Like everyone else who thinks or talks or writes about current politics, words like “liberal,” “conservative,” “liberalism,” “neoliberal,” fly glibly from my tongue or off my keyboard.  It’s just about impossible to talk or write, or even think about current politics without them.

But what do they mean?  Different things for different folks, evidently.  At least, they have very different emotional charge depending on who uses them in what context—so much so that communication across political divides often seems difficult or impossible. Today many “conservatives,” for instance, make “liberal” a dirty word, almost a curse. (In recent decades an ascendant “conservative” movement made the term so negatively loaded or ambiguous that many who might call themselves “liberal” substitute “progressive.”)

But on the other side, “liberals” in turn often view “conservative”or especially “neoconservative” in an equally negative light.  Esteemed political theorist Wendy Brown (University of California at Berkeley) finds 

"a left political moralizing impulse that wants everything the right stands for to be driven by nefariousness, smallness, or greed, and everything we do to be generously minded and good, an impulse that casts Us and Them in seamless and opposing moral-political universes.”

 

Conflict and Confusion, Doubt and Disorder

In the United States our political language has become so bent and twisty, so much a language of emotion rather than meaning, of reaction rather than reason, that we’ve just about lost our ability to communicate with each other across political divides.  I’ve known families who can’t even talk politics around the table.  Instead of reaching for agreement, or at least for understanding the other guy’s position enough to enjoy the challenge of honest debate, they get mad.  To keep the peace, they make politics a taboo topic at the table.

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Manufacturing Doubt, Creating Controversy.  True, politics is conflictual—a contact sport, as it were.  And of course the language of politics reflects discord as well as causes it.  But any game needs rules. On the larger political stage, outright disrespect for truth, and cynically manipulating meanings to create social division and conflict for the sole purpose of exploiting them, are out-of-bounds if we want a functional democracy. There is that larger context to be considered.  I’ll get to some of my own ideas on that later.  But for now, let’s look at some definitions beginning with the words “liberal,” and “neoliberal.”

Definitions are boring, I know.  But in today’s politics, it’s a place to start. Words matter, and these words that define our political life are important.  We should come to terms with them (pun intended). Getting more clarity in our language can help to head off those who would manufacture doubt and create controversy for their own ends.  Besides, the key terms we’re looking at here open windows to the modern soul, and to some of the complexity and perplexity of our time.

As we’ll see, what these words refer to is either broadly misunderstood (in the case of“liberal”), or almost invisible (in the case of “neoliberal”—although it now defines our culture, our world).  That may seem like a strong claim, but read on and you’ll see what I mean.  We’ll never get full agreement these terms, not in my lifetime; but exploring them is useful anyway.

The Word “Liberal”

My old (1981) three-volume Webster’s dictionary has a large page of dense type devoted to the term. In the realm of politics, “liberal” refers to a political party devoted to “ideals of individual esp. economic freedom, greater participation in government…and the reforms necessary to achieve these objectives.” And again, a person who is “an adherent or advocate of liberalism, esp. in terms of individual rights and freedom from arbitrary authority.”

That sounds like a good thing.  “Liberal,”“liberalism” are terms that stand generally opposed to centralized, authoritarian or feudalistic societies. Valuing the individual and personal freedom is the core of liberal ideology; but it leaves lots of leeway for different ideas about how to put it into practice, as we will see.

Going beyond thumbnail definitions, the on-line Encyclopaedia Britannica has a good overview.  It begins with a concise definition of liberalism as that “political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics.” Free markets are part of that; but depending on how they are set up and administered, markets also readily concentrate wealth and power.  The resulting inequality and poverty and their accompanying social ills veer the other way, eroding individual freedom.  Some liberals—those who really do focus on the freedom and well-being of individuals—think that governments have a legitimate role to play in protecting individual freedoms against market excess.

The Encyclopaedia’s accompanying brief article on neoliberalism spells that out. “Liberalism,”it explains, “evolved over time into a number of different (and often competing) traditions.” Liberals of all stripes believe in market freedom, a strong private sphere generally, and limits on governmental power, but they have developed contrasting views on the role of democratic government. Classical liberals who focus on market freedoms would cut government to a bare minimum—just enough to keep order and enforce market rules.  (At least, that’s what they say; not necessarily what they do).  But…

“Since the late 19th century, however, most liberals have insisted that the powers of government can promote as well as protect the freedom of the individual. According to modern liberalism, the chief task of government is to remove obstacles that prevent individuals from living freely or from fully realizing their potential. Such obstacles include poverty, disease, discrimination, and ignorance.”

In short, until recently modern liberalism was evolving toward greater latitude for democratically implemented intervention to protect individuals from the worst effects and excesses of free-market capitalism. This was a positive, evolutionary movement within the liberal tradition that kept the original focus on individual well-being as its guiding principle.  As the Encyclopaedia further explains,

Modern liberalism developed from the social-liberal tradition, which focused on impediments to individual freedom—including poverty and inequality, disease, discrimination, and ignorance—that had been created or exacerbated by unfettered capitalism and could be ameliorated only through direct state intervention.“

It became clear that unconstrained markets can run counter to the original basic liberal focus on expanding the sphere of freedom and well-being for individuals and families.  When the market sector relentlessly concentrates wealth and power, the “free market” becomes oppressive in its own right—as much or perhaps even more so than a strong democratic government that some free market enthusiasts oppose.

Corporations, the dominant free market institution—some of which grow larger than many governments—evolve under market opportunities and pressures (which are themselves creatures of government legislation and regulation) into huge top-down organizations that become the antithesis of the democratic ideal.  As they grow, some large aggressive corporations use their ever-increasing wealth and power to shape government agendas in ways that further their accumulation of yet more wealth and political power.

The Words “Neoliberal,” “Neoliberalism”

Now, what about neoliberalism? I wrote a little about the moral burdens of this now dominant ideology last time, and about some of the flawed “zombie ideas.” behind it in the post before that.  Now we’ll take a brief look at what a couple of very smart people say about neoliberalism’s conflictual relationship with democracy, and a little about its history.

This now dominant offshoot of classical liberalism represents a retreat back to an extreme anti-government stance that takes “market freedom” as its highest value, even over the freedom and well-being of individuals and families, or even of society, or the nation.  And just as before, when it became actual policy and got enacted as law, today’s version of market fundamentalism—marching under the banner of neoliberalism—leads to extreme inequality which ultimately can only be anti-democratic.

Political philosopher Wendy Brown has written an article that compares and contrasts neoliberalism and neoconservatism. You can find a lot written on neoliberalism, but this is one of the most deeply insightful discussion that I have seen, and is readily available on-line with the above link. I’ll summarize a few points, but recommend that you read the article for yourself.  You might have to go over a few passages more than once and look up some words (I did), but it’s worth it if you want to understand what’s happening in our world today.

Neoliberalism, according to Brown, is a form of government based on “market rationality” instead of on democratic principles. “ Equality, universality, political autonomy and liberty, citizenship, the rule of law, a free press” says Brown (p. 696) are the basic elements of political democracy that neoliberalism challenges or replaces “with its alternative principles of governance” based on economic principles and values. Although it’s all about the economy, neoliberalism is not just about the economy: it’s a philosophy of human society and culture at large.

Neoliberalism has been the dominant political philosophy implemented by U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democrat, over the last nearly four decades. It has also been sold to, or rammed down the throats of, other nations around the world. “Every age has an order, and ours is a neoliberal one,” says commentator Umair Haque.  Haque goes on to list five costs of neoliberalism, including economic stagnation, rising inequality, and “authoritarianism and extremism.”  

It’s indisputable that these problems have been on the rise over the past few decades.  In my mind, though, it is an open question whether neoliberalism is cause or consequence, or (as is generally the case in human affairs and other complex systems) both.  Either way it is implicated in them, and as it moves from being a fringe radical economic philosophy to governing principle—when it actually shapes government policy and legal decision- making—neoliberalism betrays the principles of liberal democracy.

That’s become crystal clear during the last four decades in which it has been the standard model.  Substituting market principles and values for democratic ones, the real social and cultural effects of neoliberalism are undemocratic, if not downright anti-democratic.  That’s ironic, since the founding aims of the movement, as stated, included advancing political freedom and the open society, and not just free market ideals.  A brief historical overview will help make sense of this paradox.  

So, just how did neoliberalism get a foothold among legal and political leaders, and then become the dominant paradigm, the prevailing conceptual frame, for setting policy and making governing decisions—for re-making Western culture in the image of the capitalist market?  And when did this happen?  David Harvey addresses these and related questions in his A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2006).  

Neoliberalism became ascendant in Britain with the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and in the United States with Ronald Reagan in 1980.  Thatcher and Reagan shared a common right-wing political philosophy, and became fast friends and allies.  Augusto Pinochet, backed by the U.S., brutally implemented neoliberal policy in Chile during the 1980s.

While the neoliberal version of classical liberalism became dominant only in the 1980s with Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet leading the pack, the ground-work was being laid for some time.  As described above, neoliberalism’s roots go back to the classical market-oriented liberalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Those ideas were revived and reworked in the later 1900s by economist Friedrich Hayek and others who opposed not just Marxism and various forms of authoritarian government, but also Keynesian economics.  Keynesianism held that government can and should actively manage the market economy as needed, and became the standard economic model after the Great Depression until the 1970s.

Hayek convened a prestigious group of economists and philosophers to discuss and support his ideas, and begin articulating and spreading the basic tenets of what became neoliberalism.  They first met in 1947 at a Swiss resort called Mont Pelerin, and the group became known as the Mont Pelerin Society.   Prominent members included Milton Friedman, philosopher Karl Popper (for a time), Arthur F. Burns (of the U.S. Federal Reserve), and George Stigler, among others.  Growing numbers of conservative think-tanks often lavishly funded by wealthy donors followed in the wake of Mont Pelerin.  When the Keynesian consensus broke down under the oil shocks and high inflation of the 1970s, neoliberalism was poised to fill the gap.

Hayek strongly influenced Margaret Thatcher.  In 1979 Thatcher’s election brought to the office of the Prime Minister of Britain an inflexible commitment to neoliberal ideas.  Thatcher had, writes David Harvey in A Brief History of Neoliberalism (pp. 22-23),

“a fierce determination to have done with the institutions and [p.23] and political ways of the social democratic state that had been consolidated in Britain after 1945…. There was, she famously declared, ‘no such thing as society, only individual men and women’—and, she subsequently added, their families. All forms of social solidarity were to be dissolved in favour of individualism, private property, personal responsibility, and family values. The ideological assault along these lines that flowed from Thatcher’s rhetoric was relentless. ‘Economics are the method’, she said, ‘but the object is to change the soul.”

Again we see that neoliberalism as it developed became much more than an economic ideology or practice.  It puts in place as the governing principle of human social life an entire philosophy and culture based on fundamentalist free-market principles.  

Neoliberalism slid into place as a comprehensive and ubiquitous cultural world-view—so much so that it virtually defines our present reality.  Seeing the world through that particular lens, we don’t recognize it as one option among others. “So pervasive has neoliberalism become,” writes commentator George Monbiot,

“that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.”

Discussion & Conclusion: Liberalism & Neoliberalism

You can begin to appreciate the confusion of terms here: “liberal,” “classical liberal,” “progressive liberal,” “neoliberal.” (And we haven’t even gotten to “conservative” and“neoconservative”yet).  What to do? Here’s one small terminological suggestion regarding the terms classical liberal and neoliberal.  Since these closely related philosophies elevate and value the freely operating market above all other considerations—even, one might say, making it a fetish—let’s call them variants of “market fundamentalism.”  This seems to me to be the most descriptive and apt term to encompass or sum up what they’re really about.  Neoliberalism is the absolutist and now dominant “brand” of liberalism defined by its free market-fundamentalism.

In the bigger picture, then, political debates within modern societies actually occur between different versions of liberalism.  This is the insight of another perceptive thinker, the great Scottish social and political philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, in his 1988 book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?  “The contemporary debates within modern political systems,” he writes (p. 392), “are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals. There is little place…for putting liberalism itself in question.” Not surprising, if you consider that liberalism is a defining feature of the culture of modernity (but more on that another time too).