A teacher asks: What the hell is “neo-liberalism” anyway?
This question came up on a BATs message thread when I posted a photo collage from the Los Angeles Oaxaca Vigil with the following caption: “Neoliberalism kills — figuratively and literally. Doing my part to resist neoliberalism every day. Los Angeles en solidaridad con los maestros de Oaxaca. Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles, California. June 2016.” In response a teacher asked:
What the hell is “neo-liberalism” anyway?
My quickly composed response was as follows:
Neoliberalism is used by most of academia to describe the “Washington Consensus” policies of deregulation, austerity, and privatization. It is a new (neo) implementation of classical liberalism — the economic term, not “social liberalism”, which is what you are most familiar with. A “liberalization” of markets is what they mean, freeing markets from rational decisions imposed by the outside — effectively a return to laissez-faire economics.
These policies are closely associated with the economics of Hayek and Freidman, and were widely imposed by the IMF, WTO, and World Bank on other contries, but were ramped up more slowly here. Most of what plagues modern education: testing, deprofesionalization, charters-vouchers, ed-tech, etc., are in line with neoliberal ideology.
The word is muddled a bit because many also use it to describe the so-called “New Democrats” like Cuomo, Booker, the Clintons, Obama, etc. The reason for this is most probably because they all espouse neoliberalism. To be clear, neoliberalism is a bi-partisan project, which is why there is so little difference between the Democrats and Republicans on things like tax cuts for the rich, school privatization, park closures, etc. A few quick, but very informative reads:
For neoliberalism, education, and nonprofits see my:
The Nonprofit Industrial Complex’s Role in Imposing Neoliberalism on Public Education
For neoliberalism and disaster capitalism see Naomi Klein:
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
For a historical overview of neoliberalism see Chris Lehmann:
Neoliberalism, the Revolution in Reverse
For a history of privatization under neoliberalism see Donald Cohen:
[EDIT]
The adherents of this conception of neoliberalism actually adopted the term as a self-description; indeed, Milton Friedman wrote a paper in 1951 called Neoliberalism and Its Prospects.
— Professor Neil Davidson in “What is neoliberalism?”
— Professor David Harvey “A Brief History of Neoliberalism”
