Ezra Klein: The Many Neoliberalisms

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May 30, 2007

The Many Neoliberalisms

Matt is right on this. Too many hold claim to the One, True, neoliberalism. In my interview with Charlie Peters, for instance, he took hold of the theory, defining it as an ideology of dynamism and technocracy centered around The Washington Monthly of the 70s and 80s. In popular punditry, however, it's also used to define a sort of counter-intuitive liberalism centered around Kinsley and The New Republic. Occasionally, it refers to Kaus-like liberals, who retain a sort of vestigial identification with "liberalism," but take as their role as a destruction of every group, politician, and policy ever associated with the ideology. Other uses put it with the DLC, or with a certain school of economic development that held sway in the 90s. In the end, its most common usage denotes liberal ends achieved through conservative means, and is generally about separating good lefties from bad lefties. But it's certainly no great sin to use it imprecisely. Everyone else does.

May 30, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

“...but take as their role as a destruction of every group, politician, and policy ever associated with the ideology.”

This is something neoliberals have in common with neoconservatives – the objective of obliterating any opposition or those of different views. It's not just appropriate to win the debate and implement one's policies. The idea is that you destroy any opposition for the foreseeable future. Is this a hallmark of our times or simply a phenomenon that the "neos" share?

Posted by: Gary | May 30, 2007 10:49:46 AM

In the world at large, neoliberalism refers to market liberalism & global economic policies. Only in North America does this problem exist, but since the above definition is applied by U.S. thinkers as well, I think it should be the one true neoliberalism.

Trying to differentiate between Kinsleyism, Kausism, "Atari Democrats" and the activities at The New Republic & The Washington Monthly, all of which were roughly concurrent phenomena is making mountains out of molehills. They all were pretty much the same thing even if they never really knew what they were themselves.

The DLC is in fact none of the above, but an attempt to salvage something of the Southern Democratic tradition by merging trendy groovy neoliberal ideas with southern lite-conservatism.

If heterodox liberals in the mid 70's to early 80's had picked a slightly more original name for their act we'd be spared a slight amount of time arguing over things that don't matter and never will.

Posted by: DRR | May 30, 2007 10:58:49 AM

too many neo's, on both sides, ideologically. having a scorecard doesn't help much either, and the result is less clarity rather than more.

Posted by: JimPortlandOR | May 30, 2007 11:34:28 AM

The phrase "liberal ends achieved through conservative means" sort of captures neo-liberalism, but not entirely. It should be "liberal ends achieved through non-traditional liberal means" which may be conservative but may not be. Take public education. A neo-liberal approach is charter schools. The conservative approach is get rid of the Department of Education, or vouchers (which, unlike charter schools undermine, rather than support the idea of public education).

The problem with neo-liberalism is that most of what they've (or we've -- I confess, I consider myself one)proposed back in the 70s and 80s has been implemented. Some of it worked (welfare reform) and some didn't (charter schools seemed to have been a flop).

What is needed now is what you might call "neo-neo-liberalism," which actually I think is a pretty good way of describing Obama's and Hillary's positions.

Posted by: think twice | May 30, 2007 1:23:34 PM

Well....
I found the Yglesias glossary very helpful.
Very.
But then I'm just slowly beginning to unravel what is, say...
'globalization' and other confusing terminology stuff like that.

So, thank you very much for the reference. It enlightened, a lot.

Posted by: has_te | May 30, 2007 1:40:31 PM

Liberal ends achieved through reality-based means, please. That was what Peters was after. That's the common thread...

Posted by: Brad DeLong | May 30, 2007 3:25:39 PM

Hmm "reality-based means"

Neo-liberal, literally meaning 'new liberal' by implication has to be opposed to paleo-liberal, or early liberal which if you ignore the British roots of Liberalism means FDR/JFK/LBJ liberalism.

Neo-liberals in my lexicon are social liberals who have abandoned their faith in governmental solutions to social problems, in short they bought the Reagan formulation "Big Government is not the solution, Big Government is the problem". "Reality" in this context translates to "markets".

The New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society were conscious visions. Life didn't have to be dog eag dog, together we could put the country back on its feet, put a man on the Moon, provide health care to the elderly and the poor. And you know? Most of it worked. Not everything, public housing being the prime example of bad sociology being put into practice, and health care for the poor having the incentives put in the wrong place, but most people wouldn't roll it all back. Which is not to say they haven't backed off.

Somehow the whole enterprise has been dismissed as misguided and paleo-liberals as misguided dreamers. Nope realistic people living in reality-based continuums know that tax and spend never gets you anywhere.

Except where it does. I have long argued that Social Security can serve as a pivot point in American politics. For the last two decades plus Social Security has been the poster child for "Big Government is the Problem" and been the standard defense against expansion of government generally, Social Security 'Crisis' has been used to push back against New Deal and New Frontier idealism and led to the rise of 'pragmatic' 'reality-based' 'neo-liberals'.

Well reality is kind of funny. It has a way of playing out on the ground. And over the last decade the numbers on the ground have been moving in favor of Social Security and so in favor of old-Liberal, New Deal arguments about the utility of social and government based solutions.

Social Security works. Social Security is efficient, its administrative costs are rock bottom considering its volume, at or below 1% .
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR07/III_cyoper.html#wp139166
And increasingly its finances have been firming up, in 1997 you could legitimately talk about 'crisis', the only way Social Security could possibly dodge the bullet was if you had growth over the next six or so years above trend, that is repeat the success of an above average 1996. Well we did that, the same growth that turned 'deficits as far as the eye can see' into General Fund surplus by 2000 has identical effects on Social Security. Just not many people were watching.

Neo-liberalism however defined is going to get a big jolt in the next couple of years. The New Deal is coming back and 'Teddy Kennedy Liberal' is no longer going to be a sneer. I won't go so far as to predict Swedish style Social Democracy but somewhere Uncle Miltie will be weeping at a dream lost.

Posted by: Bruce Webb | May 31, 2007 10:54:43 AM

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