Thanks, Jack. I enjoyed your take on the periods of neoliberalism.
JackRiddler wrote:I would say there have been two major phases in the neoliberal era of class war, in which the ruling class consensus moved against the New Deal and the Keynesian golden age and launched a restoration, a drive to restore Manchester era conditions, but now in the new technological conditions and with an individualist ostensibly democratic ideology that defines one's market value and competency as the measure of one's virtue.
Yes, but what if we go bigger. From my perspective, the uncomfortable yet unavoidable conclusion is that Capitalism itself is the problem. The New Deal and the Keynesian golden age isn't a success, but a stopgap measure. An attempt to apply Fordism on a societal scale, or something. I don't know, I'm not a political economist, I'm not well versed in the lingo. But it's a way to keep poverty and homelessness pressure capped just enough, from bubbling over into revolutionary transformation. A failure to make significant structural changes. The system is there to be gamed, it's going to be gamed.
Perhaps that's all Marixistly inevitable. eh, I shrug. But the commodity form is what defines one's market value as the measure of one's virtue. Long before neoliberalism, Capitalism set the bounds of discourse.
Personally, I would say the problem is even more fundamental than that. Market value as the measure of one's virtue is archaic law. Capitalism is just a modern manifestation, a more -or less- perfect form, depending on your perspective. I take care of sick and old people, that's market value, virtuous. I write and do creative things for free, that's not virtuous, I'm a trouble-maker, a dirty, dirty ninja. I take grandma to her doctor's appointment, I'm virtuous. Confucious is proud. I criticize the family structure, say it's part of the problem, I'm not virtuous. Confucious says I'm a bad guy.
Defining market value as the measure of one's virtue is what authoritarian society is all about. The rewards are alluring, it appeals to the baser nature in man. To refuse to bow out and be anti-social, yet still resist it, is to be a heretic, the enemy of society. You aren't building your brand, you're instantly suspect. Because you threaten the social order.
The good thing about this is, if you're evolved and enlightened, you can use it to your advantage. Post insightful shit on the "Rigorous Intuition Congratulations, Stupid" thread. You're not self-importantly puffing yourself up with mystical aura? The dopes don't understand what the hell is going on.
Here's what I was reading tonight, trying to find the words to fit these concepts. Bob Jessop:
The Strategic-Relational Approach
https://bobjessop.org/2014/12/02/the-strategic-relational-approach-an-interview-with-bob-jessop/Liberalism, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance: A State-Theoretical Pespective
"To facilitate a comparative analysis of “actually existing” neoliberalization, it is useful to contrast neoliberalism with three other ideal-typical strategies [...]: neocorporatism, neostatism, and neocommunitarianism. Before elaborating on these particular concepts in more detail, however, I will explain the general theoretical purposes of ideal types and their possible role(s) in empirical analysis.
Ideal types are so called because they involve thought experiments, not because they represent some normative ideal or other. They are theoretical constructs formed by the one-sided accentuation of empirically observable features of social reality to produce logically coherent and objectively feasible configurations of social relations. These configurations are never found in pure form, but their conceptual construction may still be useful for heuristic, descriptive, and explanatory purposes."
https://bobjessop.org/2014/12/02/liberalism-neoliberalism-and-urban-governance-a-state-theoretical-pespective/Neocommunitarianism needs a new name. That would never fly in America.
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Narratives of Crisis and Crisis Response: Perspectives from North and South
"This chapter explores attempts by different social forces to interpret the complex global financial and economic crisis as it unfolded from 2006 to the end of 2009. Much mainstream commentary has read the crisis from the viewpoints of capital accumulation rather than social reproduction, the global North rather than the global South, and the best way for states to restore rather than constrain the dominance of market forces..."
https://bobjessop.org/2014/04/01/narratives-of-crisis-and-crisis-response-perspectives-from-north-and-south/JackRiddler wrote:The idea being not just to silence the still-extant left but to make an actual left impossible to conceive. Setting the bounds of discourse, Chomsky style, manufacturing consent, etc.
The smart cool kids call it, "the New Word Order."
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
