Reading Recommendations: Neoliberalism and the nation state.

[butchersapron]

Budgen spotted encouraging copy-right busting piracy on email list not 15 minutes ago.

 

[Patteran]

This might be of interest - Bordieu on 'The Essence of Neoliberalism' (& its relationship with/impact on the nation & supranational state) in an old Monde Diplo. For Bordieu, it seems relatively accessible. (I've tried & struggled with him before - I read some references to his analysis on taste in a piece about gentrification, & had a go at the source 'Distinction', but it's hard going, made harder by a snide pdf)

ETA - now noticed this thread is eighteen months old.

 

[butchersapron]

http://www.brill.com/products/book/looking-proletariat

How much?!

Here.

 

[brogdale]

Bump, of this thread of great links...because of the PTO James Meadway interview that Smokeandsteam posted in Starmer thread:



Might re-ignite discussion?

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Bump, of this thread of great links...because of the PTO James Meadway interview that Smokeandsteam posted in Starmer thread:



Might re-ignite discussion?

Thanks brogdale

I was planning to start a new thread once the Meadway article appears on Open Democracy. But this saves me the job.

 

[brogdale]

I think Meadway is strong on the need to distinguish the really existing 'neoliberalism' of consolidator states from the ideological theory and tenets that underpin the project and on the threat that 2008/China offer(ed) to the international institutions of neoliberal global trade.

I'm less convinced about the distinction he offers between what he calls the early 'combative era' or neoliberal hegemony and the latter, more recent period of institution building. I'm still more persuaded by the Streeck type analysis that argues that the goal of neoliberal, consolidator states has always been to effect the smallest state capable of transfers of wealth from labour to corporate capital & its owners. Calling the 2008 interventions of big government support the 'death of neoliberalism' fails to appreciate that the project always requires the state as aa agent of regressive wealth transfer and that sometimes that state intervention needs to grow to maintain returns and accumulation.

Meadway's speculation about the 'post-Neoliberal' world of the data giants is interesting in that he sees monopolistic entities large and powerful enough to escape the orbit of the (national) consolidator states requiring neither the their support of corporate welfare nor institutional frameworks that underpin the market.

All the while the exogenous threat of competition from the non-Neoliberal world of the PRC is forcing the hand of the 'free-world' consolidator states to stop and reverse their consolidation in order to support capital to compete with counterparts from the "Communist" state.

Interesting stuff.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Following on from the Meadway PTO stuff this paper is also very useful in thinking about how neo-liberalism in its current guise is visibly corroding. It shows how globalisation, as a mean of organising the economy, has peaked and topped out and is now in decline (one sharply sped up by the pandemic which has forced a further dramatic decline in goods trade, investments and the movement of people.

As per Meadway it discusses a “new globalization” based on digital services, research and development, data, ideas, and other intangibles which are more nebulous and harder for neo-liberalism effectively commodify:

Globalization Isn’t in Decline: It’s Changing |

ecipe.org

 

[Smokeandsteam]

And how these various developments discussed by Meadway and the ecipe (decline of global capital flows, the collapse of consent for neo-liberalism and it’s political representatives, the rise of populism, the rise of big tech and the dominant position of China) influences and intervenes in the dominant economic ideology (expressed as a Kondratiev wave…

​

 

[redsquirrel]

Much more specific than other pieces but this piece in the LRB looking at Labour's defeat in Hartlepool gives some insight into how the changes above are playing out at the more local level.

But the new Conservatism poses deeper problems for Labour. Best represented by Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, it is unafraid of spending and not even averse to some strategic nationalisation. As well as sounding eerily like Labour, there are shades of Michael Heseltine, a reminder that Johnson once described his own politics as ‘a Brexity Hezza’. And we shouldn’t imagine that Houchen li!s phrases only from the Labour right. In a recent piece for the website Conservative Home, he envisions the development of carbon capture technologies and hydrogen power, bringing the UK ‘closer to net zero while creating good-quality jobs in the places they’re most needed’. The ‘Green New Deal’ beloved of the Labour le! is perfectly available for right-wing rearticulation, detached from the public ownership its architects hoped would spark wider economic change. Houchen campaigns forcefully for a deregulated freeport at Redcar, but equally vociferously for new o-shore windfarms; he also grasps the value of potent symbolism in a part of the country long neglected by Westminster – the nationalisation of Teesside International Airport was a strong propaganda coup for him.

 

[redsquirrel]

And how these various developments discussed by Meadway and the ecipe (decline of global capital flows, the collapse of consent for neo-liberalism and it’s political representatives, the rise of populism, the rise of big tech and the dominant position of China) influences and intervenes in the dominant economic ideology (expressed as a Kondratiev wave…

Mark Blyth gives a very similar story in his talks



In contrast, this article (which I've only very briefly skimmed) in Capital and Class argues that neoliberalism remains.

Hence, we should not believe that state activism in reaction to the capitalist crisis automatically undermines neoliberalism, and leads to a one-way road back to the national social-democracy, or, particularly in Europe, a birth of its trans-national form.

Though I think some of the disagreement is more over definitions and terms ("authoritarian neoliberalism" vs post-neoliberalism), there's more agreement in the substance.

 

[brogdale]

Following on from the Meadway PTO stuff this paper is also very useful in thinking about how neo-liberalism in its current guise is visibly corroding. It shows how globalisation, as a mean of organising the economy, has peaked and topped out and is now in decline (one sharply sped up by the pandemic which has forced a further dramatic decline in goods trade, investments and the movement of people.

As per Meadway it discusses a “new globalization” based on digital services, research and development, data, ideas, and other intangibles which are more nebulous and harder for neo-liberalism effectively commodify:

Globalization Isn’t in Decline: It’s Changing |

ecipe.org

Interesting, but I don't read the take away as that "intangibles which are more nebulous and harder for neo-liberalism effectively commodify:" They might well prove even more elusive to national, consolidator state taxation, but the data giants/platform monopolists would not be investing in products that can't be commodified.

I think behind the business jargon in this piece is the message that the "new globalisation" will merely accelerate the neoliberal transfer of the fiscal burden from capital to labour.

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Don’t know if this has been posted elsewhere, but this is as good a place as any. Tooze on the end of the neo-liberal era:

Has Covid ended the neoliberal era? | Adam Tooze

The long read: The year 2020 exposed the risks and weaknesses of the market-driven global system like never before. It’s hard to avoid the sense that a turning point has been reached

www.theguardian.com

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Slightly tangential, but a) I couldn’t think where else to put it and b) Edgerton’s essay expressly engages with historical accounts of the nation state. In the essay he revisits the Anderson-Thompson debates (the NLR debate sparked by Anderson’s Origins of the Present Crisis and culminating in Thompson’s Pecularities of the English response).

Edgerton also takes aim at declinist narratives and shows how declinism has heavily influenced the British left producing a specific incoherence in its politics. An excellent read:

Why the left must abandon the myth of British decline

The declinist theories championed by Perry Anderson blame the problems of the present on an imagined past.

www.newstatesman.com

 

[redsquirrel]

Are we really heading to post-neoliberalism do you think?
The US looks like doing another shot of Keynesian spending to oil the wheels - not really changing the fundamentals.
China is continuing its state capitalism path, long trodden now. The only change i see there is techno-totalitarianism
Brexit isnt meant to be isolationism, according to its architects its about new markets / cheaper shit from beyond the EU, like more rainforest destroying crap from Brazil . Liam Fox's plans to liberalise the NHS via a Trumpian US trade deal were drafted and narrowly avoided < hardly post-neoliberalism.

Sunak ‘planning £2bn in cuts and the UK’s highest peacetime tax rate’

Chancellor on track to impose a package of manifesto-busting tax increases at this month’s budget, says IFS

www.theguardian.com

(I'm responding to these posts here rather than on the Brexiteer thread as there is some sense to be had on this thread.)

You've previously voiced some agreement with the idea of 'post-capitalism' but you don't think 'post-neoliberalism' is possible? I'm not sure how you square that circle.

Regardless you cite the US turn towards Keynesism, Chinese state capitalism and the UK government highest tax take relative to GDP for half a century as evidence on the continuance of neoliberalism, when they are examples of the opposite - the pressures and strains that capital is under at present.

After the GFC the Financial Times was arguing about the need for austerity and cutting back the state, now it is not only arguing for greater state involvement in society, and such a position is representative of much of capital. This is a significant difference, whether this means the end of neo-liberalism depends on what you mean by the term, but capital is reacting differently than a decade ago. Modern capital requires infrastructure, skilled workers and a large state. Austerity not only hurt workers it also created issues for (sections of) capital. Moreover the situation is never one sided, labour power may have been weakened but that does not mean that capital and the state do not have to respond to the actions of labour. The rise of populism has forced states and capital to adapt and modify.

None of the above means that increased taxation and government spending that some sections of capital are supporting will necessarily benefit workers, it may very well not. Greater state intervention could equally lead to worsening conditions for workers. The classic post-war social democracy produced benefits for workers not because of greater state spending but because labour was able to direct that spending to its ends.

I think the confusion of many social democrats on this point comes from the fact that they cannot

 

[Smokeandsteam]

Two very good pieces discussing the deepening and growing tectonic shifts away from the liberal orthodoxy. The process of dis-embedding is increasingly visible.

The first is by Adam Tooze and the FT examining the return of the nation state state and the limits of globalisation:

Chartbook - Unhedged Exchange #2: The End Of Globalization As We Know It ?

The end of globalization as we know it?

adamtooze.substack.com

The second from James Meadway discusses the British states disorientation and incoherence with the new conditions by reviewing the semi conductor sector:

Britain's passé neoliberalism could leave it at a permanent disadvantage

While governments across the world are scaling up their critical industries, the UK is contemplating the sale of its biggest chip-maker.

www.newstatesman.com

 

[magneze]

Thanks for posting those. Both very interesting.

Somewhat terrifying that any national strategy on the UK semiconductor industry and technology in general is controlled by Nadine Dorries.

 

[Koknbul]

I don't suppose anyone has any reading recommendations on what the implications of Neoliberalism are for the nation state, do they? It's a topic likely to come up in some exams I have in a month or so. I've got a couple of David Harvey's books (A Brief History..., and The Enigma of Capital) which are good, but was hoping someone might have a few more pointers to other stuff that isn't so obvious.

defiantly.. we need to weed out the paddlers & bring in someone with a bit more va va voom