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I have noticed that people on HN tend to equate neoliberalism with classical liberalism, being clueless about the difference. Classical liberalism was a natura
by OO000oo 3y ago
I have noticed that people on HN tend to equate neoliberalism with classical liberalism, being clueless about the difference.
Classical liberalism was a naturalistic belief in market supremacy, understood to be a colossal failure by the middle of the 20th century. It was associated with the Gilded Age, which spawned the so-called Progressive Era, the ideological camps that followed, and the catastrophe that was the world wars.
Neoliberalism is what the capitalist class have insisted is a reformed liberalism, invincible to the problems that classical liberalism motivated.
It is a far more centralized, 'managed' market supremacy without the naturalistic perspective. Neoliberalism claims to acknowledge that markets are not natural and must be tightly managed by experts.
- Aerroon 3y agoI don't understand the classical liberalism part. How do a bunch of empires, that don't operate on market principles, going to war with each other show that classical liberalism is a 'colossal failure'?
- jowea 3y agoI believe the case against classical liberal economics has more to do with the economic crises of the late 19th century and specially the Great Depression than with the wars.
- churchill 3y agoNope. The Great Depression doesn't indict classical liberal economics - the Federal reserve is to blame for it! Between 1923 - 1927, just 10 years after the Fed was formed, it grew money supply 60%. When the bankers started calling in their loans, everyone went bust. That'd be equivalent to grow America's M2 ($20 trillion) by 12 trillion in just 4 years. 2019 to 2022 wasn't even that intense and, well, we can see how ugly things have gotten.
- derstander 3y ago> the Federal reserve is to blame for it! Between 1923 - 1927, just 10 years after the Fed was formed, it grew money supply 60%. I’m not an economist so I’m speaking from a position of ignorance here. But I thought the US was on gold standard during this time period. How was the Fed able to increase money supply by such a large % without e.g. the country mining a lot more gold? I tried a cursory search but was unable to find any answers.
- Geee 3y agoThat is exactly the problem. They issued more currency than there was gold in the reserve. I.e. they broke the gold standard.
- marcinzm 3y agoLooking at charts of the US gold supply it seems to have grown fairly significantly in the early 1900s up to the great depression, and seems to have been more than the 60% cited for money supply growth.
- churchill 3y agoThe same reason Nixon had to take the U.S off the gold standard in 1971 - the government printed more dollars than it had gold to back. Just because you have a gold standard won't stop politicians from printing cash when they need it. The only way to stop politicians meddling with money is to denationalize it and eliminate legal tender laws.
- marcinzm 3y agoLooking at charts the money supply mainly grew during WW1 and growth went back to the previous levels after WW1.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoBankers don't usually start calling in loans when there's too much money, but rather when there's too little. So I think your explanation needs a few more causal steps.
- cbau 3y agoNot an expert, but if you read any of Keynes, he's basically critiquing classical economics and pointing out some of the ways it fails to explain economic cycles, hence the invention of macroeconomics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employment,_Interest_and_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employme...
- dantheman 3y agoKeynes was always wrong, and is an excuse for governments to spend money. Stagflation...
- churchill 3y agoKeynes has to be THE most confusing and self-contradictory personality in orthodox economics. He had no original insights and the only reason political elites took a liking to him was because he gave them a logical, complicated copout for money printer to go brrrrrrr. He frequently changed his theories and ideas for political expediency and the idea that modern 'economists' take his teaching as gospel truth is just sad. Murray Rothbard wrote an entire profile on the man [0] and I'd suggest anybody taking a stab at heterodox economics to read it. [0]: https://mises.org/library/keynes-man-1 https://mises.org/library/keynes-man-1
- morelisp 3y ago> frequently changed his theories and ideas for political expediency... Murray Rothbard Man if there was ever a pot for a kettle...
- roenxi 3y agoWhen dealing with Marxist or Keynsians (or modern monetary theorists for that matter) it is a safe bet that the people implementing the policies haven't read and don't intend to follow the theory. So I am simultaneously shy of saying "Kaynes was wrong" and confident that anyone claiming "Kaynes was right and we must do suchandsuch!" is saying the wrong thing. Ditto the other theories.
- 3y ago
- jay_kyburz 3y agoI assumed the OP was saying The Great Depression led to WW2
- dauertewigkeit 3y agoRead on the rise of fascism in Italy. It had a lot to do with discontent with liberalism at the time.
- hef19898 3y agoAnd we are reaching (?) a similar point all over the democratic countries right now again.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoit was more than just a discontent with liberalism, it was also discontent with communism -- an attempt to find a 3rd way / fuse them. the ruthless capitalist approach led to the development of communism as a reaction. but communism had its own faults and, to many, egregious failures as well. Mussolini -- who was literally the editor of a socialist newspaper -- grew disillusioned with socialism, and proposed a 3rd way by mixing chunks of capitalism that he liked with the chunks of communism that he liked, as well as a good healthy dose of machismo and nationalism to paper over the gaps. similar approaches were taken in Germany, and there was a Nationalist (right wing) Workers Party (left wing) called the NSDAP that tried to do the same thing. Instead of pure corporatism they made it ethnic, but had vaguely similar approaches to corporations and the state, which often meant whatever they felt like at the time.
- OO000oo 3y agoGermany and Britain and France and Austria were all very much capitalist countries.
- TheGigaChad 3y ago[dead]
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoSargon of Akkad has described himself as a "classical liberal": https://youtube.com/@SargonofAkkad https://youtube.com/@SargonofAkkad In fact, his channel profile now simply says "English liberal." Wikipedia begs to differ with all that...
- brigandish 3y ago[flagged]
- pharmakom 3y ago"classic liberal" was claimed by the alt right and doesn't mean what it used to mean in those contexts.
- roenxi 3y agoWasn't there a big move to tearing down [0] statues [1] because the classical liberals [2] were considered monsters from a different era? Classical liberalism does really poorly under the current progressive zeitgeist and would likely and ironically be labelled "racist white man logic". The strongest thing protecting the classic liberal thinkers from being tarred and feathered is nobody knows who they are. I don't think the alt right can be said to have "claimed" it as much as the left is rejecting it and there is no other home in a 2-faction classification. [0] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/17/statue-removed-france-voltaire-397405 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/17/statue-removed-fran... Note the name Voltaire [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson#Memorials_and_honors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson#Memorials_and... Note the name Jefferson. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism#Notable_thinkers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism#Notable_t... Note the names Jefferson, Voltaire.
- namdnay 3y agoa bunch of overzealous students putting paint on one statue of voltaire is hardly a "big move".. voltaire, his ideas and his works are still at the centre of french culture, politics and curricula
- ETH_start 3y ago[flagged]
- bombolo 3y agoI guess you also deny this happened :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression Also, china isn't liberal, that's why it does so well. They also don't have intellectual property.
- ur-whale 3y ago> They also don't have intellectual property. You say it like it's a bad thing? How quaint.
- bombolo 3y agoHow quaint indeed that you delude yourself of establishing i said it as a bad thing.
- ETH_start 3y ago>china isn't liberal, that's why it does so well The point is, China's economic development massively accelerated once it massively moved toward the direction of market economies. They still have significant centralization, which is why they will likely reach a ceiling on their productivity, after which growth will be much more tepid, but the point stands.
- bombolo 3y ago> They still have significant centralization, which is why they will likely reach a ceiling on their productivity Which got them where they are, you mean. But you seem to want to promote liberal ideology regardless of merits.
- ETH_start 3y agoIt seems much more likely that they were benefiting from the catch up factor, as all the low-hanging fruit for raising productivity could be picked in the wake of a large scale roll back of communist restrictions that had been in place for 30 years.
- astrange 3y agoNeoliberalism doesn't exist and is just a word academics use to describe anything they don't like.
- antupis 3y agoIt actually exists some countries like Estonia https://www.cato.org/policy-report/july/august-2006/mart-laar-receives-milton-friedman-prize# https://www.cato.org/policy-report/july/august-2006/mart-laa... .