November 25, 2006
This paper---Neo-liberalism and the Restoration of Class Power---- by David Harvey was for a workshop on neo-liberalism at Princeton University in 2004. After giving a history of neo-liberalism under Thatcher and Reagan in the opening section of his paper David Harvey outlines the characteristics of the neo-liberal mode of governance:
Consider the neo-liberal state as an ideal type. While there are well-known dangers of setting up an argument this way, it has the advantage of clarifying the contrasts to the social democratic state that preceded it while allowing a preliminary exploration of the question as to whether or not the neo-conservative state is a radical departure or a mere continuation of the neo-liberal state by other means.The fundamental mission of the neo-liberal state is, at its base, to create a "good business climate" and therefore to optimize conditions for capital accumulation no matter what the consequences for employment or social well-being. This contrasts with the social democratic state that is committed to full employment and the optimization of the well-being of all of its citizens subject to the condition of maintaining adequate and stable rates of capital accumulation.
Harvey says that the neo-liberal state looks to further the cause of and to facilitate and stimulate (by tax breaks and other concessions as well as infrastructural provision at state expense if necessary) all business interests, arguing that this will foster growth and innovation and that this is the only way to eradicate poverty and to deliver, in the long run, higher living standards to the mass of the population.
He adds that:
Internally, the neo-liberal state is hostile to (and in some instances overtly repressive of) all forms of social solidarity (such as the trade unions or other social movements that acquired considerable power in the social democratic state) that put restraints on capital accumulation. It withdraws from welfare provision and diminishes its role as far as possible in the arenas of health care, public education and social services that had been so central to the operations of the social democratic state. The social safety net is reduced to a bare minimum.
Externally, Harvey adds, neo-liberal states seek the reduction of barriers to movement of capital across borders and the opening of markets (for both commodities and money capital) to global forces of capital accumulation, sometimes competitive but more often monopolistic (though always with the opt-out provision to refuse anything "against the national interest").
And finally the neo-liberal state is profoundly anti-democratic, even as it frequently seeks to disguise this fact. Governance by elites is favored and a strong preference for government by executive order and by judicial decision arises at the expense of the former centrality of democratic and parliamentary decision-making. What remains of representative democracy is overwhelmed if not, as in the US, totally though legally corrupted by money power.... In the neo-liberal view, mass democracy is equated with "mob rule" and this typically produces all of the barriers to capital accumulation that so threatened the power of the upper classes in the 1970s. The preferred form of governance is that of the "public-private partnership" in which state and key business interests collaborate closely together to coordinate their activities around the aim of enhancing capital accumulation. The result is that the regulated get to write the rules of regulation while “public” decision-making becomes ever more opaque.
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You'll have to introduce me to David Harvey, so I can shake his hand.
How apt the typically pithy Nietzsche comment sitting above the comments.