When the Keynesian settlement was finally put into effect, after World War II, it was offered only to a relatively small slice of the world's population. As time when on, more and more people wanted in on the deal. Almost all of the popular movements of the period from 1945 to 1975, even perhaps revolutionary movements, could be seen as demands for inclusion: demands for political equality that assumed equality was meaningless without some level of economic security. . . . At some point in the '70s, things reached a breaking point. It would appear that capitalism, as a system, simply cannot extend such a deal to everyone. Quite possibly it wouldn't even remain viable if all its workers were free wage laborers; certainly it will never be able to provide everyone in the world the sort of life lived by, say, a 1960s auto worker in Michigan or Turin. . . . The result might be termed a crisis of inclusion. By the late 1970s the existing order was clearly in a state of collapse, plagued simultaneously by financial chaos, food riots, oil shock, widespread doomsday prophecies of the end of growth and ecological crisis--al of which, it turned out, proved to be ways of putting the populace on notice that all deals were off.
The moment that we start framing the story this way, it's easy to see that the next thirty years, the period from roughly 1978 to 2009, follows nearly the same pattern. Except that the deal, the settlement, had changed. Certainly, when both Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in the UK launched a systematic attack on the power of labor unions, as well as on the legacy of Keynes, it was a way of explicitly declaring that all previous deals were off. Everyone could now have political rights . . . but political rights were to become economically meaningless. (David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years, p. 374-75)
Before 2003 when I first started writing this blog, religious and philosophical issues were the primary focus of my reading and thinking. I honestly didn't care that much about what was happening in the political and economic spheres. I saw any hope then for real change as developing out of the cultural sphere, with the political and economic spheres reacting to it. I still believe that, but I have come to believe that the encroachment of the political and economic spheres in the cultural sphere is crowding out what I think of as spiritual possibility. The conditions for the possibility of spiritual initiatives are becoming increasingly sterile. Neoliberalism is the name for the toxic reigning world view in the political and economic spheres that is sterilizing spiritual possibility in this way.
Before 2003, I'd have described myself as a generic social democrat. I voted for Clinton in '92, but for Nader in '96 and 2000. It was then that I was beginning to wake up to this Neoliberal thing. But my assumption during the '80s and '90s was that the world created by Thatcher and Reagan was aberrational, that the pendulum would eventually swing back to some sensible approximation of the New Deal compromise between markets and governments. I no longer believe that. I don't think there's going to be a pendulum swing. I believe now things are fundamentally different. I think we're locked in.
We're locked in because since the fall of the Soviet Union, Neoliberalism has become the dominant narrative around which this globalization is organized in the political and economic spheres, and there is no alternative political economic world view with a constituency powerful enough to push back against it. Some promising things have emerged in Latin America while the US has been preoccupied with its imperial follies in the Middle East, but will they be able to survive if and when the people who run things start paying more attention?
A lot of us, even if we accept that the trente glorieuses were then and this is now, still think that a new deal has to be negotiated, we want negotiate that deal from a position where we have some leverage. But Neoliberalism isn't interested in negotiating, and its principals have worked hard and are still working to make it as difficult as possible for ordinary people to have any power or leverage in the negotiations. The unions have been eviscerated. We certainly no longer have any power in the political process because the Neoliberal world view is embraced with minor variations by political elites in both parties in the U.S., and it's the narrative that has become accepted without question by the people around the world who are running things. And it will continue to dominate elite thinking until a plausible alternative emerges.
But I fear that it will only emerge out of the rubble of Neoliberalism's self-destruction--a collapse that will not be easy or painless for any of us. The crisis of 2008 was a warning, but not one that the people running the world seem to have heeded. Why have they not heeded it? Because Neoliberalism is a fundamentally myopic world view that justifies the status quo for those who are currently running things. And the people running things, like the Roman Senatorial class of old, are incapable of thinking long term or seeing the big picture. They are concerned only about themselves, and from where they stand, things look pretty good. And who is proposing a plausible alternative--if by 'plausible' one means 'continuing to benefit those who are running things'?
More on all this theme as we move forward.