Neo-Liberal: What is that? No one ever answers. No one knows?

[oscar111]

seems no DU person can or cares to , define it.

any wise and kind souls willing to help us newbies?

[YOY]

1. Frankly this is the first time I've ever seen it.

What is is? An attempted insult in retribution for the 'neo-con' label?

[Beaver Tail]

2. I would guess

What the Neocon is to Fascism the Neo Liberal is to Libertarian Socialism, any extreme is scary.

[Ken Burch]

17. "Neo-liberal" has meant different things in different political eras

in the 1980's it initially referred to a group within the Democratic Party(some of whom ended up helping found the DLC, some of whom just ended up becoming Republican)who argued that the party should present itself as "socially liberal and fiscally conservative"(remember THAT one?)That is, that the party should claim to be concerned about the poor and about hard times for working people, yet should always stop short of actually doing anything to help them. Clinton's program could be described as "neo-liberal" in that sense.

Later, it came to mean the global effort to lower trade barriers, lower wages and make life harder for the working class everywhere. Those who supported NAFTA, and most of those in the second Bush administration, could fairly be called "neoliberal" in that sense.

[salvorhardin]

3. See wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

Who is a neoliberal?

As with many political terms, since the word is used in different ways by different groups, different people can be classified in different ways based on it. The most restrictive definition of neoliberal is "laissez-faire, capital market driven, privatization and trade arrangements." Under this specific form, neoliberalism is a business-conservative policy aimed at enforcing stringent budget discipline on developed and developing nations by requiring, for all but the US, balanced budgets and trade flows. This is based on a specific interpretation of the Mundell-Fleming model and is most associated with the Washington Consensus. In these terms the prominent neoliberals are people such as Margaret Thatcher, Robert Barro, and Alan Greenspan.

In the broader sense, where a neoliberal is an individual who subscribes to Prof. DeLong's formulation of neoliberalism, any advocate of government restricted to supplying public goods, and globalized free trade is a neoliberal. By this broader definition Robert Rubin, Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen are "neoliberals," even though all three have been highly critical of the neoliberalism of the more restrictive form, and the manner by which such institutions as the IMF and World Bank have been run in the post-Bretton Woods era.

The key argument between these two usages can be seen from Stiglitz' criticisms of the Washington Consensus: namely, by the measures that he follows, that while globalization and global trade are good, they have been conducted in a manner that seems almost designed to impoverish poorer nations. He specifically cites agricultural subsidies and barriers, for example for sugar, the average prices paid for imports and exports between developing and core nations, and the damaging effects of "hot money" as the vehicle for foreign investment. For a laissez-faire neoliberal, other than an admission that agricultural subsidies are bad, none of these constitute indictments of laissez-faire policies.

They have a pretty good look at neoliberalism, although the neutrality of the article is disputed. You'll want to see the Talk page about that article for a broader understanding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Neoliberalism

[jobycom]

4. Neo's son in the next Matrix trilogy?

:shrug:

Other than that, it's just another label meant to divide liberals so we can fight each other.

[Pinko]

15. Well...

"Other than that, it's just another label meant to divide liberals so we can fight each other."

Not unless you consider Maragaret Thatcher and Ronald Raygun liberals.

On another note, I've noticed that adding "neo" or "new" to the beginning of a ideology or name of a political party completely reverses their meanings. For example, Labour (in Britain) has gone from socialist to moderate right-wing thanks to Tony Blair and "New Labour." Same with the New Democrats ('no, no, we love corporations now') and the neocons ('radical change? Fine with me!').

[kevsand]

16. Hmmm. So how would that work

in the case of "new assholes?"

[mitchtv]

5. New one on me, and I've been around

a Loooong time

[oscar111]

7. Wiki article: seems to equate N-L with the historical original menaing of

liberal.

Liberal originated in eng. centuries ago as

one who favored ending tarrif protection of workers in england --- ie, one who was for free trade --- ie, what today would be a horrid GOP-er.

Posters here have told me that the rest of the world , still today, when they hear "Liberal", think immediately of the classic meaning i wrote out above,.. ie, a RW free-trade goon.

So the Witki article seems to say that a Neo-Liberal is really at core, the same as what the rest of the world calls a "Liberal".

Both are free-trade goons. Both are RW-ers.

[Gildor Inglorion]

6. Kinda like, "Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebie" redux? Just asking....

:D

[oscar111]

8. Thread Summary: a neoliberal is a RW free-trade goon

who attacks the wages of our middle class.. by ending tarrifs and making us compete with India's

dollar-a-day

lads, who are unfortunately stuck in the vast slums of
Bombay.

[rodeodance]

10. not really, the DLC of the 1980's with Clinton as head very much would

be labeled as neoliberalism.

[oscar111]

12. Clinton had some RW elements in his ideas

like welfare deform.

[rodeodance]

9. neoliberalism as such also contrusts certain kinds of individuals-the

active choosing person who freely enters into the marketplace of ideas, materials, or whatever.

[oscar111]

11. so are you saying NLism is a good thing?

Do you see ending tarrifs as good?

just curious, not lambasting you

[oscar111]

13. ALL AGREE? the core is free trade

or, possbly the core is

lasse fare capitalism in all its facets?

what is the best statement of its .. neoliberalism... skeletal core?

[salvorhardin]

14. I think that may be an oversimplification

but laissez-faire capitalism is a crucial component of neoliberalism; its' meaning is pretty well confined to beliefs regarding economic policy.

You're right that liberalism has a decidedly different meaning in the U.S. than in Europe and elsewhere. I think part of that comes from a concerted effort by the right-wing to redefine liberalism over the past 40 years.

Margaret Thatcher, Alan Greenspan. I'd say both were excellent examples of neoliberals.

[FightinNewDem]

18. Charlie Peter's Neoliberals

There are two basic definitions, as a few posters hit upon.

One definition uses "liberal" in the classical sense, ie, something more akin to a libertarian than to a left-of-center individual.

The other definition was coined by Washington Monthly editor Charlie Peters back in the early 1980s. Peter's Neoliberals were the "Atari Democrats", a collection of Democrats who were basically liberal but skeptical of centralized, top-heavy solutions of the Great Society sort. These folks were pro-free trade, fiscally moderate, tech savvy, and socially progressive.

Peter's original neoliberals were folks like Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley, Gary Hart, and Tim Wirth, along with some younger Southerners such as Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Chuck Robb.

As time progressed, most of the tenets of the "neoliberal" approach became associated with the DLC's New Democrat philosophy, although some of the early neoliberals (Hart and Bradley, for example) take a somewhat more dovish approach to foreign policy than the later New Dems.

[Odin2005]

19. Neo-liberals...

...are the Milton Freidman/Fredrich von Hayek "privitization is good and the market will help everything" crowd that thinks Keynes, Galbraith, and other great economists from the New Deal era are the spawn of Satan.


Oh, and What we call a Liberal, a European would call a Social Democrat, and what the Europeans call Liberals we would call RW Libertarians.

[mwooldri]

21. Which is odd... as UK Liberal Democrats...

... are more Social Democrats than Libertarian. This speaking as a lapsed member of the Liberal Democrats. The UK Lib Dem's policies are certainly for business freedom (as in the traditional liberal model) but very much for making sure current state services such as health, police, the state pension, universities are well funded, and even _increasing_ taxes to pay for them.

I identify myself as a Social Democrat in the broadest sense, and on the vast majority of the issues the UK Lib Dems stand for I can identify with and support. I would not see the Lib Dems as right wing as totally libertarian by any means. There are a lot of issues that can be shared with libertarians but a lot more issues are more socially democratic than any.

Considering that the Liberal Democrats are a merger themselves between the Social Democratic Party (offshoots of the right-wing/centrist Labour party) and the Liberal Party (who can be traced back to the Whigs of 19th Century UK politics) and as such you can see where the politics end up.

Mark.

[David Van Os]

20. So what?

Who cares?

[ProgressAlwaysWins]

22. Personally, I don't even like the term "liberal".

It's pretty much the word that Republicans use to demean us. They use it in pretty much the same tone of voice one would use to say "asshole". I'm not liberal, I'm progressive. But it's OK, because Bush-supporting Republicans aren't "conservative" either, no matter how much they like to pretend they are.

As for "neo-liberal", well, that's pretty much a word they pulled out of their asses shortly after they coined the word "neo-conservative" for themselves. I don't think it means anything.