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the neoliberal vision of the future

Dillinger4

Dillinger4

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What is the neoliberal vision of the future?

The picture often given by neoliberal apologists is a happy market run society, free from government control etc etc. However, I am not really interested in the views of idiot apologists.

What I want to think about is the views of the people directing policy, the people who directly benefit from neoliberal policy, because I get the feeling that at least some of them know better than that.

They seem to be risking their future survival for very short term gain. What kind of future to neoliberal policy makers envision?
 
On the most basic level, their future vision isn't that much different from the current one - for them at least - just one with an intensification and deepening of current trends/plans. So basically, a continuing downward shift in the labour share of the national income (achieved by intensive and extensive methods - higher productivity at lower wages and longer working day (or two jobs) at lower wages. That's the fundamental thing that their model is based on.

On top of that there an associated shift of the cost of social expenditure onto labour as well, whilst redirecting that social spending onto projects that support the first fundamental aim - state spending to be offload costs that historically came to be viewed as parts of capitals obligations - health, education, infrastructure etc - merit goods to be turned into private profit if you like.

And then, to achieve all this they need to destroy the way that people organise collectively - this is to be done by the above constructing 'human nature' itself - famous Thatcher quote:

Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul.
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butchersapron said:
Just noticed this is in world politics - thought it was in UK P&P so responded on the basis of domestic plans...
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I am interested in both.

This system is completely unsustainable. I want to try and understand how the neoliberal policy makers and advocates see it playing out.
 
I'm repeating someone else's argument here, so I may have it wrong, but downward pressure on labour share of national income means that workers have to be encouraged to borrow more in order to keep consumption up. But borrow against what? The only way to do that is to increase the notional value of assets. And then you end up with money in two places at once representing the same wealth – in the hands of the ever-richer rich and in the hands of the ever more debt-ridden poor. And then... craaaaash. It can never be sustainable, so it can't be a vision of the future, surely.
 
Dillinger4 said:
What is the neoliberal vision of the future?

The picture often given by neoliberal apologists is a happy market run society, free from government control etc etc. However, I am not really interested in the views of idiot apologists.

What I want to think about is the views of the people directing policy, the people who directly benefit from neoliberal policy, because I get the feeling that at least some of them know better than that.

They seem to be risking their future survival for very short term gain. What kind of future to neoliberal policy makers envision?
Click to expand...

The future isn't the primary consideration of neo-liberalism (or even really an appropriate subject for consideration). What matters is in the present securing and deepening individualised market relationships, as the economic, social and cultural organising principles of society. As far as the future can be protected/engaged with at all, it is at this level of 'freeing individuals' in the present.

All of which makes it horribly dangerous - Louis MacNeice
 
littlebabyjesus said:
I'm repeating someone else's argument here, so I may have it wrong, but downward pressure on labour share of national income means that workers have to be encouraged to borrow more in order to keep consumption up. But borrow against what? The only way to do that is to increase the notional value of assets. And then you end up with money in two places at once representing the same wealth – in the hands of the ever-richer rich and in the hands of the ever more debt-ridden poor. And then... craaaaash. It can never be sustainable, so it can't be a vision of the future, surely.
Click to expand...

Not if they're put in a situation where ever more people work and work more/longer/more productively - perfectly possible then for the w/c to maintain the same living standards whilst capital increases its share.

The question of its sustainability as we might think of it is really not on the neo-liberals agenda really. But, also the current fuck up is, from their perspective, perfectly sustainable -in fact, it's functional for them.
 
butchersapron said:
The question of its sustainability as we might think of it is really not on the neo-liberals agenda really. But, also the current fuck up is, from their perspective, perfectly sustainable -in fact, it's functional for them.
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That's true. It's a 'correction' whereby all that money representing non-existent wealth disappears, but it is taken away from the workers. Result.
 
Blackrock’s Larry Fink opened his most recent interview with the sentance: "the market likes totalitarian government" make of that what you will.....
 
Dillinger4 said:
What is the neoliberal vision of the future?

The picture often given by neoliberal apologists is a happy market run society, free from government control etc etc. However, I am not really interested in the views of idiot apologists.

What I want to think about is the views of the people directing policy, the people who directly benefit from neoliberal policy, because I get the feeling that at least some of them know better than that.

They seem to be risking their future survival for very short term gain. What kind of future to neoliberal policy makers envision?
Click to expand...



Have a look at the Adam Curtis documentaries The Power of Nightmares and Whatever Happened to Our Dream of Freedom. Both can be found on Youtube. If I remember correctly both contain interviews with neo-liberal and neo-conservative thinkers and strategists.

The best book I know that dissects neo-liberalism/conservatism as both an economic and political strategy is John Gray's False Dawn, which is all the more interesting in coming from somebody who was once largely on their side. Professor Richard Wolff's website is also worth going through for both articles and audio/video in which he takes apart the neo-liberal project and its effects.
 
killer b said:
something about a boot and a human face, i'll wager.
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Those interviews in the above mentioned documentaries reveal that far from being simply interested in profit, the neocons (the radical wing of neo-liberalism) at least sincerely see themselves as freedom fighters. John Gray accurately calls them revolutionaries.
 
LLETSA said:
Those interviews in the above mentioned documentaries reveal that far from being simply interested in profit, the neocons (the radical wing of neo-liberalism) at least sincerely see themselves as freedom fighters. John Gray accurately calls them revolutionaries.
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Their idea of freedom (for a small percentage of the population and mostly for "the markets") doesn't mean they can't like authoritarianism. Enemies of enterprise and all that...
 
lagtbd said:
Their idea of freedom (for a small percentage of the population and mostly for "the markets") doesn't mean they can't like authoritarianism. Enemies of enterprise and all that...
Click to expand...



They quite clearly do like authoritarianism where they feel it's needed. That doesn't mean they don't regard themselves as freedom fighters.
 
What makes you thınk they have a plan at all?

The system ıs determıned by the ınterests of capıtal ıtself, not by the owners of capıtal.
 
phildwyer said:
What makes you thınk they have a plan at all?

The system ıs determıned by the ınterests of capıtal ıtself, not by the owners of capıtal.
Click to expand...

Or you might say, the people driving the neo-liberal agenda are not concerned with planning for e.g. sustainability, they're concerned primarily with maximising profits and pushing ideas about governance for society which are oriented to profitability (although I don't think particularly rigorously in most cases)
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Or you might say, the people driving the neo-liberal agenda are not concerned with planning for e.g. sustainability, they're concerned primarily with maximising profits and pushing ideas about governance for society which are oriented to profitability (although I don't think particularly rigorously in most cases)
Click to expand...

It seems like a massively risky short term gamble which could result in the collapse of the entire system, when there is another banking crisis, for example.

I don't think there is any structured plan, but as people so heavily involved in financial affairs, they must have a sense of the risk that they are taking.

This occurred to me when whilst thinking where neo-liberal policy ends. What happens when everything has been cut and put into private hands? What happens when there is nobody left who can even pretend to regulate the banks? What happens when the next crisis happens, and nobody is able to be bailed out? What happens when civil society (possibly) breaks down during the next crisis because all the functions of the state have been sold?

I am just trying to figure out how the people running this see some of those questions.

As butchers said somewhere up there, it is a fuck up for us, and it is a functionable fuck up for them - but for how long? As things get more fucked up and unstable, as deeper and deeper and crisis occurs - what then? Surely they know that this cant last.
 
I was once on a training day about the future of employment. It was led by some people from Shell. Their main theme was that in future people would not be employed by one employer but would have a 'portfolio' of work. That is to say that everyone would be self employed working on a number of different projects at a time for different companies.

They had a further proposal and that is that there would not be companies as we know them now. Instead investors would set up a company to complete a particular task, like building a road. They would put the work out to others for a price, and when the task was completed the company would cease to exist. This of course would remove all liabilities of companies to those they employed.

That is was the view from certain people at Shell a few years back.
 
Hocus Eye. said:
I was once on a training day about the future of employment. It was led by some people from Shell. Their main theme was that in future people would not be employed by one employer but would have a 'portfolio' of work. That is to say that everyone would be self employed working on a number of different projects at a time for different companies.

They had a further proposal and that is that there would not be companies as we know them now. Instead investors would set up a company to complete a particular task, like building a road. They would put the work out to others for a price, and when the task was completed the company would ceases to exist. This of course would remove all liabilities of companies to those they employed.

That is was the view from certain people at Shell a few years back.
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Holy cow, that's horrible, and I can see it working. It would certainly further entrench a certain parasitic class of people uninterested in doing anything productive themselves or having any responsibilities towards anyone. I can definitely imagine it being a new phase in the 'liberation' of capital. It would probably take off in the third world before the first I should imagine - that would be the place to look out for it.
 
It's the way I'd like to work. And in fact it's very much how I'm structuring my life.

Put simply... if I work for one company and it goes its up.. I'm screwed. however if I work for several then the loss of one can be covered for.
 
Dillinger4 said:
What is the neoliberal vision of the future?
Click to expand...

Maybe I is not up with the latest political lingo, but liberalism is essentially about the freedom of ideas, no?

To ask what their view of the future is is like asking a million people about cheese... you might find that Dairylea is popular, but you aren't going to get much more use out of it than that.

The point of liberalism, I think, is that planning for the future is a specific task of the individual, governmental responsibility is to ensure that there as few barriers as possible.

In that context it's contrary to the ethos of it to have concrete plans for the future since that inhibits freedoms.
 
The neoliberal vision of the future is laid out from about 5:12



These people are evil and mad, we can only hope there is a global upsurge of violent hatred directed against these genocidal megalomaniacs leading to their utter annihilation. Either that or they will destroy the planet.
 
Dillinger4 said:
It seems like a massively risky short term gamble which could result in the collapse of the entire system, when there is another banking crisis, for example.

I don't think there is any structured plan, but as people so heavily involved in financial affairs, they must have a sense of the risk that they are taking.

This occurred to me when whilst thinking where neo-liberal policy ends. What happens when everything has been cut and put into private hands? What happens when there is nobody left who can even pretend to regulate the banks? What happens when the next crisis happens, and nobody is able to be bailed out? What happens when civil society (possibly) breaks down during the next crisis because all the functions of the state have been sold?

I am just trying to figure out how the people running this see some of those questions.

As butchers said somewhere up there, it is a fuck up for us, and it is a functionable fuck up for them - but for how long? As things get more fucked up and unstable, as deeper and deeper and crisis occurs - what then? Surely they know that this cant last.
Click to expand...

It's almost as if capitalism contains inherent contradictions that will lead to its own downfall. Almost as if.
 
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