When I was a preteen, television was the essential escape vehicle, and the best rides were all made in America. Every afternoon I would race home from school for my daily two-hour outing on the all-American easy-watching super-sexy turbo-charged dreamtime machine. The US of A was just sooo cool.
I watched Fonzy jump the shark, fantasized about cuddling up to Jeanie, laughed at Gilligan, and helped outwit Colonel Klink almost every day. Australia was all about going to school, taking out the bins, and taking crap from everyone. But it was different in the land of the free.
In America everyone was interesting. They had a gun, or lots of guns, or they were a fast talker, or rode a big motorbike, or fought Nazis, or did organized crime, or battled supervillains. They could very well have a Genie, a supercool car, a rock’n’roll band and a perfect life in a big mansion with a pool. They will know cool people, do cool things, listen to cool music, and simply be naturally and effortlessly cool. Plus, in turn, they will be righteous, sexy, brave, wise, dangerous, outrageous, funny, brash, and flash. In other words, they will always be interesting. Not dull. Not deathly and almost unbearably dreary and plain and dull. Not mindbogglingly lifeless and eternally bland suburban blah. For the preteen me, in every important way, America was everything that urban Australia was not.
Then in my teens I became complicated like Kerouac. I lived hip like Ginsburg. I was as lean as Wolfe. I was transcendently cool. I would drag my feet through the negro streets at dawn. I inhabited tenements illuminated. I consumed electric cool-aid in seedy dives. I sat at the feet of wizened guitarists and shivered with rage as the street poets thundered. I dreamt the American dream vicariously yet nevertheless deeply and enthusiastically.
Now the salty bitch has betrayed us all. Most traditional American fiction and mythology has been rendered nonsensical almost overnight. Our common frame of reference has been butchered.
It remained possible to reconcile the evident gap between the professed ambitions of the rulers of the USA, and their actions, when they were professing stereotypical and recognizable political claptrap; but now everything that is occurring simply does not make American sense. According to the current crop of cashed-up leaders, Yankee-doodle and apple pie are passe, the civil war was misguided, miscegenation and diversity are faults, and the constitution got it all wrong. But at least the Supreme Court has kept up with the new political reality and its demands.
When the leader of The US of A is flogging sneakers and shiny techno-trinkets to the red-white-and-gullible from the Oval Office, the line between irony and reality has dissolved. When the writhing mass of those yearning to be free are described in official documents as ‘illegal aliens’ both comedy and culture are cheapened and set adrift. When the stereotypes and narratives that we have all jointly trashed and celebrated, for all of our lives, are suddenly redundant; what happens to the middle-class information bubble?
How can I believe in the Brady Bunch when the President is bonking porn stars? How will Scooby-Doo react when the teacher in the isolated community schoolroom is the enemy, and the corporate shyster trying to scare and defraud everyone is the hero? What happens to Law & Order when the prosecutors are in the dock and the convicted felons are running the Justice Department? This scream of cultural angst has been brought to you by the letter’s ‘G’, ‘O’ and ‘P’ and the numbers ‘19’ and ‘84’.
As a modern thinking Australian in the 21st century, I had learned to come to terms with the changing cultural landscape in the USA. Mainly by becoming psychopathically unconcerned with actual events in the country and instead lapping up the available propaganda. But now it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain a viable level of doublethink. When watching American teevee, it now seems to come down to a choice between either ‘the news’ or ‘the rest’. Perhaps if I pretend that the last ten years did not happen then maybe, just maybe, I can get through an airing of MASH without bursting into tears?
Trump might not be having much of a direct effect on my physical wellbeing, but he sure has punched a huge hole in the side of the USS Happy Memories. Is it now possible to watch The West Wing without devolving into fits of hysterical giggling? Is Boris Badenov still a viable baddy now that Natasha is the White House Press Secretary? (At least Rocky and Bullwinkle live in the soon to be 51st State.)
My childhood is now a MAGA victim. Every time I see some familiar mindless American bubble-gum flavored crap that I recognize, I am jolted into the uncomfortable present. The bloody worries of the world at once become blindingly apparent. I am forced to resentfully acknowledge the actually fucked up reality within which I reside. Which is not why I watch mindless American bubble-gum flavoured crap.
Also by Dr Moylan:
Clenching my buttocks & keeping it short ‘n light
The art of living in interesting times
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I thought Natasha was the Director of National security?
Sorry to tell you James that the US of television land in your teenage years was just another fantasy. Didn’t exist in the real world and those who want to take the US “back” to those days are just kidding themselves. The US is good at projecting something that it is not but not very good at dealing with and fixing the reality that is their country. I was watching a video yesterday about porch pirates (in other words common thieves), it is estimated that 90,000 parcels A DAY are lifted from peoples porches by thieves. The US is a shitehole country, it has been for a very long time. Just my view and nothing that is happening now changes that view, in fact it reinforces it.
It’s interesting that Trump is mirroring the narrative of some here regarding the Russia & Ukraine war.
But oddly (or perhaps not) there appears to be about zero commentary or scrutiny of this.
As we watch the Trump shenanigans, it’s all too easy to categorise this as right-wing rhetoric and showmanship. That would be a mistake.
Trump is certainly unpredictable and dangerous, but that alone does not make him a figure of the far right.
Let’s not forget that for most of his life he was a Democrat, and still has many close friends who are Democrats. His instincts are all liberal.
He’s all about business, about profit, and about doing deals.
That alone does not make him a liberal, but a consistent theme in his campaigning does.
One of the alleged virtues of liberalism is it’s regard for tolerance. But as I’ve pointed out several times in the past, that regard for tolerance only goes so far. Liberals will not tolerate threats, however minor, to their financial system.
They see these as threats to their ability to make a profit.
Even countries that want to go it alone with their own system, interfering with nobody, minding their own business, are attacked without mercy.
During his campaign and since his election, Trump has threatened economic warfare against countries that are considering moving away from the US dollar as the medium for international trade. This is not one of his “flooding the zone with crap” tactics. This has been consistent.
And his intolerance for alternative economic models makes him– you guessed it — a liberal.
All of the political mayhem and chaos that we see in an endless stream has a single cause. Frantic attempts to preserve a financial system that entrenches both privilege and poverty.
Liberalism is the problem.
That’s hilarious!!!
Trump is a liberal!!
Amazing
Readers might find this helpful in considering Trump’s liberal background.
From wiki — Over his first term, Trump reduced federal taxes and increased federal spending, both of which significantly increased federal budget deficits and the national debt. The positive economic situation he inherited from the Obama administration continued, with a labor market approaching full employment and measures of household income and wealth continuing to improve further into record territory. Trump also implemented trade protectionism via tariffs, primarily on imports from China. During Trump’s first three years in office, the number of Americans without health insurance increased by 4.6 million (16%), while his tax cuts favored the top earners, and failed to deliver on its promises, worsened and eroded the country’s revenue needed to continue investment to critical programs like social security and medicine.
Erosion of critical programs? Tax cuts for the wealthy? How very liberal.
Eagle-eyed readers might find a couple of other “liberalisms” in that lot.
Since his election Chatham House says Ahead of the election Trump promised action in five main economic policy areas. He pledged tax cuts resulting in a stimulus of up to $8–10 trillion, to impose 10–20 per cent tariffs against all US trading partners and 60 per cent against China, to deport up to 11 million undocumented migrants, to unleash a wave of economic deregulation and to reform radically the federal bureaucracy, improving efficiency and cutting ‘enormous amounts’ of waste. He also promised to roll back the Biden administration’s pro-climate policies, to end the war in Ukraine and to double down on efforts to constrain China’s access to US technology.
So his outlook has not changed. The comment from Chatham House could just as easily be written about any Oz Coalition govt. Tax cuts, discrimination against asylum seekers, deregulation, improving efficiency and cutting waste (cutting social services), undermining pro-climate policies — these are all typical liberalism options that have been utilised by the Coalition.
The only significant economic difference between Trump and liberals here in Oz is his use of tariffs as economic warfare. But then, we are not an economic powerhouse with delusions of global supremacy, so we do not have the power to go down that path.
Trump’s use of tariffs however, is still consistent with the most important plank of liberal policy — the protection of profits and the system that produces profits.
Steve, you are a might confused.
You are misusing the term ‘liberal’ and confusing it with neoliberalism and corporatism.
More significantly, you do not typify a politician by what they say but rather what they do.
Both Adolf and I are both fond of using the word ‘socialism’ and talking about the need to empower those who have only their labor to sell. But that does not make me a Nazi or Adolf a socialist.
Moreover, even in terms of considering a formal Politics 101 appreciation of liberalism (as it emerged in the mid 18th century in the UK) Trump simply does not fit.
The main feature of the original iteration of liberalism was the definition and extension of basic civil rights via (the rather woolly proposition of) ‘a social compact’ with the citizenry. Thus social scientists often comment that the main benefit accruing to the modern age that flows from more than two centuries of liberal philosophy is not necessarily legislative but rather narrative.
Extemporization upon the philosophy of liberalism has provided us with propositions such as the social discourse and the idea of a differentiated audience. Our modern conceptions relating to each national ‘pot’ being culturally and epistemically diverse are born from the cultivation of a liberal view of society.
However liberalism – like the Woolly Mammoth – is extinct. It was one facet of the ‘great society’ period of social theorising when the social ethos and most consequential scholars were still largely wedded to the idea that society was perfectible.
We are in a post-liberal epoch where ideology seem to be the primary explanatory paradigm – along with those who simply despair quietly and eschew all of the simpler explanations for everything that seem to be a ubiquitous byproduct of our modern populist politics.
sigh…
cool JM
Patricia,
I have reread yr comment several times and still find it hard to respond in any adequate fashion.
Therefore, since I have obviously failed to describe my five decade long relationship with the mythical world of America in words (ie, above) I will now attempt the same in Interpretive Dance in the backyard. Although I only have my cat to assist me I am sure I will manage to craft a message that is powerful, nuanced, and impossible to grossly misunderstand. (Give me a few days…)
Astronaut JiMM
Peter Dutton isn’t a liberal either, in the true sense of the word.
R,
I would suggest that Dutton is an ideologue and a populist, but mostly a rather dull and uninspiring opportunist. I sorta get the feeling that he believes what he perceives to be most opportune thing to believe at any given moment. In the wild west he would have been selling quack remedies at the fair alongside Trump, but not nearly as successfully.
Dr JiMM,
It baffles me why the party of Peter Dutton’s call themselves the Liberal Party.
The Liberals on Parade (circa Johnny H).
Act six: Reffo & Ministerial Duet.
Reffo: Johnny! Fetch me some freedom!
Johnny: There’s a hole in my heart, oh Reffo, dear Reffo!
There’s a hole in my heart, dear Reffo, a hole.
Reffo: Well, patch it dear Johnny, dear Johnny, dear Johnny,
Well, patch it dear Johnny, dear Johnny, patch it.
Johnny: With what shall I patch it, oh Reffo, oh Reffo!
With what shall I patch it, oh Reffo, this hole?
Reffo: With compassion dear Johnny, dear Johnny, dear Johnny,
With compassion dear Johnny, dear Johnny, patch it.
Johnny: That won’t win an election, oh Reffo, you dodo
That won’t win no election, oh Reffo, you dill.
Reffo: But we’re drowning dear Johnny, fleeing, then sinking,
Whilst trying dear Johnny, to find a new home
Ruddock: We’ll build them some shelter, out hither, out yonder.
Where illegal non-persons, can find a new home.
etcetera…
Jim, I’m confused about a lot of things, but liberalism is not one of them.
I’ve repeatedly stated here that liberalism is anything a liberal wants it to be at any point in time. Stanford agrees with me. “Liberalism is more than one thing. On any close examination, it seems to fracture into a range of related but sometimes competing visions.”
And this “Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues — the nature of liberty, the place of property and democracy in a just society, the comprehensiveness and the reach of the liberal ideal — one might wonder whether there is any point in talking of ‘liberalism’ at all.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/
There is certainly confusion about neo-liberalism, as discussed at Neoliberalism In Australia by Denis Hay. Check out the comments for more info, but this comment is relevant — “It was of interest to me personally that Jackson noted that in this entire book about the crisis of capitalism and democracy, the term “neoliberalism” was only used once. This supports the comment from Chris Hedges I mentioned above, that “neoliberalism remains largely unmentioned and unexamined, especially by academia and media”.
I’ve made the point several times that the term is unsuitable, as it is a diversion in that it disguises the predictable downside of liberalism. It runs protection for liberalism.
Wiki seems to support this view. “In scholarly use, the term is often left undefined or used to describe a multitude of phenomena; however, it is primarily employed to delineate the societal transformation resulting from market-based reforms.”
Market-based reforms are simply liberal economics in action.”
You said “you do not typify a politician by what they say but rather what they do.”
Exactly. That’s why I included a summary of his first term achievements. And in his 2nd term, the tariff war has begun.
You said “The main feature of the original iteration of liberalism was the definition and extension of basic civil rights via (the rather woolly proposition of) ‘a social compact’ with the citizenry. Thus social scientists often comment that the main benefit accruing to the modern age that flows from more than two centuries of liberal philosophy is not necessarily legislative but rather narrative.”
Boy oh boy, I could not have put it better myself. In fact, you’ve re-worded my explanation of the deliberate con behind the continued popularity of liberalism.
A rather woolly social compact? Say it again, it’s music to my ears.
“The main benefit accruing to the modern age that flows from more than two centuries of liberal philosophy is not necessarily legislative but rather narrative”? Yep. And the narrative is everything. Don’t worry about concrete achievements that last. Focus on the ever-changing narrative.
“Our modern conceptions relating to each national ‘pot’ being culturally and epistemically diverse are born from the cultivation of a liberal view of society.”
And yet, and yet… we watch as the world dominated by liberal democracy becomes evermore culturally homogenised and bland.
What was that you said? Don’t look at what they say, look at what they do?
*”However liberalism – like the Woolly Mammoth – is extinct.”
Try telling that to those suffering in Gaza as the liberal democracies stand by doing nothing. Or tell it to the people of Nicaragua who are relentlessly attacked because they have the temerity to aspire to an independent model of economic development.
Sorry Jim.
Trump is a liberal.
Trump is a greedy, senile megalomaniac, full of hatred. He has no genuine political convictions. He’ll use whatever badge he can to get what he wants.
Steve should be encouraged by the fact that Trump uses a very similar narrative to himself when discussing the Russia vs Ukraine war.
Steve claimed Trump is a liberal.
I’ve noted others have commented on Steve’s limited ability to define what he means when he refers to a liberal
I can see why.
I’ve looked at a range of definitions of liberalism . None describe Trump.
It seems that Steve likes the Humpy Dumpty definition – When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
His input on this subject ranks among his greatest embarrassments, such as his claim that economic statistics, facts and data are “meaningless” in a discussion about economics.
It’s always nice, when one makes a contentious point, that someone chips in with a supporting comment.
AC has noted that he has “looked at a range of definitions of liberalism … ”
This enlightened observation fits in perfectly with the point I made above — “Given that liberalism fractures on so many issues … one might wonder whether there is any point in talking of ‘liberalism’ at all.”
And well done to AC for taking the trouble to do some research on this important matter. His unsurpassed yearning for learning, his enthusiastic embrace of the big picture, and his steely determination to focus on the matter in hand so that reality can be revealed in all its glory, is an example to us all.
Your “big picture”
° Economic data, facts and statistics are “meaningless” in a discussion about economics
° Trump is a “liberal ”
° There’s a dozen more like that (just as embarrassing), which I might find and post
••••••••••••••••••••
I’m willing to start with a basic (Wikipedia) definition –
Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, the right to private property and equality before the law.Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.
There’s not much of Trump in any of that.
•••••••••••••••••••
But the great news is- you are entirely consistent with the Trump position on Ukraine and Russia.
You’re know by the company you keep.
Jim, In a recent comment elsewhere (Neoliberalism in Australia by Denis Hay) I mentioned a review of a book that is relevant to these issues. My comment included this — The review of the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism by Martin Wolf was written by Trevor Jackson, professor of economic history at Berkeley. Author of the book, Martin Wolf, is possibly the most influential economics commentator in the English-speaking world. He has been chief editorial writer for the Financial Times since 1987 and their lead economics analyst since 1996. Before that he trained in economics at Oxford and worked at the World Bank starting in 1971, including three years as senior economist and a year spent working on the first World Development Report in 1978. This is his fifth book since moving to the Financial Times.
So this is a discussion of liberalism at the highest level.
The review discusses the reversal of attitude by Martin Wolf to the benefits of liberal economics, and his failure to see the full picture.
Those readers who in the past have disputed my analysis of liberalism should note that Jackson’s use of the term is identical to mine.
The book review can be found here. I hope you find it to be of interest.
Cheers, Steve
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/01/16/never-too-much-the-crisis-of-democratic-capitalism-wolf/
Jim, just to clarify your final point in your reply to me — your sense of despair at our modern populist politics.
We have to ask ourselves how we got to this point.
I’ve argued elsewhere that the shift to the Right that we see fairly uniformly across the globe, is down to the failures of liberal democracy. This might seem unrelated to our topic, but your reference to populism is worth pursuing.
What exactly is populism? It’s a term usually used to denigrate, and I sense that was your intention also.
But surely populism simply refers to those who are popular?
Why should those who value democracy be resentful of popularity? Isn’t that what democracy is all about?
If a majority of voters want to elect a demagogue, what’s the in-principle problem?
Wikipedia has an extensive entry on populism, it’s well worth a look. This item struck me, as it supports my position.
The rise of populism in Western Europe is, in large part, a reaction to the failure of traditional parties to respond adequately in the eyes of the electorate to a series of phenomena such as economic and cultural globalisation, the speed and direction of European integration, immigration, the decline of ideologies and class politics, exposure of elite corruption, etc. It is also the product of a much-cited, but rarely defined, “political malaise”, manifested in steadily falling voter turnout across Western Europe, declining political party membership, and ever-greater numbers of citizens in surveys citing a lack of interest and distrust in politics and politicians. (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2008)
Two important questions arise.
Historically there are several meanings to the word, but with populism being widely accepted today as meaning a revolt by the common people against democracy being controlled by elites, is it the case that the use of “populism” as a pejorative is simply a tool used in a class war?
And if this is a class war, whose side are we on?
… populism being widely accepted today as meaning a revolt by the common people against democracy being controlled by elites …
Yes, because nothing says non-elite like billionaires (Musk), rich grifters (Trump) and rich ethno-nationalists (Orban).
leefe, if you think that was a rebuttal of my point, think again.
Those who voted for Trump think they are revolting against the elites. That’s the point.
What do think “drain the swamp” was all about?
Excellent discussion.
Seems to be well moving along.
Under Lucy’s article Blind Faith … 6Feb2025, I asked,
OK, so now (unless I’ mistaken) its about ‘liberalism’ and ‘liberty’. So what is the annoying prevalent political pre-history that drove those two expressions into common parlance. What was the prevailing antagonism? ‘Liberalism’ and ‘liberty’ as opposed to what?
I enjoyed SD’s response regarding ‘Ricardo’ etc, and JulianP’s subsequent comment about Liberalism / Capitalism / Neoliberalism moving along to High-Tech Capitalism and Neo-Feudalism.
In this discussion (above), I latched onto,
“… from more than two centuries of liberal philosophy is not necessarily legislative but rather narrative.” Yep. And the narrative is everything. Don’t worry about concrete achievements that last. Focus on the ever-changing narrative.,and
“it is primarily employed to delineate the societal transformation resulting from market-based reforms.” Market-based reforms are simply liberal economics in action., and
On populism, populism being widely accepted today as meaning a revolt by the common people against democracy being controlled by elites, is it the case that the use of “populism” as a pejorative is simply a tool used in a class war? And if this is a class war, whose side are we on? In this, I understand ‘elites’ to mean the class (extant or aspired to) that pumps the euphemistic narrative of ‘market-based reform’ for their own convenience in wealth accumulation, as opposed to a ‘democratic’ regime which regulates to provide equality of services and economic opportunity for all.
That liberalism and neoliberalism, through the guile of the narrative have largely won-out, its tangible effects have given rise to further dissatisfaction, which liberalism / neoliberalism has doubled-down on, blaming the regulating regime for constraining opportunity – a lie, it only regulates for equality of opportunity. In any case its ongoing guileful narrative has given rise to a maddened populism, and in response by informed observers terms such as neo-feudalism and techno-feudalism (regressions to brutality?).
Further on populism, another term arises ‘sado-populism’ (which Lucy in her article 20Nov2024 of the same name, attributes to Timothy Snyder). Wow, what an article! From liberalism, now onto neoliberalism and sado-populism. From Lucy’s intro:
“The neoliberal project underway from the 1940s but truly gaining traction in
the 1970s and 80s in the Thatcher/Reagan era was marketed as selling freedom to succeed. In fact, the program was effectively neofeudal. The ultra-rich were in the process of using their charitable foundations to fund projects to remake the law to serve their desires, not the common wealth.”
“The oligarchs would have freedom from tax and “red tape.” This meant the public would have “freedom” from services such as decent healthcare and education, maintained bridges, roads and, ultimately, staffed services like air traffic controllers and the weather bureau. The public would also have “freedom” from decent working conditions, safe consumables, clean air and water.”
“The protests that would inevitably result would need to be crushed to prevent interruptions to profits. The pain created for the vast majority of the public has been immense. Wages have stalled since the neoliberal project gained traction. (CEO remuneration, by contrast, has skyrocketed. Another of the neoliberal activists’ scams was the notion that meteoric executive pay equalled profits.) The middle class has shrivelled, and the precariat grown.”
To suggest that Trump is not a ‘liberal’ of liberalism and / or neoliberalism, to me seems kinda weird, especially given the ‘slipperiness’ of the term and the narrative. I certainly wouldn’t put him in the class of ‘market-based reformers’. To me, he is the great circumventer and smasher of all ‘norms’ regardless where those ‘norms’ may have emerged from. This time around, he has gone the complete lunatic autocrat, interested, as he always has been, in his own wealth and aggrandizement. Whilst he reads from ‘Project 2025’, he doesn’t really give a damn about any thesis, and just picks and chooses to suit himself and his quest. And it’s notable that the all-powerful global Techbros have kissed the orange ring so as to further their wealth and power as the techno-feudalists, along with various other pluocratic hangers-on as neo-feudalists.
As for Russia / Ukraine, and for that matter Israel / Palestine, the situation today, is simply a symptom of old quests for commercial / strategic dominion, whether by ‘holy’ or ‘civilization’ myths, which persist today alongside the ‘economic freedom’ myths pumped by liberalism / neoliberalism.
It’s not that hard to follow the relatively modern trail of its development, from the growth and putting down of the Ottomans, through the Ottomans-Habsburgs, to the betrayal of the Russians, the Crimea War, the quest of the Zionists, the Sykes-Picot carve-up, the full force of the ‘liberal narrative’, and the progression of that politics and the late 19th and 20th century wars, and beguiled life thereafter.
In the face of these wrecking balls, it’s no wonder there’s a predominance of confusion and mistrust. A perfect ‘divide and conquer’ environment relished by Trump. In the last week or so, no real surprise to hear his narrative on the ‘Gaza Riviera’, or his extended phone calls with Putin and their team’s travel to Saudi-Arabia to meet (at the exclusion of Ukraine and Europe), and then Trump to laud Putin (another pretender lost Pink Emperor), and lambast Ukraine and Europe, calling the war their fault, and Zelensky a dictator. To Trump the complex truth doesn’t matter. It’s classic Trump circumvention and smashing of ‘norms’, all and any ‘norms’ to supplant them by any means so as to further his own wealth and aggrandizement. The narrative of another uber-liberal, of the crazed narcissistic kleptocratic autocratic type.
Maybe it’s good things will crumble fast? But at what cost? Who knows?
Clakka, thanks for taking an interest in such an important topic.
A few months ago I downloaded Chalmers Johnson’s 2004 book The Sorrows of Empire. I’ve only just got around to reading it, and went straight to the chapter on globalization in which he has included a history of neoliberalism that supports what I’ve been saying here for quite some time.
You referred to Lucy’s account of neoliberalism, which is a good one, but I’ve contested her timeline elsewhere. As does Johnson.
I’ve posted the following because a widespread sentimental and ultimately dangerous view of liberalism persists.
From Johnson — In the 1970s, the American and British economies were plagued by “stagflation” (high rates of inflation combined with low economic growth), high rates of unemployment, large public-sector deficits, two major oil crises as producer nations sought to influence the policies of consuming nations, racial strife, and, for the United States, defeat in Vietnam.
These circumstances allowed for the rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. To revive international trade and, more important, put the United States back in charge of it, the new governments committed themselves to a rebirth of nineteenth-century capitalist fundamentalist theory.
This meant withdrawing the state as much as possible from participation in the economy, opening domestic markets at least in principle to international trade and foreign investment, privatizing investment in public utilities and natural resources, ending most protective labor laws, enacting powerful domestic and international safeguards for private property rights, including, above all, “intellectual property rights” (that is, patents of all sorts), and enforcing conservative fiscal policies even at the expense of the public’s health and welfare.
Because the ideas of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish and English economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo, from whom the new economic orthodoxy derived, were associated with the political movement in Britain called “liberalism,” the new economic dispensation was often called “neoliberalism.” In policy circles it became known as the “Washington consensus,” in academic life as “neoclassical economics,” and in public ideology as “globalism” or, more proactively, “globalization.”
One of the leading academic specialists on globalization, Manfred Steger, says that it amounted to “a gigantic repackaging” of two centuries of classical liberalism, relabeled “the new economy.”
So there we have it. Neoliberalism is nothing new as some have suggested, it’s the liberal economics of Industrial Revolution-era plunder and oppression, repackaged with the additional feature of globalization, that was not new at all.
All that was new was the cool label.
I recall that when TV first entered our homes in the sixties, TV outlets were so desperate for fill-in material they would import UK “documentaries”, many of which pushed export markets as the key to sound economic policy.
Export, export, export was the cry well before Thatcher and Reagan appeared. In fact, the wealth of the foremost European economies that grew over centuries was based on globalization.
We know it as colonialism.
Clakka, there’s a very good article in The Guardian today by the Oz economist John Quiggan, on this very topic.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/22/neoliberalism-is-dead-so-why-havent-australias-leaders-got-the-message
As I read it I thought that he was getting the neoliberalism description right but the history wrong, but he eventually noted its roots in classical liberalism.
Yeah, thanks SD,
As a complete novice, I now think I have a reasonable handle on the historic progression. Not for the purpose of the minutia of economic theory and its associated philosophies, but for the broad sweeps and affects, how and why they were adopted, and what narratives permeated into ubiquitous ‘beliefs’.
SD, the irony of your close-out had me nodding agreement. No doubt, from the year dot through the rise and fall of civilizations, there’s been the ‘plays’ of supremacists giving rise to sieges, tribal incursions and wars to facilitate theft and often obliteration.
For the ‘West’, after Columbus proved we weren’t going to fall off the edge of the world, pope Alexander VI introduced laws promoting ‘colonialism’ via the Doctrine of Discovery. Stacked on the Doctrine of Reception extant, it was let rip by Monarchs, the aristocracy, pirates and freebooters. ‘Natives’ and non-Christians didn’t stand a chance. And of course as time went by, in the ‘West’ and particularly ‘America’, dominionism (or dominion theory). Although various civil laws may, to a certain extent, temper those old doctrines, they remain saturated deep in the psyche of the ‘West’, and also for the ‘victims’ globally.
The collective of the UN has instituted in International Law protections against those wiles, but it is not unusual for the provisions of such associated Treaties to be ignored. And of late, lead by hostility of America, for the UN to be repudiated, intimidated, and subjected to Uncle Sam’s hubristic sanctions.
Of course, the monied FRWNJs and re-emerging fascists rely on this to disassemble the ‘democracy project’ and any faith in it.
All to the delight of the narcissistic kleptocratic circumventer and iconoclast, Trump, and his flunkies. Yet given half a chance, another demonstrable ‘colonizer’ of state mechanisms, the mind and all / any lands and seas.
To me, one of the big questions remains. Can the USA learn from and reform itself, taking out the xenophobia, colonialism, dysfunctions, criminality and hubris lurking, and now off the leash and running amok, in its systems?
Indeed Clakka, you’re exactly right.
The role of historical antecedents is so important in this.
Because major economic/political movements do not emerge from nothing.
I’ve noted elsewhere elements of liberalism in the Magna Carta, but I’m sure that we could also find them in Rome or Carthage or ancient Persia.
Liberalism is, after all, just an expression of human weaknesses that have through accidents of history, made it to centre stage at a particularly crucial stage in human history.
To your question — “Can the USA learn from and reform itself,…”
It’s just about the foremost question of the times, isn’t it?
So much hinges on it.
My suggestion would be that individuals and small groups are capable of learning and reforming, but unless such a process takes place nation-wide it will not happen.
Bureaucracies do not reform. They protect the status quo.
The US has bureaucracies within bureaucracies, as we see with their foreign affairs operations.
Too much inertia.