Neoliberalism’s World Order
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 มิ.ย. 2024
- Adam Tooze, Quinn Slobodian, and Atossa Araxia Abrahamian discuss neoliberalism, globalization, and the future of democracy.
At Verso Books in Brooklyn, September 20, 2018.
Ten years after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers nearly shattered the global economy, basic questions about the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression remain unanswered. What drove the accumulation of private debt and financialization of the economy that made the downturn possible? Was this a crisis for neoliberalism? Given its association with globalization, is a defense of national sovereignty the only way to take back democratic control from neoliberal forces? How has this shaped the populist revolts now transforming the global order, and how might the left respond?
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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Adam Tooze is Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of History at Columbia University, where he also directs the European Institute. He is author of “Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.”
Quinn Slobodian is associate professor of history at Wellesley College. His most recent book is “Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism.” Forthcoming is “Nine Lives of Neoliberalism” (Verso Books), co-edited with Dieter Plehwe and Philip Mirowski. He is currently writing a book with the working title “Hayek’s Bastards” on the neoliberal roots of the far right.
The conversation is moderated by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, senior editor at the Nation and a contributing editor at Dissent.
If Financialization has been the main method for neoliberalism’s ascendence, why not have a counter narrative to that - namely what Marx and other classical political economists of his day sought to eliminate - the privatization of surplus value (economic rent). The Socialization of economic rent would be a major factor in equalizing distribution and its emphasis would bring a corollary understanding within academia and, possibly, society at large. As it is, Western economic academia denies accounting for debt, unearned income (economic rent), the value of protectionism (Eric Reinert). Economic History was dropped as a requirement for economics majors!
Honestly ...I never heard the term ‘economic rent’ used in the literature ... synonymous with ‘surplus-value’...Relative Surplus Value and Absolute Surplus Value are the two forms of S/V in the literature I found. How does economic rent explain the two forms of surplus value?
Love the auto-generated 'New World Order' warning
You can basically flag almost all of TH-cam with "cat video" or "total bullshit" and be right 90% of the time. The remainder are music videos. :-)
Great discussion.
Neoliberal strategy is essentially the decollectivization and individualization of the economy and society (it’s especially against the collective organization of the lower-classes)
Congratulations, you are part of the few , who actually understand this, you summarize it perfectly
@Ashok Hegde don't be a tool.
@Ashok Hegde Not when it becomes an article of faith. There IS such a thing as society.
@Ashok Hegde And go where? Under neoliberalism, you are welcome as a refugee if you have money.
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Neoliberalism is a euphemism for financial colonialism - or possibly rather: neo-imperialism.
or Neofeudalism
@@iche9373 Yeah, you've got a point...
In 1:00:58 he talks about how the Global South was actually frightening Wall Street and Global Capitalism in itself by threatening to withhold essential ressources. Yeah, you are right! Guess what happenend then....
"HOW DID WE GET HERE?" It's a rhetorical question, right?
Mark Blyth a compatriot of Adam Tooze did a great lecture on that -> th-cam.com/video/tJoe_daP0DE/w-d-xo.html
This is Mark & Adam more recently -> th-cam.com/video/c1iAOK1aucY/w-d-xo.html
Did any mention computerized markets?
Excellent discussion. The comments here framing left-nationalism as a smart programmativ response to concerns over (a specific type of) sovereignty assume that it wins against right-nationalism. So far this doesn't really seem to be the case in the post-2008 world afaict.
More like the various social classes that arise out of commerce in certain industries...exercise a socialism among themselves.
"I'm a journalist, so . ..". Oh, ok, I guess that gives you "carte blanche", then, right?
Tooze is such an ideological clown
Where in the world does neoliberalism exist? Certainly not in the US or the EU. Not in Japan, China, Russia and North Korea. It doesn't exist in India or any parts of Africa or South America that I know about. It's a theoretical idea whose time has never come. Even communism was practiced more often than actual neoliberalism. I would even say that the very people who call themselves neoliberals are afraid of it... what they really want is government rules that give them the advantage. They don't want the anarchy of lack of government rules. ;-)
Clearly Tooze misconceives the 2008 crisis as inherent to "capitalism," which couldn't be further from the truth. Further, he attributes "economics" (aka: neoliberalism, as he seems to be using these terms) with not comprehending this fact---or, at least, being okay with it. The grand irony here, however, is that Tooze is the one with the miscomprehension. Namely, the crisis was born NOT from unfettered capitalism (aka: unfettered, and free markets), but from government intervention...aka: the fact of the existence of the central banking system, which system ultimately backstops the major banks, guaranteeing to make them whole in case of loss. The imposition of the backstop not simply unwittingly encourages them to take excessive risk, but knowingly does so, in the conscious recognition that the banks WILL go too far, and WILL need to be made whole on the back end.
Without the backstop, no excessive credit. Without excessive credit, both corporate balance sheets and bank balance sheets remain right side up. This truth is easy to see for one with a basic understanding of correct (ahem, to repeat, correct) economic theory.
The devastating sorrow of this entire situation is that this government guarantee has been in place from the very beginning of central banking, beginning with the establishment of the Bank of England, and continuing on through the creation of the Fed, and indeed all central banks. Indeed, the backstopping of the banks is the very _raison d'etre_ of central banking---that is, a guarantee to make them whole with government currency; aka: to socialize their private losses, wherein society at large pays the cost of their profligacy---again, not MAYBE bail them out when the balance sheets get way upside down, but ALWAYS. The institution itself was the brainchild of the bankers---this fact alone should tell one something fundamental about the true logic of the system. How on earth does Tooze miss this vital dynamic, and then go on to write a book promoting his tragically false understanding? I pray he comes to the truth, retracts this current piece of cheese, and writes a new book, with a reformed and enlightened thesis.
How can you be so smart yet so stupid? Do you really believe Tooze doesn't have an agenda? Look at his connections at the World Economic Forum.
That is total bullshit. People take risks, no matter what. The other day a French guy fell from a building in Hongkong, despite the obvious fact that climbing tall buildings without safety harness is idiocy. ;-)
lol.
As Phillip Mirowski says: The radical right only pretends to not understand that governments create & shape markets. And only pretends to not understand that governments issue the currency that funds private sector net savings.
So, while their followers might buy their rhetoric, the leaders know what’s up.
@seankennedy in a perfect world you're correct. In an imperfect world people have to eat in safety.
Social chaos can lead to excessive deaths, destruction, social and institutional reversals with incalculable costs.
But you knew this already
@@schmetterling4477true, he risked his life; obviously you missed that point.
What’s gone wrong with the markets?
It’s Hayek’s fault, he didn’t learn anything from the Wall Street Crash.
Free market beliefs were at a low ebb in the 1930s and there were just two bastions of free market thinking left.
1) The University of Chicago economics department
2) The LSE
“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” Irving Fisher 1929.
This 1920's neoclassical economist that believed in free markets knew this was a stable equilibrium.
He became a laughing stock.
The pressure was really on in the US as their free market thinkers had made complete fools of themselves. They really needed to get their finger out and find out where they had gone wrong.
They eventually worked out there were two factors at work, which had artificially inflated the market.
1) Share buybacks
2) The use of bank credit for margin lending.
Henry Simons was a founder member of the Chicago School of Economics and he had worked out what was wrong with his beliefs in free markets in the 1930s.
Banks can inflate asset prices with the money they create from bank loans.
www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Henry Simons and Irving Fisher supported the Chicago Plan to take away the bankers ability to create money.
“Simons envisioned banks that would have a choice of two types of holdings: long-term bonds and cash. Simultaneously, they would hold increased reserves, up to 100%. Simons saw this as beneficial in that its ultimate consequences would be the prevention of "bank-financed inflation of securities and real estate" through the leveraged creation of secondary forms of money.”
www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henry_Calvert_Simons
They had worked out where they went wrong, but by this stage everyone else had moved on with the New Deal, and no one was particularly interested in their findings.
They had missed the boat.
Hayek was at the LSE, and seems to have been totally oblivious to the Wall Street Crash, and it never even occurred to him that there might be something to learn from it.
He just ploughed on as if nothing had happened.
In the 1940s, Hayek put together his theories of the markets being a mechanism for transmitting the collective wisdom of market participants around the world through pricing.
It was never going to get into the mainstream until nearly everyone had forgotten what happened last time they believed in the markets, i.e. the 1980s.
Unfortunately, Hayek won out and the lessons of 1929 were forgotten.
What lifted US stocks to 1929 levels in 1929?
Margin lending and share buybacks.
What lifted US stocks to 1929 levels in 2019?
Margin lending and share buybacks.
A former US congressman has been looking at the data.
th-cam.com/video/7zu3SgXx3q4/w-d-xo.html
The Americans are going to re-learn those lessons the hard way.
It’s a pity they didn’t stick with their own free market thinkers who worked this out after last time.
They’ll be cursing Hayek soon.
Hayek didn't win out. The Fed and other central banks are not working off the free market model and haven't for more than half a century. The only people who are touting free markets are idiots who are not in the markets. Modern monetary policy is tightly controlled and that is the only reason why semi-free markets work in practice. Without the top level control market participants would be running out of money to play with all the time. ;-)