This Week: Neoliberalism in the 21st Century, Props to Mike Connolly, + Chuck Berry & Derek Walcott, RIP
This week — defining an ideology with Corey Robin, Yasmin Nair, Greg Lindsay, Moira Weigel, and Yarden Katz. Listen today at 2pm on WBUR or anytime on our website.
Zach Goldhammer: Our program this week was made by possible by listeners like you. The show was planned and produced as a direct response to the many comments we got from OS fans who had been asking for a definition of the term neoliberalism.
With a keynote from the CUNY political science professor, semi-prophetic author, and formidable blogger Corey Robin, we began by defining neoliberalism in terms of the late 70s political shifts within the Democratic Party: the sharp turn away from New Deal commitments and towards an embrace of free markets and deregulation. Robin tracks the history back to Jimmy Carter, and like our host Chris Lydon, he considers Carter the first neoliberal, along with the various “Atari Democrats” listed off in Charles Peters’s 1983 Washington Monthly piece, “A Neo-Liberal’s Manifesto”
But this was more than a show about political economy. Our all-star cast of guests helped us hash out neoliberalism’s influence on a variety of topics, including air travel and global commerce (Greg Lindsay); tech and intimacy (Moira Weigel); science and media (Yarden Katz), as well as feminism and education (Yasmin Nair).
We also collected some general definitions from our friends and correspondents over email. The strongest one came from our favorite local essayist and renaissance man, George Scialabba:
I’d say neoliberalism is essentially the extension of market dominance to all spheres of social life, fostered and enforced by the state. In economic policy, this means deregulation and privatization. In culture, it means untrammeled marketing and the commoditization of everyday life, including the intimate sphere. In law, it means consumer sovereignty, non-discrimination (which is after all economically irrational), and a restrictive conception of the public interest. In education, it means the replacement of public by private (i.e., business) support for schools, universities, and research, with a concomitant shift of influence over curriculum and research topics. In civil society, it means private control over the media and private funding of political parties, with the resultant control of both by business. In international relations, it means investor rights agreements masquerading as “free trade” and constraining the rights of governments to protect their own workers, environments, and currencies.
We hope that we were able to provide the best answer we could without sounding too pedantic (we want this show to be fun!). Of course, there were still some helpful critiques in the comments section and on twitter. Two of the most common general points were: 1. Why did we focus on Carter and the (New) Democrats without talking about the right-wing neoliberalism that rose up with Reagan and 2. How is talking about neoliberalism different from a general discussion of capitalism and its discontents?
On point 1, I might argue that the Democrats are the ones who should understand this history well, but who seem caught up in some strange historical amnesia. While conservatives today take pride in the Reagan revolution, many liberals seem to be unable to say what really happened during the Carter years. For many of them, neoliberalism is just some ahistorical slur popularized by so-called BernieBros over the last year or so. As Greg Lindsay reminded us over twitter, this was the sense of the term actively being pushed out by liberal beltway communications strategist Sally Albright a couple months ago:
Understanding this history — as well as the consequences for the Democrats in the most recent election — is important. As Corey Robin told us (in a later portion of our interview that we had to cut from the show due to length), our recent history may be the most clarifying moment in this story:
Here’s what I think is new. The neoliberals in the 1990s and after Obama seemed to have a recipe for political success. They seemed to understand how you could get Democrats and liberals elected. It was an illusion as we now know because the Democratic Party was falling apart under Barack Obama. But I think what this election has exposed is that they do not have a claim on political knowledge or political expertise. In fact, they are a disaster.
The job of the left right now is not only to make the arguments against neoliberalism on both moral and political grounds but also to say that this is no longer a recipe for governing from the left, this will not stop Trumpism … there is a relationship [between] this neoliberal corporate, centrist Democratic Party and this hard right, revanchist Republican Party, and these two are in a kind of dialogue, or a dance of death, and increasingly [a dance] of the dead.
If the liberals want this dance to end, they need to remember how it got started.
On point 2, I think this is a fair critique. When we start talking about everything that is privatized, commercialized, or technologized as somehow neoliberal, we lose the specificity of our critique. Yarden helpfully pointed us to a piece by Matthew Clair about the limits of what you can effectively call neoliberal. I think Clair makes a strong case for why we shouldn’t simplistically equate social media use, for instance, with neoliberalism:
One of the most promising and resonant contemporary examples of democratic subjectivity mediated through social media is the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. More than an example of the possibility of democracy in neoliberal times, BLM illustrates the counterintuitive role neoliberal rationality can play in bolstering democracy.
[…]
BLM activists on Twitter and other social media are certainly making a name for themselves individually. Self-expression and self-representation are BLM activists’ main tools. And despite the avowed leaderless-ness of the movement, certain activists’ voices are more influential than others, making the movement susceptible to the pitfalls of hierarchy, internal marginalization, and the many ostentations of a phenomenon one might term “protest-celebrity.” And yet, these neoliberal characteristics of the movement (bolstered by the technological processes of retweeting and trending) have also allowed for the dissemination of black revolutionary thought, the reinvigoration of black counter-publics, and at least nominal state accountability. And when it comes to a movement so centered on identity, self-representation of individual black activists is intimately tied to the larger representation of black bodies as entities that live and breathe outside of capital.
Yarden also urged us to be sensitive to the cracks in neoliberalism, that we should be just as aware of where the ideology isn’t present in our daily lives as to where it is. Still, he suggests, vis-a-vis historian and philosopher Philip Mirowski, that we may not be able to recognize neoliberalism’s influence in the same way that a fish is unaware of water.
It’s a point that builds off of David Foster Wallace’s famous 2005 commencement speech, “This Is Water,” which served as general call for mindfulness and compassion in our daily lives over a decade ago.
That talk makes a striking contrast now with Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel’s commencement speech 10 years later, where he tells students that they have found “something meaningful” only if they’ve made something other people want to buy.
If using the term neoliberalism is just a way of marking what has shifted in our culture — of where capitalism has not only become increasingly present but also increasingly felt — than why not use the new(ish) term? Even if it is quickly becoming overused and diffused in it’s meaning, it can still remind us that isn’t just the same old story. Something has changed — over the last 40 years as well as in the last 10 — and much more needs to be changed in response.
Talk of the Town: State Representative Mike Connolly Meets With the Boston Democratic Socialist of America
In a fitting end to this week, Conor and I went the annual meeting of the Boston Democratic Socialists of America and heard State Representative Mike Connolly talk about, well, what else? Neoliberalism.
Some might have been surprised to hear an elected Democrat use the word, but it shouldn’t be too shocking for anyone who has been following Connolly’s career. He’s quickly become one of the most inspiring progressive politicians in Mass, aligning himself with Senator Warren as well as Cambridge representative (and past OS guest) Nadeem Mazen as one of the few Democrats fighting to move the party to the left.
If you’ve been to a protest in Boston over the last year, you’ve probably seen him around, and he’s easy to spot: he’s a giant of a man who towers over the crowd. He’s particularly committed to street-level politics because that’s where he got his start: he likes to refer to himself as the first “Occupy” guy to get elected to the state house. After getting involved in Occupy Boston, he made his name in 2012 as “No Money Mike,” running as an independent trying to unseat 20-year incumbent Tim Toomey. He lost that round, but bounced back as Berniecrat in 2016.
Connolly still remains strongly committed to the use and abuse of money in electoral politics, but Connolly’s strongest talking points this time were on health care and the need to fight for single-payer. As we prep our own health care show, we may reach out to him for an interview sometime soon.
We also ran into former OS producer and dad-of-the-year Max Larkin at the event. His son Wyatt was there getting an early political education while also catching up on some Sesame Street clips (see, iPhones don’t necessarily equal neoliberalism!)
Listen: RIP Chuck Berry
I sort of had a this-is-water moment when I heard Chuck Berry died this weekend. He’s everywhere and nowhere in the music I listen to: his influence is omnipresent but rarely credited, and I almost never listen to his original recording. But when the news hit, I happened to be listening to a Modern Lovers record and heard Jonathan Richman giving his deadpan intro to this song: “Back in the U.S.A., by Chuck Berry, as done by the Modern Lovers.”
As many of the recent obits have made clear, pretty much every rock song should come with a similar disclaimer, as every bit of guitar-driven music released over the last 60 years owes something to his work. Berry says just as much himself in his reviews of punk records:
As John Lennon once put it: “If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.”
I’d recommend following the guitarist and music historian Elijah Wald on facebook just to read his posts on Berry’s songwriting.
Greg Kot’s obit in the Chicago Tribune also has some great analysis of Berry’s guitar playing and the ways in which he remade the modern band:
Berry developed a sound that synthesized genres and created the most popular template for rock ’n’ roll: a small, guitar-led combo performing original songs. A half-century before, country guitarists borrowed riffs and runs from blues performers. Berry flipped the formula; he was essentially a country-music guitarist who added blues inflections and a faster rhythm-and-blues beat. Plus, he played electric guitar, and the amplification enabled him to simulate the sound of two or three guitars playing at once. He thickened the sound by employing a two-string technique, sliding along the frets and bending them to create enormous power and drive. His tone evoked a trumpet.
& RIP Derek Walcott
Another major loss from this week: the Caribbean poet and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott passed away on Friday. Chris recorded his 2008 appearance at the Calabash literary festival in Jamaica, where he read his poetic attack on V.S. Naipul, “The Mongoose.” But there’s much more to the interview than mere polemic. Here’s Walcott’s meditation on his life and work:
I’m 78, right? I never thought I’d get here. I thought I was going to die at 30. I saw everything. I saw the gravestone, I saw the people coming to visit it. I saw the brackets and my name, “died at 25.” Oh, my God, fifty years later I’m still here… I’m going to be reading some stuff that — I say to myself: this is very simple, this is very ordinary. And I think I am delighting in that, not from any sense of resignation about anything. I just don’t like it now when any art makes a fuss. I don’t like any over-agitated poetry, because I know the technique, I know what people are doing. I know they’re going to be very bright. I don’t want to be bright. I don’t want to be intimidated when I read a poem, or challenged, or grabbed by the collar. I just want them to let me alone, please. Let me read the poem in peace, you know. And so I am coming to a point where even if it appears to be resignation and repetition, I don’t care as long as it’s clear, as long as what I am saying is at least honest emotionally.
You can listen to our recording of that Calabash conversation between Derek Walcott and the poet Kwame Dawes on our website.
Coming Up: Adam Curtis
We’re still finalizing our call date with the great documentarian Adam Curtis, but in the meantime, read this recent interview with him on self-expression, myth, and unreality:
I was reading the sociologist Max Weber the other day. Back in the 1920s, he was predicting that we would all be taken over in a bureaucratic age. It could be left wing or right wing, but we would enter into what he called an iron cage of rationality. It would be a wonderful world where everything was managed, everything was rationally done. But what you would lose was enchantment. It would become a disenchanted age. You would miss the sense that there are things that are mysterious and wonderful in their mysteriousness. He said, “The price you pay for going into the iron cage is you become disenchanted.” I sometimes wonder whether conspiracy theories are an attempt to re-enchant the world in a distorted way.
It’s like religion knocking on the door and trying to come back in a strange and distorted form. A sense of mystery beyond our own understanding of the world. If you ever talk to conspiracy theorists, that’s the sense you get from them. A sort of almost romantic sense of awe that there is this dark mysterious thing that a rational thing could never penetrate. That’s sort of religious.
Maybe what’s trying to get back into our world is enchantment, and the only way it can come back in is in these strange distorted ways.The downfall of capitalism is that it’s become appropriated by rational technocratic disenchantment. It’s become an iron cage. It’s trapped us. Some new form of enchanted myth is going to have to come back in.
Till next time,
Zach, Mary, and the OS gang
