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October 16, 2010
In his The Politics of Inequality: A Political History of the Idea of Economic Inequality in America Michael J. Thompson argues that the neoliberal turn of recent decades has brought upon a reorientation of democratic life as it has taken the political out of political economy. Discourse has shifted from political society to economic society, and while the American political tradition is based on the twin themes of republicanism and liberalism, the project of neoliberalism makes the latter regnant.
Neoliberalism is thus an assault on the ‘social democracy’ tradition that has its roots in the New Deal periods. Neoliberalism is now an ‘entrenched ideology’ in US political culture and, in addition to legitimising economic inequality, it has resulted in a ‘decline of civic engagement, the erosion of political life, and the shattering of a once vibrant public sphere’. He says:
At the core of neoconservative and neoliberal philosophy is the notion that equality has extended as far as it will ever be able to extend without endangering individual liberty. Equality is to be realized and contained exclusively in the legal and political sphere, and even then, only in the abstract or formal sense. This differs strongly from the insight that was offered and acted upon by Progressive and New Deal thinkers who saw the role of the state expanding into the economy as necessary for a more substantive conception of democracy to flourish. These thinkers were reacting against the massive inequalities of the late nineteenth century, but, even more, they were reacting against the entire social theory upon which it had been based: laissez-faire individualism. And it is precisely this theory of society and government that has made a triumphant return in contemporary American politics.
Thompson adds that the persistence of economic inequality has much to do with the structural transformation of work and the transition to postindustrialism as it does with the new transformation of political ideology.
Nevertheless, the ascendance of libertarian ideas about economy and society has not only influenced the elites responsible for public policy but also has affected public sentiment on a whole range of economic issues as well as the way that the public conceives of contemporary economic life. The inverse relation between the rise of inequality and the amount of political aversion to it requires explanation, and I think it can be found in the way that the idea of liberalism, with its emphasis on individualism and its conception of labor and property, has triumphed over broader conceptions of the common good that were espoused by republican-minded thinkers. Bled of its older political implications, a narrow sense of liberalism can no longer provide a robust critique of economic divisions, even among those who suffer most from them.
The is an ideological shift that views economic inequality as valid in pursuit of larger social and political goals.
he adds that If inequality is seen merely in economistic terms and simply as a debate about “fairness,” then the political implications of inequality have indeed been lost. The critics of inequality that make up the American egalitarian tradition interpreted economic inequality as not only pernicious in and of itself but also as a threat to social and individual freedom.
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