After neoliberalism w/ James Meadway
Added 2021-07-23 09:45:37 +0000 UTCJames Meadway joins PTO to talk about his forthcoming article for Open Democracy on the end of neoliberalism. We talked about why James believes that we're witnessing a transition away from neoliberalism and towards what some are calling authoritarian capitalism, why the left needs to focus more on the high point of globalisation of the early 2000s when thinking about neoliberal forms of governance rather than the late 1970s and 1980s, and we also talked about how the platform tech giants may have been nurtured within the neoliberal system but that their revenue models point to a quite different regime of capital accumulation.
Comments
thanks Christopher!
Politics Theory Other
2021-07-30 10:57:04 +0000 UTCFantastic episode!
Christopher Page
2021-07-30 07:06:37 +0000 UTCthanks Paul! Glad you enjoyed it. I'm sure I'll be talking with him again.
Politics Theory Other
2021-07-26 11:13:10 +0000 UTCThat was a superb hour. Whilst some of this is necessarily speculative it’s so important that we begin to think about how capital is organising itself after 2008/Covid/the rise of regular seismic shocks to its Eco-system and the concomitant loss of legitimacy. In fact how it’s seeking to re-legitimise itself and how it’s responding to the rise of authoritarian power and economic dominance are critical question but regularly overlooked ones. James was great, please have him back on. His thinking around Trump/Biden/China is worth a discussion of itself. Thanks!
Paul Barnsley
2021-07-25 20:32:27 +0000 UTCTrump clearly was moving away from neo-liberal institutions, however, I'm not sure that I would say the same about Biden. We're still talking about the privatization of space. Under Biden, one of the crown jewels of the New Deal era, the Tennesee Valley Authority, which has survived privatization efforts for decades, has been a target in the ongoing infrastructure spending bill. The most recent negotiations over infrastructure spending includes a shift away from public roads, towards more privately owned toll roads. Biden has embraced some of the anti-trust policy objectives, however, this is more of an elite project -- it isn't something being pushed for by labor interests. With respect to the Post Office, he's failed to stop Trump's privatization efforts. With respect to foreign policy, Biden has worked to support and bolster neo-liberal regimes around the globe. When it came to the provision of health care in the stimulus, Biden opted for expanding coverage through an expansion of short-term public subsidies to the private sector, rather than an expansion of the public sector. Sanders has had some influence given his seniority and position within a tenuous Senate majority. However, the center of gravity is still with the "moderates" in the GOP and on the right flank of the Democratic Party. e.g. forces who enjoy overlapping donor bases from multi-national business interests, not from labor. Larry Summers still has a direct line to the Biden administration and was reported to be consulting with the administration just this past week. Time will tell, but I am skeptical that we are seeing the end of neo-liberalism in the near future. Business interests celebrated aspects of the Trump presidency, particularly the 2017 tax cuts. However, Trump completely botched the response to COVID, and he personalized foreign policy in a way that an American president is not suppose to do. Biden and the people around do a much better job of coordination with global business interests. I do not see this as a radical departure from the past 40 years, but rather something that appears to be more continuous. I think a lot of the noise and PR in the early days of the Biden presidency about a leftward shift, but substantively, the center of gravity is close to where it was in the 1990s. He's more responsive to labor interests than Trump or Clinton, but I don't think those interests have the same degree of influence that they had with LBJ and even Nixon.
J P 3
2021-07-24 05:40:05 +0000 UTC
