for what happens when Republicans control the House as they did for the majority of both Clinton and Obama's presidencies. We actually know how government works!

The Magistrate

(95,247 posts)

15. The Nearest Thing To Definition, Sir

Reply to George II (Reply #12)

Thu Apr 16, 2020, 02:01 AM

Apr 2020

Requires examining some historical roots.

In Europe early in the nineteenth century, aristocratic and feudal hold-overs were still a feature of most societies. The mercantilist economic view, which held that every country should be self-sufficient and was weakened to the degree it could not manage this, was still predominant thought influencing government and business policy. In this milieu, political parties seeking relief from anachronism, and a freeing up of business and trade from both feudal and mercantile restrictions, arose. They called themselves Liberals, or even Radicals, and did more or less advocate for Capitalism, as opposed to Feudalism and autocratic control. Often, but not always, their platforms included greater freedom of political speech and artistic endeavor, and more modern social behaviors.

Once Socialist, and even Anarchist thought became a feature of European politics, these parties advocating for Capitalism and social reforms ceased to be the cutting edge of opposition to the old order. Soon enough in most countries, the old conservative parties made their peace with Capitalism, while generally still favoring traditional behaviors and arrangements otherwise. The surviving Liberal parties opposed Socialism, but often did tend towards social reforms seen as improving the lot of the poor (which at the time was most if not all of the working people). The Progressive movement in the United States early in the twentieth century, which arose in the Republican Party, is one example of this, as is the old Liberal Party in England, which fostered the formation of the Labour Party, an explicitly Socialist body there.

In places where political and social life did not advance much in the early twentieth century, what survived of Liberal or Radical parties remained, and the labels retained their original meanings. Spain is one example. During the Spanish Republic, Liberal and Radical parties, though small indeed, ranged themselves with larger rightist parties, whether of traditionalist or modernizing ilk, for these parties were certainly opposed to Anarchism and Socialism, which were predominant on the left of Spanish politics during the brief Republic. Latin American politics had similar features, so did the politics of Central Europe.

In the West, including the United States, the term Liberal came to mean during the twentieth century a political tendency desiring relief from traditional constraints on behavior, on mores and artistic expression, combined with improvement of the living standards of poor and working people, but without any great re-working of economic arrangements. Liberals remained loyal to Capitalism, but desired it be regulated, and restrained from its worst excesses. Once Soviet totalitarianism had done its unfortunate work in discrediting Socialism as a viable political force for the supplanting of Capitalism, the reforming and regulating and modernizing program of Liberalism became the chief tendency on the left of our politics.

The intent behind use of the term 'neo-liberal' should be apparent from the above. It is a claim there is really no difference between a Liberal today and a Liberal circa 1840 in France, or circa 1935 in Spain. This is nonesense. The older parties sought to establish Capitalism against autocratic and feudal opposition. The modern liberal seeks to regulate and restrain Capitalism, and some do, where it seems possible, seek to use the mechanisms of Capitalism to achieve these ends, by manipulating markets and taxes to favor reforms they desire. The term 'neo-liberal' attempts to cast such policies as a throwback to the original meanings, and so to suggest that what actually does constitute the strongest tendency of the left of our politics is really not of the left at all, but part and parcel of the right.

The change over time of the meaning conveyed by 'liberal' blurs the question enough for people to imagine themselves being honest when they make the charge. Though it is obvious that it is the 'free-marketeers' and Randites who are the real present day heirs of the old European Liberal parties, and range themselves, just as did their late survivals in Spain, alongside the christo-fascist right.

la-trucker

(283 posts)

19. Neoliberalism is any theory or doctrine

Reply to George II (Reply #12)

Thu Apr 16, 2020, 08:56 AM

Apr 2020

that doesn't bow down to Bernie Sanders.

The Magistrate

(95,247 posts)

22. A Crude But Functional Definition, Sir

Reply to la-trucker (Reply #19)

Thu Apr 16, 2020, 10:06 AM

Apr 2020

There are words which say more about the person who uses them than the person they are directed at....

"Defeat of a hated enemy is something to be for."

Celerity

(43,389 posts)

36. Democrats and neoliberalism and the Third Way

Reply to George II (Reply #12)

Thu Apr 16, 2020, 09:21 PM

Apr 2020

I detest Jacobin magazine btw, this reply to you absolutely NOT an apologetic for them, not a defence of them in the slightest. I am merely giving you (as best I can atm, without posting a book) an answer to your positing:

I've never been able to get a clear definition of "neoliberalism"

Democrats and neoliberalism and the Third Way

These days, the meaning of “neoliberal” has become fuzzy. But it has a long history of association with the Democratic Party.

https://www.vox.com/polyarchy/2019/6/11/18660240/democrats-neoliberalism

The fallout from the 2016 election has created many surreal moments for historians of American politics and parties, but surely one of the oddest has been the introduction of the term neoliberal into the popular discourse. Even stranger still is that it has become a pejorative largely lobbed by the left less at Republicans and more at Democrats. As neoliberal has come to describe a wide range of figures, from Bill and Hillary Clinton to Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates, its meaning has become stretched thin and caused fuzziness and disagreement. This muddle of meanings creates an opportunity to seek a more precise understanding of what I call “Democratic neoliberalism.”

It is actually not the first time Democrats have been called neoliberal. In the early 1980s, the term emerged to describe a group of figures also called the Watergate Babies, Atari Democrats, and New Democrats, many of whom eventually became affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). In this iteration, the term neoliberal was embraced not as opprobrium. Rather, it used a form of self-description and differentiation to imply that they were “new Democrats.” In 1982, Washington Monthly editor Charles Peters published “A Neo-Liberal’s Manifesto,” which aimed to lay out the core principles of this group; two years later, journalist Randall Rothenberg wrote a book called The Neoliberals that sought to codify and celebrate this cohort’s ascendency.

The DLC and its allies have largely received attention from political historians for their electoral strategy instead of their policies. Yet, even more than electoral politics, this group had an impact on shaping the ideas and policy priorities of the Democratic Party in key issues of economic growth, technology, and poverty. They also created a series of initiatives that sought to fuse these arenas together in lasting ways. The realm of policies is where parties can have an impact that reaches beyond elections to shape the lives of individual people and intensify structures and patterns of inequality. It thus points to the importance of expanding the study of US political parties writ large, beyond simply an examination of political strategy and electoral returns and instead thinking about the ways in which parties come to reflect and shape ideas and policy. It also demonstrates the importance of treating neoliberalism less as an epithet and more as a historical development.

Unlike their counterparts in fields like sociology and geography and even in other historical subfields, historians of the United States were long reluctant to adopt the term “neoliberal.” Many still argue that the neologism has become, in the words of Daniel Rodgers, “a linguistic omnivore” that is anachronistic and potentially “cannibalizing.” In the past few years, scholars of 20th-century American political history, however, have increasingly embraced neoliberalism and sought to understand its historical evolution. Building and drawing on the work of influential theorists like David Harvey, these inquiries have been important in the efforts to understand the relationship between capitalism and politics and the power dynamics with them.

Yet these accounts have largely depicted the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s as inextricably intertwined with conservative ascent and the Reagan Revolution, and situated the Clinton era and the rise of the New Democrats as a piece of a larger story about the dominance of the free market and the retreat of government. This approach flattened and obscured the important ways that the Clintons and other New Democrats’ promotion of the market and the role of government was distinct from Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and their followers.

The principles and policies Clinton and the DLC espoused were not solely a defensive reaction to the Republican Party or merely a strategic attempt to pull the Democratic Party to the center. Rather, their vision represents parts of a coherent ideology that sought to both maintain and reformulate key aspects of liberalism itself. In The Neoliberals, Rothenberg observed that “neoliberals are trying to change the ideas that underlie Democratic politics.” Taking his claim seriously provides a means to think about how this group of figures achieved that goal and came to permanently transform the agenda and ideas of the Democratic Party.

From Watergate Babies to New Democrats

snip

A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto

By Charles Peters; Charles Peters is the editor of The Washington Monthly.

September 5, 1982

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1982/09/05/a-neo-liberals-manifesto/21cf41ca-e60e-404e-9a66-124592c9f70d/?utm_term=.ce3a69efb8e6

NEO-LIBERALISM is a terrible name for an interesting, if embryonic, movement. As the sole culprit at the christening, I hereby attest to the innocence of the rest of the faithful. They deserve something better, because they are a remarkable group of people.

The best known are three promising senators: Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gary Hart of Colorado and Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts. The ones I know best are my fellow journalists, including James Fallows and Gregg Easterbrook of The Atlantic, Michael Kinsley and Robert M. Kaus of Harper's, Nicholas Lemann and Joseph Nocera of Texas Monthly, and Randall Rothenberg of New Jersey Monthly. But there are many others, ranging from an academic economist like MIT's Lester Thurow to a mayor like Houston's Kathy Whitmire to a governor like Arizona's Bruce Babbitt. There's even a cell over at that citadel of traditional liberalism, The New Republic.

While we are united by a different spirit and a different style of thought, none of these people should be held responsible for all of what follows. Practicing politicians in particular should be presumed innocent of the more controversial positions. When I use the first person plural, it usually means some but not all of us, and occasionally it may mean just me.

If neo-conservatives are liberals who took a critical look at liberalism and decided to become conservatives, we are liberals who took the same look and decided to retain our goals but to abandon some of our prejudices. We still believe in liberty and justice and a fair chance for all, in mercy for the afflicted and help for the down and out. But we no longer automatically favor unions and big government or oppose the military and big business. Indeed, in our search for solutions that work, we have come to distrust all automatic responses, liberal or conservative.

We have found these responses not only weren't helping but were often hampering us in confronting the problems that were beginning to cripple the nation in the 1970s: declining productivity; the closed factories and potholed roads that betrayed decaying plant and infrastructure; inefficient and unaccountable public agencies that were eroding confidence in government; a military with too many weapons that didn't work and too few people from the upper classes in its ranks; and a politics of selfishness symbolized by an explosion of political action committees devoted to the interests of single groups.

snip

A Neoliberal Says It’s Time for Neoliberals to Pack It In

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/03/a-neoliberal-says-its-time-for-neoliberals-to-pack-it-in/

My fellow neoliberal shill Brad DeLong has declared that it’s time for us to pass the baton to “our colleagues on the left.” As it happens, I agree with him in practice because I think it’s time for boomers to retire and turn over the reins to Xers and Millennials, who are generally somewhat to the left of us oldsters. Beyond that, though, there’s less here than meets the eye. DeLong says there are three reasons he thinks neoliberals should fade into the background:

Political: The original guiding spirit of American neoliberalism was the idea that Democrats had moved too far to the left and gotten punished for it with the election of Ronald Reagan. For years, neoliberals believed that if the party could be moved toward the center, it would be possible to make deals with Republicans that would lead to better governance. Needless to say, that didn’t work: Republicans, it turned out, were simply emboldened to move even further to the right. They showed absolutely no intention of compromising in any way with Democrats.

But this is old news. Charlie Peters, the godfather of political neoliberalism, conceded it publicly long ago. For at least the past decade, there’s been no reason at all to believe that the current Republican Party would ever compromise with Democrats no matter how moderate their proposals. Anyone who has believed this since George W. Bush was president was deluding themselves. Anyone who has believed it since 2009, when Obamacare was being negotiated, is an idiot. There’s nothing about this that separates neoliberals from anyone else these days.

Policy: DeLong suggests that the folks to his left are basically just social democrats like him who “could use a little more education about what is likely to work and what is not.” But with the unfortunate exception of its jihad against organized labor, neoliberals have been social democrats from the start. Bill Clinton tried to pass universal health care, after all, and I think Barack Obama would have done the same if he’d thought there was any chance of passing it.

So this is nothing new either. The question is, does DeLong intend to go along in areas where his neoliberal ideas are in conflict with the AOC wing of the Democratic Party? He plainly does not.

The world has changed: “We learned more about the world. I could be confident in 2005 that [recession] stabilization should be the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. That you look at something like laser-eye surgery or rapid technological progress in hearing aids, you can kind of think that keeping a market in the most innovative parts of health care would be a good thing. So something like an insurance-plus-exchange system would be a good thing to have in America as a whole. It’s much harder to believe in those things now.”

But has the world really changed? I don’t think so—not yet, anyway. I’ll bet DeLong still believes in these two things, but now understands that Republicans will undermine them at every opportunity. That makes it Job 1 to destroy the current incarnation of the GOP, and the best way to do that is to have unity on the left. But if and when that’s been accomplished, I’ll bet he still thinks the Fed should be primarily in charge of fighting recessions. We just need FOMC members who agree.

At the risk of overanalyzing this, I think DeLong is still a neoliberal and has no intention of sitting back and letting progressives run wild. He has simply changed the target of his coalition building. Instead of compromising to bring in Republicans, he wants to compromise to bring in lefties. Now, this is not nothing: instead of compromising to the right, he now wants to compromise to the left. But I suspect that this simply means DeLong has moved to the left over the past couple of decades, just like lots of liberals.

snip

Third Way

The Third Way is a position akin to centrism that tries to reconcile right-wing and left-wing politics by advocating a varying synthesis of some centre-right and centrist economic and some centre-left social policies. The Third Way was created as a re-evaluation of political policies within various centre-left progressive movements in response to doubt regarding the economic viability of the state and the overuse of economic interventionist policies that had previously been popularized by Keynesianism, but which at that time contrasted with the rise of popularity for neoliberalism and the New Right. The Third Way is promoted by social liberals and some social democratic parties.

Major Third Way social democratic proponent Tony Blair claimed that the socialism he advocated was different from traditional conceptions of socialism and said: "My kind of socialism is a set of values based around notions of social justice. [...] Socialism as a rigid form of economic determinism has ended, and rightly". Blair referred to it as a "social-ism" involving politics that recognised individuals as socially interdependent and advocated social justice, social cohesion, equal worth of each citizen and equal opportunity. Third Way social democratic theorist Anthony Giddens has said that the Third Way rejects the traditional conception of socialism and instead accepts the conception of socialism as conceived of by Anthony Crosland as an ethical doctrine that views social democratic governments as having achieved a viable ethical socialism by removing the unjust elements of capitalism by providing social welfare and other policies and that contemporary socialism has outgrown the Marxist claim for the need of the abolition of capitalism. In 2009, Blair publicly declared support for a "new capitalism".

The Third Way supports the pursuit of greater egalitarianism in society through action to increase the distribution of skills, capacities and productive endowments while rejecting income redistribution as the means to achieve this. It emphasises commitment to balanced budgets, providing equal opportunity which is combined with an emphasis on personal responsibility, the decentralisation of government power to the lowest level possible, encouragement and promotion of public–private partnerships, improving labour supply, investment in human development, preserving of social capital and protection of the environment. However, specific definitions of Third Way policies may differ between Europe and the United States. The Third Way has been criticised by certain conservatives, liberals and libertarians who advocate laissez-faire capitalism. It has also been heavily criticised by other social democrats and in particular democratic socialists, anarchists and communists as a betrayal of left-wing values, with some analysts characterising the Third Way as an effectively neoliberal movement.

snip

my addition:

There are two main schools of thought that people refer to neoliberalism in the US and some other countries. There is the RW type as espoused by Reagan and Thatcher, etc, and then there is the 'leftish' Third Way style as dealt with in the body of my my reply above. A lot of the confusion in the US comes from the fact that 'liberal' is mostly used there in regards to the left, whilst in most of the rest of the world it is referring to the centre-right (ie. classical liberalism as opposed to social liberalism or 'new' liberalism.)

The Liberal Party (known since 2015 as Liberalerna and before that, for 80 years, as Folkpartiet ie. The People's Party and then, from 1990 to 2015, as Folkpartiet liberalerna) here in Sweden for example, is a centre-right (centre-right based upon a European scale in terms of the political spectrum) party. The US has been artificially spun so hard to the right (and the fact it only has two main parties due to a constitutional lack of proportional representation mechanisms for Congress) that a significant amount of the Democratic centrists and moderates (and especially the few conservative Dems left) would be squarely in the centre to the rightward edge (in regards to some of the blue dogs) of the so-called centre-right parties in many European nations.

rufus dog

(8,419 posts)

14. Some questions and this ain't going to be nice

Reply to George II (Original post)

Wed Apr 15, 2020, 11:19 PM

Apr 2020

1. Who the Fuck is Jacobin?
2. What is the the purpose of posting BS from this Asshole?
3. Why the Fuck I am giving this BS a kick?
4. When will we get to the point of understanding disrupters intent?

Edit to add HOW

5. How will I track kicks to this post?

Edit again BOOKMARK!!!!!

NurseJackie

(42,862 posts)

27. Kick! (Here you go... track me!)

Reply to rufus dog (Reply #14)

Thu Apr 16, 2020, 05:22 PM

Apr 2020

5. How will I track kicks to this post?

Kick! (Here you go... track me!)

Celerity

(43,389 posts)

35. Jacobin is not a person, it is a a socialist (real socialist, not faux Sanders type) mag named after

Reply to rufus dog (Reply #14)

Thu Apr 16, 2020, 09:05 PM

Apr 2020

The Jacobin Club, a revolutionary political movement that was the most famous political club during the French Revolution (1789–99). The club was so called because of the Dominican convent in Paris in the Rue Saint-Jacques (Latin: Jacobus) where they originally met. Today, the terms Jacobin and Jacobinism are used in a variety of senses. In France, Jacobin now generally indicates a supporter of a centralized republican state and strong central government powers and/or supporters of extensive government intervention to transform society. Jacobin is sometimes used in Britain as a pejorative for radical, left-wing revolutionary politics.

The Jacobin Club was one of several organizations that grew out of the French Revolution and it was distinguished for its left-wing, revolutionary politics. Because of this, the Jacobins, unlike other sects like the Girondins, were closely allied to the sans-culottes, who were a popular force of working-class Parisians that played a pivotal role in the development of the revolution.

The Jacobins had a significant presence in the National Convention, and were dubbed "the mountain" for their seats in the uppermost part of the chamber. Eventually, the Revolution coalesced around The Mountain's power, with the help of the insurrections of the sans-culottes, and, led by Robespierre, the Jacobins established a revolutionary dictatorship, or the joint domination of the Committee of Public Safety and Committee of General Security.

The Jacobins were known for creating a strong government that could deal with the needs of war, economic chaos, and internal rebellion (such as the War in the Vendée). The Jacobin dictatorship was known for enacting the Reign of Terror, which targeted speculators, monarchists, right-wing agitators, Hébertists, and traitors, and led to many beheadings. The Jacobins supported the rights of property, but represented a much more middle-class position than the government which succeeded them in Thermidor. Their economic policy established the General maximum, in order to control prices and create stability both for the workers and poor and the revolution. They favored free trade and a liberal economy much like the Girondists, but their relationship to the people made them more willing to adopt interventionist economic policies.

snip

The French Revolution

The Jacobins

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/kat_anna/jacobins.html

The most prominent political clubs of the French Revolution were the Jacobin Clubs that sprung up throughout Paris and the provinces in August of 1789. By 1791, there were 900 Jacobin clubs in France associated with the main club in Paris. According to Spielvogel, "Members were usually the elite of their local societies, but they also included artisans and tradesmen" (688).

Jacobin clubs served as debating socitites where politically minded Frenchmen aired their views and discussed current political issues. Many members of Jacobin clubs were also deputies and used the meetings to orgamnize forces and plan tactics. The most notorious deputy connected with the Jacobin club is Robespierre. Marat was also aligned with the Jacobin club, and this association caused his death. Charlotte Corday, his murderer, targeted Marat because she thought that he represented the worst of the Jacobin movement (Dowd, 115).

The club supported and participated in some of the most shocking events of The Revolution. Members of Jacobin clubs were among the mob invaded the Tuileries on August, 10, 1792. They also supported the execution of Louis XVI. Druing the Terror, local Jacobin clubs turned the provinces into nightmares of fear and destruction as members took it upon themselves to be agents of the Terror, and sent thousands to the guillotine (Dowd, 129). The clubs were also strictly anticlerical, and during the Terror some clubs wages a crusade against the church, imprisoning priests and looting churches (129).

The Jacobin clubs were closed soon after Robespierre was killed in 1794, but not before they became synonomous with revolutionary fervor and fear.