Rough but edited (and significantly expanded) lecture transcript. Part of Econ 135: The History of Economic Growth Course Unit 5. After Neoliberalism Comes "Polycrisis": extra-economic dimensions...
I fear the term 'neo-liberal' will confuse future students for at least a century. Were the ideas new or liberal? No, it was just a cynical label. Surely a better term can be created.
I like this analysis a lot, but I do have a couple of disagreements. First, as I said in a comment on a previous post, I don't think there are any legitimate populists. The vast majority of "populism" is merely rhetorical, designed to bring the "populist" into power so that he and his friends can be in charge instead of that other guy and his friends. There could hardly be any better recent example than Trump, who relies on false promises to solve everyday problems combined with racist, misogynist, and other bigoted promises that play to fear of the "other". It's the same strategy we saw in the original Populist movement, in the Jim Crow South, in Italy in 1922, in Germany in 1933, in Hungary and India recently, and elsewhere. The only question is exactly where Trumpism will land on that spectrum, and there is no landing place that allows for much hope in the near future.
The other dispute involves a conclusion that I've come to only recently and with a great deal of regret. I now think that capitalism and democracy are incompatible. The reason is that capitalism creates two major problems. You identified the inequality arising from Neo-Liberalism so I don't need to add anything here. But the other problem is that capitalism creates enormous uncertainty in the population at large: is my job secure? am I keeping up with my neighbors? are "those people" getting stuff that I deserve and they don't? Etc. That uncertainty translates very readily into fear. And whether fear leads to hate or fear is the mind killer, the result either way is an emotion which pseudo-populists and actual fascists can exploit.
I'd like to be optimistic here, if for no other reason than I want my grandchildren to live in a decent world, but right now I'm not. There were too many missed opportunities in the past 16 years and it's hard to see how we can get those back.
I think you're right about the need to review our communications habits, but I also fear that doing so requires the very well-informed, non-splintering mass movement that may be impossible now, inside the media and power ecology that we have, under intensely sponsored encouragement, permitted to form around us. (I'd add Neil Postman to your list on that topic.) Elsewhere, I'd also mention Anthony Giddens, who saw the culture war as deep (coming from economic wealth and contraception/feminism) and global and prone to provoking backlashes. I also fear the ironic underbelly of the old "culture of poverty" claptrap: culture does build up and does matter and does take time to un-wreck. If we keep stupefying and scaring ourselves, leave most people with only minimal K12 tools, and continue turning our universities into techno-medical institutes, we may be toast at the level of collective ideation.
I fear the term 'neo-liberal' will confuse future students for at least a century. Were the ideas new or liberal? No, it was just a cynical label. Surely a better term can be created.
I like this analysis a lot, but I do have a couple of disagreements. First, as I said in a comment on a previous post, I don't think there are any legitimate populists. The vast majority of "populism" is merely rhetorical, designed to bring the "populist" into power so that he and his friends can be in charge instead of that other guy and his friends. There could hardly be any better recent example than Trump, who relies on false promises to solve everyday problems combined with racist, misogynist, and other bigoted promises that play to fear of the "other". It's the same strategy we saw in the original Populist movement, in the Jim Crow South, in Italy in 1922, in Germany in 1933, in Hungary and India recently, and elsewhere. The only question is exactly where Trumpism will land on that spectrum, and there is no landing place that allows for much hope in the near future.
The other dispute involves a conclusion that I've come to only recently and with a great deal of regret. I now think that capitalism and democracy are incompatible. The reason is that capitalism creates two major problems. You identified the inequality arising from Neo-Liberalism so I don't need to add anything here. But the other problem is that capitalism creates enormous uncertainty in the population at large: is my job secure? am I keeping up with my neighbors? are "those people" getting stuff that I deserve and they don't? Etc. That uncertainty translates very readily into fear. And whether fear leads to hate or fear is the mind killer, the result either way is an emotion which pseudo-populists and actual fascists can exploit.
I'd like to be optimistic here, if for no other reason than I want my grandchildren to live in a decent world, but right now I'm not. There were too many missed opportunities in the past 16 years and it's hard to see how we can get those back.
I think you're right about the need to review our communications habits, but I also fear that doing so requires the very well-informed, non-splintering mass movement that may be impossible now, inside the media and power ecology that we have, under intensely sponsored encouragement, permitted to form around us. (I'd add Neil Postman to your list on that topic.) Elsewhere, I'd also mention Anthony Giddens, who saw the culture war as deep (coming from economic wealth and contraception/feminism) and global and prone to provoking backlashes. I also fear the ironic underbelly of the old "culture of poverty" claptrap: culture does build up and does matter and does take time to un-wreck. If we keep stupefying and scaring ourselves, leave most people with only minimal K12 tools, and continue turning our universities into techno-medical institutes, we may be toast at the level of collective ideation.