the neoliberal vision of the future

[butchersapron]

Violence stemming from monopoli isn't just an excess, it's about the battle of histories.



We know they have several meanings, so a boundary between is being negotiated.

Not interested bob. Off you fuck.

 

[Idris2002]

Violence stemming from monopoli isn't just an excess, it's about the battle of histories.

.

OK, I'll bite. What the hell does this even mean? 'the battle of histories'.

 

[Kizmet]

No. Not this time.

Liberalism is a blanket term governing free markets and all that comes from them. I don't see how it can be 'neo'... unless it's 'neo and improved'..

Are there qualitative differences?

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Not interested bob. Off you fuck.

Neoliberalism is separate from the havoc it reeks, in the bloody violence its imposition results in? When it's meant to be a harker back to the good ol days of the free market and imperialism.

 

[Dillinger4]

.

 

[butchersapron]

No. Not this time.

Liberalism is a blanket term governing free markets and all that comes from them. I don't see how it can be 'neo'... unless it's 'neo and improved'..

Are there qualitative differences?

No it's not for starters.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

OK, I'll bite. What the hell does this even mean? 'the battle of histories'.

The narratives represented by any state or any sovereignty. Premodern societies were always tending towards universal concepts. But for Europe the old free market was accompanied by the organization of imperialist violence, which it tries to emulate now.

 

[butchersapron]

i.e fuck all to do with the issue - he's a weirdo pretend intellectual idris, ignore.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

post has fuck all to do with any issue whatsoever

 

[Idris2002]

i- he's a weirdo pretend intellectual idris, ignore.

I could have stayed at work for that. 'Premodern societies were always tending towards universal concepts'. What all of them, everywhere?

 

[butchersapron]

Oh wow! There's competing foundational narratives! Such bad news you bring us. (Note the lack of interest in how these were constructed - they just exist - in fact they don't, one is good and one is bad.)

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

Oh wow! There's competing foundational narratives! Such bad news you bring us. (Note the lack of interest in how these were constructed - they just exist)

No, it's okay, they're inevitable as long as there's something being fought over.

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

I could have stayed at work for that. 'Premodern societies were always tending towards universal concepts'. What all of them, everywhere?

Monist and theist ideas for example were becoming dominant ones.

 

[butchersapron]

In all pre-modern societies. Off the thread bob.

 

[Kizmet]

No it's not for starters.

No, it's not. Was a bit distracted.

It does, however, include enforcement of the free market. So I'm struggling to see how adding neo to it can suddenly turn them into fortune tellers and social engineers.

Unless by 'neo' you mean 'cunt'.

 

[butchersapron]

No it doesn't.

 

[Kizmet]

Oh?

 

[Kizmet]

*sigh* once a neo... always a neo...

 

[audiotech]

This world is dominated by a few huge corporate monopolies, with little accountability, shifting their wealth to off-shore trusts, avoiding tax and becoming ever more authoritarian in advancing their own interests. 'Neo-liberal' in name only it appears?

 

[nino_savatte]

As Butchers hints at above though, it's possible in most western countries without a Pinochet-type regime.

Of course, we may well see the conditions that enable us to have relative political freedom swept away sooner than we think, but the disappearance of those conditions will also put paid to neo-liberalism as both a political project and as an abstract ideal.

Add to that, a dictatorship isn't actually what most neo-liberals or neo-conservatives do want to see, as they explain in those Adam Curtis documentaries I referred to. As with the radical left, social collapse and/or dictatorship is an unfortunate but sometimes unavoidable stage on the road to freedom.

Of course, it all depends on what one means by the word 'dictatorship'. The people aren't asked whether or not they want privatisation, it's imposed on them.

When I mentioned "Pinochet's Chile", I was thinking mainly of the gung-ho neoliberal model that was imposed on the country and that exists to this day (with some minor modifications).

When you refer to Curtis, I take you're referring to The Trap.

 

[butchersapron]

This world is dominated by a few huge corporate monopolies, with little accountability, shifting their wealth to off-shore trusts, avoiding tax and becoming ever more authoritarian in advancing their own interests. 'Neo-liberal' in name only it appears?

They're becoming ever more democratic actually. Stop thinking of death camps and stormtroopers.

 

[audiotech]

They're becoming ever more democratic actually. Stop thinking of death camps and stormtroopers.

Not at all straw man.

I've just read David Harvey's A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism. He writes this:

To guard against fascism, communism, socialism authoritarian populism, and even majority rule - the neoliberals have to put strong limits on democratic governance, relying instead upon undemocratic and unaccountable institutions (such as the Federal Reserve or the IMF) to make key decisions. Faced with social movements that seek collective interventions, therefore, the neoliberal state is itself forced to intervene, sometimes repressively, thus denying the very freedoms it is supposed to uphold. In this situation, however, it can marshall one secret weapon: international competition and globalisation can be used to discipline movements opposed to the neoliberal agenda within individual states. If that fails, then the state must resort to persuasion, propaganda or, when necessary, raw force and police power to suppress opposition to neoliberalism.

Harvey continues:

This was precisely Polanyi's fear: that the liberal (and by extension the neoliberal) utopian project could only ultimately be sustained by resort to authoritarianism. The freedom of the masses would be restricted in favour of the freedoms of the few.

 

[butchersapron]

sometimes repressively

So most times what? And as if that had any bearing on what i've said.

And what else did Polanyi say would happen, had always happened?

Yeah mad fucking max

 

[butchersapron]

neo-liberalism is being imposed by democracy. It is democracy.

 

[audiotech]

"Imposed"?

 

[butchersapron]

Yes, imposed.

 

[audiotech]

'Compulsory democracy' sounds wonderful.

 

[camouflage]

Yeah mad fucking max

You keep mentioning Mad Max, surely that would be the ultimate neoliberal wet dream... pig shit and private armies, free spirited individuals existing on an open plane across which capital moves freely, and children learn early the entrepreneurial spirit.

To be fair, perhaps I'm thinking of Libertarians.

 

[butchersapron]

You keep mentioning Mad Max, surely that would be the ultimate neoliberal wet dream... pig shit and private armies, free spirited individuals existing on an open plane across which capital moves freely, and children learn early the entrepreneurial spirit.

To be fair, perhaps I'm thinking of Libertarians.

Neo-liberalism has nothing to do with any of that. It wants a well ordered society pumping out surplus value - a market, law , a state propping this up and that's it.

It wants THIS society run to their ends. Not death camps

 

[audiotech]

"Well ordered"?