David Harvey: The Persistence of Neoliberalism Despite its Loss of Legitimacy (1/2)
Summary
TLDRIn this discussion, Greg Wilpert interviews David Harvey at the 2019 Left Forum in Brooklyn. They delve into the paradox of neoliberalism's waning popularity yet persistent institutional presence. Harvey argues that neoliberalism remains active, entrenched in global institutions and mindsets. He points out the emerging alliance between right-wing authoritarianism and neoliberalism as a concerning trend. Harvey also discusses how the left may have inadvertently adopted neoliberal principles, exemplified by corporate feminism. He emphasizes the need for a genuine alternative to both neoliberalism and its authoritarian counterpart, suggesting the left must awaken to this opportunity.
Takeaways
- 🌐 Neoliberalism's loss of legitimacy as an ideology is acknowledged, yet its institutionalized forms persist, such as the World Bank, WTO, EU, NAFTA, and TPP.
- 🧠 There's a widespread internalization of neoliberal values, leading to a situation where even critics often propose alternatives within a neoliberal framework.
- 💼 The rise of corporate feminism, which aligns with neoliberal principles of individual entrepreneurship, is critiqued as a form of feminism that overlooks broader social issues.
- 🌱 Neoliberalism's influence is so pervasive that it has affected the left's discourse, including some elements of anarchism that resonate with neoliberal ideas of individual liberty.
- 🔄 The distinction between the logic of capital, represented by tech giants like Google and Apple, and the logic of territory, represented by conservative neoliberalism, is highlighted.
- 🔄 The left is challenged to present a real alternative to both the logic of capital and the conservative form of neoliberalism.
- 📉 Neoliberal policies have led to increased social inequality, contradicting the promise of wealth for all through entrepreneurialism.
- 🏦 The ideology of neoliberalism blames individuals for their poverty, deflecting from systemic issues.
- 🛑 The rise of authoritarianism and neoconservatism is seen as a reaction to maintain social order against the perceived threat of the anti-neoliberal movement.
- ✊ The left has opportunities to counter the current alliance of neoliberalism and right-wing populism but has yet to fully capitalize on this moment.
Q & A
What is the contradiction between the loss of legitimacy of neoliberalism and its persistence in institutionalized forms?
-The contradiction lies in the fact that while neoliberalism has lost its legitimacy as an ideology, it continues to persist in its institutionalized forms through structures like the World Bank, WTO, European Union, and NAFTA, making it difficult for nations to deviate from it even if a progressive government comes into power.
How does David Harvey view the current state of neoliberalism?
-David Harvey sees neoliberalism as very active and not merely a 'zombie form'. He believes it has been instantiated within many institutions and has become a mindset where even those opposing it often look at alternatives through a neoliberal lens.
What does Harvey mean by saying we have all become neoliberals without knowing it?
-Harvey suggests that the neoliberal mindset has become so ingrained in our thinking that even when we object to certain neoliberal activities, we still consider alternatives in a way that is consistent with neoliberal principles.
How has neoliberalism been incorporated into the left, according to Harvey?
-Harvey points out that neoliberalism has been incorporated into the left through the adoption of entrepreneurialism and individualism, exemplified by corporate feminism which aligns with neoliberal values.
What is the difference between anti-neoliberal politics and anti-capitalist projects according to Harvey?
-Harvey distinguishes between anti-neoliberal politics, which opposes a specific form of capitalism, and anti-capitalist projects, which aim to go beyond capitalism altogether.
How does Harvey describe the relationship between neoliberalism and the current rise of right-wing authoritarianism?
-Harvey describes an alliance between right-wing authoritarianism and neoliberalism as troubling and dangerous, suggesting that this combination is being used to maintain social order and perpetuate neoliberalism.
What does Harvey think about the role of the left in the current political landscape?
-Harvey believes the left has not yet woken up to the possibility of mounting a counter-attack against the alliance of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, and is currently stuck in terms of presenting a real alternative.
How does Harvey explain the increasing social inequality under neoliberalism?
-Harvey explains that neoliberalism, driven by competition and the equalization of the rate of profit, inherently leads to greater social inequality, as the rich grow richer and the poor become relatively poorer.
What does Harvey think is the role of the state in perpetuating neoliberalism?
-Harvey suggests that the state, particularly through authoritarian measures and neoconservatism, plays a role in perpetuating neoliberalism by disciplining populations and maintaining social order.
How does Harvey view the impact of neoliberalism on the idea of personal responsibility?
-Harvey criticizes neoliberalism for promoting the idea that if you're poor, it's your fault for not investing in your own cultural capital, effectively blaming the victim.
What historical events does Harvey mention as examples of resistance against neoliberalism?
-Harvey mentions the anti-globalization movement, such as the protests in Seattle, and the Occupy Wall Street movement as examples of resistance against neoliberalism.
Outlines
🌐 Neoliberalism's Institutionalized Persistence
In this segment, Greg Wilpert interviews David Harvey at the 2019 Left Forum in Brooklyn. They discuss the apparent contradiction between the loss of legitimacy of neoliberalism as an ideology and its continued persistence in institutional forms. Harvey argues that neoliberalism is not a 'zombie' form but remains very active within institutions such as the World Bank, WTO, EU, and NAFTA. He suggests that there's a mindset where people have unknowingly adopted neoliberal principles, even when they oppose certain neoliberal activities. Harvey also points out the paradox where despite the criticism of figures like Clinton and Blair for their neoliberal policies, the ideology has seeped deeper into society. He highlights the alliance between right-wing authoritarianism and neoliberalism as a troubling and dangerous development.
🚀 The Neoliberal Influence on the Left
David Harvey delves into how neoliberalism has influenced the left, particularly in the last decade. He discusses Michel Foucault's analysis of neoliberalism and its ingrained nature in everyday habits, such as viewing oneself as an entrepreneurial enterprise. Harvey uses the example of corporate feminism, which aligns with neoliberal values of self-entrepreneurialism, to illustrate how neoliberalism has been internalized even within critical movements like feminism. He contrasts this with the need for an anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal feminism. Harvey also differentiates between anti-neoliberal politics and anti-capitalist projects, questioning whether it's possible to reform capitalism ethically or if a move beyond capitalism is necessary. He notes the left's tolerance for neoliberal practices and the influence of the '68 generation's pursuit of individual liberty, which was co-opted into a neoliberal framework that downplayed social justice.
🌉 The Dichotomy of Neoliberalism and Authoritarianism
The conversation turns to the dichotomy between neoliberalism and conservatism, with Harvey drawing a parallel to his earlier work on the New Imperialism. He discusses the logic of capital versus the logic of territory, suggesting an alliance between neoliberalism and authoritarianism to maintain social order. Harvey critiques the neoliberal narrative that blames individuals for their poverty, arguing that this ideology deflects from systemic issues. He notes a shift towards state authoritarianism and neoconservatism to suppress dissent against neoliberal policies. Harvey suggests that the left has an opportunity to counter this authoritarian shift but has not yet fully recognized or capitalized on this moment.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡neoliberalism
💡institutionalized
💡legitimacy
💡authoritarianism
💡corporatism
💡entrepreneurialism
💡anarchism
💡social inequality
💡cultural capital
💡right-wing populism
💡counter-attack
Highlights
Greg Wilpert interviews David Harvey at the 2019 Left Forum in Brooklyn.
Discussion on the contradiction of neoliberalism's loss of legitimacy as an ideology yet persistence in institutional forms.
Harvey suggests that neoliberalism is active and ingrained within many institutions like the WTO and EU.
The idea that we have all become neoliberals without knowing it.
Harvey points out the paradox of Trump's deregulation being consistent with a neoliberal project.
The tax bill under Trump被视为典型的新自由主义文件,有利于债券持有人。
The emergence of an alliance between right-wing authoritarianism and neoliberalism.
Harvey discusses how the left may have incorporated some key ideas of neoliberalism.
The influence of Michel Foucault's analysis of neoliberalism on everyday habits.
The concept of individuals as enterprises of their own and its relation to corporate feminism.
The distinction between anti-neoliberal politics and anti-capitalist projects.
The potential for an ethical or social democratic form of capitalism.
Harvey's view on the left's tolerance for neoliberal practices due to its incorporation into leftist discourse.
The challenge to neoliberalism's legitimacy due to increased social inequality.
Neoliberalism's tendency to blame the victim for their poverty.
The rise of authoritarianism as a response to the failure of neoliberal reforms.
The potential for the left to mount a counter-attack against the neoliberal order.
Harvey's call for the left to wake up to the current moment of possibility.
Transcripts
it's the real news network
and I'm Greg wilpert joining you from
New York City where I'm at the 2019 left
forum which is actually taking place in
Brooklyn this year and I'm joined by
David Harvey distinguished professor of
anthropology at the Graduate Center of
the City University of New York thanks
for much David for joining us today
so I want to I want to start with the
question of neoliberalism because that's
an issue that has been a lot on people's
minds here at the left forum it seems to
me and one of the issues regarding
neoliberalism it seems to be the strange
contradiction between on the one hand
that everybody is saying and I think the
kind of the progressive candidates on
the Democratic Party in the United
States are kind of bearing this out the
loss of legitimacy of neoliberalism at
this point at least as an ideology as a
mode of thinking but on the other hand
and this is kind of this this
contradiction is the persistence of
neoliberalism in its institutionalized
form that is we have all kinds of
structures in place from the World Bank
to the World Trade Organization the
European Union the new and revamped and
North American Free Trade Agreement the
trans-pacific partnership is all kinds
of different institutions in place that
basically institutionalized
neoliberalism and so my question is how
can we get beyond this contradiction in
the sense that yeah what good is a do if
neoliberalism has been vanquished on the
level of ideas but it continues on kind
of as some has said perhaps a nizam be
like form without any real life but as a
nation and as individual nations it's
almost too difficult to do anything
about it even if a progressive
government comes into office so what do
you think well I don't think it's a
zombie form I think it's very active and
for some of the reasons you mentioned
it's become instantiated within many of
the institutions and you mentioned
we have Global's thing with the WTO
which is a neoliberal construct to which
everybody is supposed to comply you have
a European Union with my strict record
and Lisbon Accords which are completely
kind of neoliberal in their orientation
even further than that I think we have a
mindset in which in a curious kind of
way we have all become neoliberals
without knowing it and even when we kind
of object to some of the more egregious
activities which are going on we often
look at alternatives in a very
neoliberal kind of way and I think yeah
one of the questions I wonder wanna ask
around here of my colleagues is what
degree is the Left become neoliberal
last well in everybody's critical of
Clinton and and Blair and so on for
neoliberal izing Democratic Party and
the Labour Party's but I think it's gone
much deeper than that so it's not gone
and I would point out that if one other
one of the themes of neoliberalism
mister deregulate Trump was deregulated
had a rate which is absolutely
phenomenal so that is very very
consistent with a neoliberal project and
a deepening of the neoliberal project as
opposed to it's sort of rolling it
rolling it back the tax bill he gave out
was a classic neoliberal document which
was really a bondholders charter and I
think that actually in many day-to-day
aspects neoliberalism is is alive and
active and I think that the problem now
however is as you mentioned its
legitimacy and I think what's happening
is there's a curious Alliance occurring
between right-wing authoritarianism and
neoliberalism which is very very
troubling and
I think that is a very dangerous sign I
want to return to that point but before
I do I want to touch on something that
you said just before that which is about
how the left might have incorporated
some key ideas of neoliberalism and this
is of course something that has only
been discovered recently I would say one
that recently in the last 10 years
neoliberalism has been around I guess
since the night early 1970s but on the
last in the last 10 years there have
been more and more thinkers who panned
and I think partly this might be a
result of Michel Foucault's analysis of
neoliberalism talking about how it
becomes ingrained in our everyday habits
and the thing that he points to is these
ideas about how we become enterprises of
our own of an individual as a single
individual as an enterprise and I'm
wondering is that related to what you're
thinking in terms of the new
liberalization of the left I mean give
me some make that a little bit more
concrete what do you mean by that good
book come out by Cynthia I wrote so the
teaching back to Sharia and Nancy Fraser
the feminism for the 99% and one of the
things they do is to point out that as a
form of feminism which latched on to
neoliberalism precisely because it was
had this philosophy of
entrepreneurialism in the self and so
women could say okay I'm doing
entrepreneurialism is my self and as an
entrepreneur I can ascend in the
corporate world and so you get a kind of
corporate feminism which in many ways is
represented by Hillary Clinton which
explains why she didn't do so well
amongst amongst many women because that
corporate feminism which is consistent
with neoliberalism has become quite
significant in the feminist movement and
so these authors go against that and say
we have to have an anti-capitalist
feminism which is anti neoliberal and
anti-capitalist and I think is a big
difference for me by the way between an
anti neoliberal
politics an anti-capitalist product
project because neoliberalism is a
particular form of capitalism and the
big question is can you get rid of it
and construct an ethical form of
capitalism or a social democratic form
of capitalism or do we really need to go
beyond capitalism altogether but I don't
think the left particularly when you
look at some of the other issues and the
overlap there is in the left with some
aspects of an anarchist tradition and
the anarchist tradition is not entirely
sort of opposed to some of the
neoliberal ideas about liberty and
freedom of the individual and the like
so you you'll find I many aspects of the
left these days is sort of Kerik
characterized by whatever called a non
ideological cultural anarchism
and to some degree that is a little bit
what comes out of the neoliberal ethic
when the neoliberal ethic was first
being proposed it seems to me that it
was very much being proposed to the
generation of 68 and saying to that
generation look you want individual
liberty and freedom okay we'll give it
to you we'll give it to you and we'll
give it to you in this neoliberal form
which is a very political economic form
and you have to forget other issues like
social justice and the like so it's it's
seeped its way into the discourse is of
much of the left and I think that this
is this creates a sort of tolerance for
some neoliberal practices if but though
never ideas would exist on the left now
returning also to this issue now of the
alliance between neo liberalism and
conservatism in a way I'm wondering if
there's a parallel that might be made in
the sense that a to to something that
you wrote actually along
ago when you wrote about the New
Imperialism and what I'm thinking of
specifically is about I think you made
the distinction between the logic of
capital versus the logic of territory I
think it was was the alternative and the
this neoliberal alliance with
conservatives and it follows kind of a
logic of territory in some sense versus
you also have among the elites or among
the ruling class if you will of a kind
of a logic of capital and a kind of this
neoliberal non conservative
neoliberalism and that and that's
represented by the big tech companies
for example Google and Apple and so on
and Facebook on the one hand and on the
other hand we've got the kind of
trumpian neoliberalism that is
authoritarian and and of course now the
the left forces seem to be stuck somehow
in terms of possibly facing the choice
between one of those two are presenting
an alternative and I'm just wondering if
if what that so to speak that other
logic might be in terms of what would it
be oriented towards and how would it be
able to present a real alternative to
this the logic of of capital versus
logic of territory the neoliberal versus
the neoliberalism if you will and the
conservative neoliberalism how can it
kind of can can this alternative kind of
get beyond this this dichotomy well I
take it from this perspectives that when
I read Marx particularly Volume one over
now of capital what I see is a system
which systematically has the rich
growing richer and the poor getting
relatively poorer in other words a free
market economy driven by competition in
which there is an equalization of the
rate of profit that kind of economy will
produce automatically greater and
greater levels of social inequality and
of social well-being and of course the
neoliberal era all the data show
that is exactly what has happened so you
kind of go okay I understand
theoretically why this is happening it's
because of this this this mechanism
because that's what this mechanism does
and I see the data and then but that
then I think leads to the challenge to
the legitimacy of neoliberalism because
the idea behind it is to say to
everybody do entrepreneurial work in
yourself and then you'll become rich and
all the rest of it but it turns out
that's extremely difficult to do and for
the mass of the population it turns out
to be impossible so they look at this
situation and say this system is not
working for me
but then the neoliberal ethic kicks in
about entrepreneurialism the self and
says well if you're poor it's because
you didn't invest in your own cultural
capital it's your fault that you're poor
so neoliberalism has a very clever way
of turning things around and blaming the
victim and we see that saw that in the
foreclosures of the housing and all this
kind of stuff many people who were
foreclosed upon didn't blame the system
what they blamed was themselves so
actually what what neoliberalism does as
an ideology is to start to do that so
when somebody kind of says look the
system's not working for me the system
turns around says oh that's because you
didn't work on your education you didn't
do right it's your fault all this kind
of stuff so it it's a very neat way now
when you get to the mid 1990s or beyond
that I would say sort of around 2000
particularly after the Clinton years
when Clinton came in promising all kinds
of benefits and gave us and after and
all these neoliberal reforms and at that
point I think people kind of said you
know this is not really working for me
and what's more there's something going
on here which is which is not right so
you start to see in the 2000s this kind
of alliance between the neo cons and the
neoconservatives in the authoritarian
state because the only way in which
social order could be actually
kept was went by actually starting to
discipline populations because after all
the first revolt against the neoliberal
order which was global as opposed to
particular there are lots in Latin
America as I think you know and but the
global one was Seattle which was the
anti which is the anti-globalization
movement and then all of the picketing
of the IMF and g20 is meetings and all
these kinds of things general all of
that kind of story and at that point I
think the ruling class has started to
say well this could is is gonna get out
of hand we need a government structure
that's gonna sit on these people and do
it really really hard
so when Occupy Wall Street came along
which was a fairly small and fairly
innocent kind of movement actually Wall
Street got paranoid and basically
summoned the New York mayor at the time
who was the Wall Street character
Bloomberg to say squash these people and
and so then at this point the
perpetuation of a neoliberal order
starts to become more and more
guaranteed by state authoritarianism and
neoconservative ISM which now has
morphed a little bit into this kind of
right-wing populism so in a sense the
neoliberal order is being perpetuated by
this authoritarian shift and I think
again that should give the left a good
possibility to mount a counter-attack
and I think they are in a position to
remount a counter attack in certain
parts of the world but right now I don't
think the left has woken up to that this
moment of possibility
you
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