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March 1, 2011
Gerry Hassan's argument in The Neo-Liberal State and its Context at Open Democracy about the neo-liberal nature of the contemporary UK state also applies to the Australian one. The neo-liberal state has emerged out of the welfare state and it is one that is concerned with governance in a seemingly free and self-regulating global market that is constituted as the ideal in relation to which governance should be oriented. The ethos here is one whereby ‘government failure’ is seen as being a greater problem than ‘market failure’.
Hassan says:
The UK state has become a neo-liberal state – one which has changed how it acts in the UK and globally...he neo-liberal state has a transformed political centre; one which at the core and highest echelons of British government now prioritises marketisation, corporatisation and outsourcing, and economic relationships which aid this. The political centre has been captured by entrepreneurs of the state, corporate interests, and the accountancy firms. The old Whitehall mandarins have been caricatured by ‘Yes Minister’ – an account the Thatcherites and Blairites thought accurate in describing them as obstacles to change, stuffy, high bound to tradition and Oxbridge dominated.
From this 'modernizing reform flows the promotion of neo-liberal culture: a culture which is based on celebrating the cult of the individual, selfishness, greed and the validation of winners. This is coupled to the emergence of the the neo-liberal self: a subject that is increasingly isolated, atomised and without voice and power, and permeating and penetrated by the unrelenting logic of consumer capitalism, advertising, marketing and the power of brands.
The future of Australia is inextricably linked to the future of the neo-liberal state's capacity to govern in accordance with a neoliberal rationality of government:
this governmental rationality can be characterised as one within which governance is reflected on with the aid of a vocabulary that includes ‘competition’, ‘market’, ‘ freedom’,‘ choice’, ‘ customer orientation’,‘ efficiency’ and ‘flexibility as core concepts; ‘the market’ is constituted as the ideal in relation to which governance should be oriented; it is accepted that markets can exist only under specific political, legal and institutional conditions that must be actively established by authorities; individual and/or individualised entities are constituted and acted upon as flexible and manipulable subjects with a rationality derived from arranged forms of entrepreneurial and competitive behaviour; the main responsibility for economic activity is ascribed to private market actors; and interventions in such activity on the part of authorities are, if accepted at all, given a theoretical justification based on ideas of market failure or imperfection.
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If they are contradictory just so. Especially when we think that ultimately the sort of individualism described makes government impotent as to its purpose, as the 4
Corners thing on the Murray Darling last night demonstrated.
What hope for reason prevailing against the mentality of Barnaby Joyce's crew?