extra-market role so often attributed to it by both neoliberalism and its opponents. So the irony is that there is more than a grain of truth in the neoliberal disdain for the state; only, the reasons are wrong. It's because, and not in spite of, neoliberalism, that the state is so fucking wretched.

The Victorians gave us liberalism and 2 world wars.
Now 75 years later we are again in the shit, sold to us as Neo-liberalism .

No one sold neo-liberalism. It’s essentially anti-market term of abuse.

In this article, we analyze contemporary scholars’ unusual use of neoliberalism in the study of political economy and offer an explanation for why this situation has come about. Based on a content analysis of journal articles, the first section of the article documents three key characteristics of this use. First, neoliberalism is employed asymmetrically across ideological divides: it is used frequently by those who are critical of free markets, but rarely by those who view marketization more positively. In part, proponents avoid the term because neoliberalism has come to signify a radical form of market fundamentalism with which no one wants to be associated. Second, neoliberalism is often left undefined in empirical research, even by those who employ it as a key independent or dependent variable. Third, the term is effectively used in many different ways, such that its appearance in any given article offers little clue as to what it actually means.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12116-009-9040-5

As opposed to 'neosocialism' lmao.

No one sold neo-liberalism. It’s essentially anti-market term of abuse. — NOS4A2

Neo-liberalism is a political choice. Clinton, Thatcher, Blair, Bush they all started to deregulate and let the market loose what previously had been the public sector. Banks were deregulated, Public utilities sold off and then all the tax cut and tax breaks and tax havens to dismantle the rest.

Do you by any chance interpret the financial aid provided by governments to corporations and banks in 2008 - and still provided by governments to petroleum companies, for example - as welfare? If not, why not? It is financial aid provided by the government to those it deems to be in need.

I ask in part because I don’t find evidence that economy ever prospers - or maybe even exists - in the complete absence of governance. What type of governance, and governance by whom, to me are the pivotal issues.

To that effect, governance of economy and governments alike by an ever concentrated sum of corporate oligarchs is to me not a good thing, and that’s where I see things headed. So I’m not misunderstood, I do endorse capitalism when properly structured.

Neo-liberalism is a political choice. Clinton, Thatcher, Blair, Bush they all started to deregulate and let the market loose what previously had been the public sector. Banks were deregulated, Public utilities sold off and then all the tax cut and tax breaks and tax havens to dismantle the rest.

They merely disguised the failures of socialism and the post-war consensus with market reforms, as did Sweden and many others. If Thatcher hadn’t privatized entire industries the Winter of Our Discontent would have lasted for more than a season.

The problem with Blair, Bush and Clinton is they never deregulated enough, and never gave liberalism a chance. Their middle-of-the-road policies were socialism in the outward guise of capitalism.

So I’m not misunderstood, I do endorse capitalism when properly structured. — javra

To be clear, by "capitalism" do you just mean free markets, or do you mean the division of society into a class of owners and a class of laborers? The latter is the original sense of the word still in use by opponents of it despite the misleading conflation with free markets promulgated by proponents of it last century.

The problem with Blair, Bush and Clinton is they never deregulated enough, and never gave liberalism a chance. Their middle-of-the-road policies were socialism in the outward guise of capitalism. — NOS4A2

If you just came here to spout unsupported nonsense, please bugger off. There are people here interested in a serious conversation.

I resurrected the thread because I wanted to debate neoliberalism. No ill will was intended. I will step away so as to comply with your orders.

Or support your claims with argument and evidence. Either would be fine.

To be clear, by "capitalism" do you just mean free trade, or do you mean the division of society into a class of owners and a class of laborers? — Pfhorrest

Not a very easy question to properly answer. In earnest, by "capitalism properly structured" I interpret a meritocratic system of capital acquisition wherein those with greatest ability gain the most. The leading problem I currently find with capitalism as-is is that it selects for those with most greed to be endowed with most capital and, hence, economic power. The stock market has nearly no interest in long-sighted success but, instead, is most interested in short term gains, nowadays at least - often time leading to long-term calamities (economic, environmental, etc.). A CEO that destroys a company, instead of being financially ruined him/herself, often gets selected to run other companies. If the head destroys the body, its unnatural for the head to be placed on another healthy body and prosper. By comparison - as an ideal economic model to be pursued and developed - an economy structured by the people (with the people at large being its governance) in manners that select for qualities we value (as per the golden rule) to gain greatest economic power would by my appraisals be commendable. There would still be competition for capital here and, hence, to me the latter is yet a system of capitalism.

But less idealistically and more directly, in a forced choice, I'd select the "free trade" meaning of the word. Still, class division is by my appraisals not requisite for capitalism. As one example, cooperatives can - or at least could - prosper economically with a system of fair competition - if we actually lived in such a system. Here, the owners are in part or in whole the laborers.

Gave a longer spiel than anticipated. I usually try to shy away from partaking in these subjects due to their complexity - especially when it comes to debates. It just that the idea of economy in the absence of any governance doesn't so far strike me as realistic.

ey merely disguised the failures of socialism and the post-war consensus with market reforms, — NOS4A2

The failure of socialism is that it prevents exploitation, (the dirty secret of unregulated capitalism.)

By comparison - as an ideal economic model to be pursued and developed - an economy structured by the people (with the people at large being its governance) in manners that select for qualities we value (as per the golden rule) to gain greatest economic power would by my appraisals be commendable. There would still be competition for capital here and, hence, to me the latter is yet a system of capitalism.

But less idealistically and more directly, in a forced choice, I'd select the "free trade" meaning of the word. Still, class division is by my appraisals not requisite for capitalism. As one example, cooperatives can - or at least could - prosper economically with a system of fair competition - if we actually lived in such a system. Here, the owners are in part or in whole the laborers. — javra

It sounds like what you favor is what is technically considered a form of market socialism. That “owners = laborers” part (and equivalently the “economy governed by the people” i.e. economic democracy part) is pretty much the definition of socialism, and likewise “owners != laborers” is the original definition of capitalism. Competition is not a requisite feature of capitalism, but of markets, which can be socialist is capital ownership is widespread and there is no owner/laborer division.

To be clear, by "capitalism" do you just mean free trade, or do you mean the division of society into a class of owners and a class of laborers? — Pfhorrest

Capitalism is the exploitation of a society by means of ones assets.

I hear you. The definitions can be contentious, often emotively so. For example, socialism for most - at least in my neck of woods - most always invokes notions of what I term Stalinism. I do favor Sanders (a socialist democrat) as a candidate in the USA, but I for example can also find a lot of merit in Warren, who's a self-proclaimed capitalist. But to the degree I'm wrong in my terminology, I stand corrected. Regardless of terminology, though, I do uphold a market of fair competition.

Yeah, I get that in much of the world since the Cold War there is this false dichotomy between state socialism and libertarian capitalism, an ideological view intentionally pushed by statists and capitalists alike in both the US and USSR to hide the historical association of libertarianism with socialism. The original socialists were libertarian, and the original libertarians were socialist, being the same people in fact. Then Marx et al started a trend in socialism toward “temporary” statism (state capitalism in fact, the avowed form of government of both the USSR and present-day China) still ostensibly en route to a stateless communism; and later Rothbard et al misappropriated the name “libertarianism” for a radical form of capitalism contrary to all prior usage, rejecting the state without understanding how capitalism inevitably creates in effect a state, just an undemocratic state ruled dictatorially by the owning class. In effect, it becomes a modernized feudalism, or state capitalism again, what Mussolini said should have been called corporativism, if he hadn’t already popularized a different name for it: fascism.

a market of fair competition. — javra

Has given us landfills . — ovdtogt

So its your stance that economic competition has so far been mostly equitable?

I don't find it to be so. But I won't be debating the issue.

Very nicely said!