Qué es Neoliberalismo? » Su Definición ..
In recent years, there is a growing and widespread tendency to distort the real meaning of certain terms, often political or ideological. It is common to see that both in parliamentary debates and in heated discussions on Twitter, adjectives and disqualifications are used with the sole objective of disarming and nullifying the arguments of the adversary. In this way, anyone who contravenes our opinion is branded as a Bolivian fascist or communist. It is in this context that, from journalism, but also as a civic duty, it is necessary to provide light and clarity, fighting hoaxes and disinformation. Thus, a term with a long historical history is presented, which has seen the Second World War, the Cold War, the formation of the European Union (EU), the financial crisis of 2008 ... neoliberalism.
The origins of this economic and political current go back to the 1920s and 1930s. The free market system advocated by the liberals had failed in their response to the crises of these years and Keynesianism was configured as the hegemonic theory, after the New Deal success by refloating the American economy after the 1929 Crack.
In other words, the laissez faire of the liberals was considered an outdated macroeconomic vision and large economies like the United States, but also the Soviet or the German, each with its own style, were betting on a strong state intervention in the economy to resolve the contradictions of the free market system. In this way, classical liberalism saw the need to reinvent itself, in order not to perish.
Renewal of liberal postulates
Faced with this threat, the liberals withdraw and close ranks. These organize a colloquium in Paris in 1938, not very different from those of today in some universities, to exchange opinions and reflections in an environment of overflowing intelectual ’intelligentsia’ ’, the Walter Lippmann Colloquium. Leading exponents of liberal doctrine will come, such as the philosopher Louis Rougier (organizer), the German sociologist and economist Alexander Rüstow (coiner of the term neoliberalism) and Walter Lippmann himself, whose book The Good Society served as a pretext to organize this symposium and discern the future of liberalism; among many other personalities.
Contrary to what may be thought today, these intellectuals, possibly influenced by the achievements of Keynesian policies, agreed, to a greater or lesser extent, on the need to carry out a renewal of liberalism through the commitment to a ' 'Strong state', which would ensure free competition, and by moving away from laissez faire.
However, as in all currents, there was no homogeneous thought: Lippmann and Rougier defended greater state intervention and others, such as the Austrians Hayek and Mises, were reluctant to this proposal. This would mark the future of neoliberal economic schools. Even so, they all agreed on proposing a third way, in the face of the advance of socialism and fascism in Europe.
During the following years, these theories passed without penalty or glory on the political and intellectual plane. The end of the bloody Second World War in 1945 unleashed a new wave of interventionism to rebuild a ruined Europe. In 1944 Friedrich Von Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, which according to the British historian Perry Anderson will constitute the "founding letter of neoliberalism" and, 3 years later, in 1947, Hayek himself took the initiative and returned to summon the maximum exponents of the liberal renewal in Mont-Pèlerin.
They will repeat Hayek, Mises or Lippmann, who will be joined by new members such as the American economist Milton Friedman (adviser to neoconservative governments such as Ronald Reagan in the United States or Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom) or the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper and, for the first time, a woman, Veronica Wedgwood.
The relevance of this meeting resides in the foundation of the Mont-Pèlerin Society by these intellectuals who were protesting against the construction of the Social State in Western countries and the New Deal. Society was defined as multidisciplinary, with reflections and postulates, therefore, not only economic, but also philosophical and political. This association has avoided linking with political parties, but has played an important role in spreading neoliberal ideology.
Social mobilizations and construction of the Welfare State
However, in the 50s and 60s, neoliberal doctrine still has an almost non-existent influence on politics, but also on society and the popular classes. These are years of social democratic effervescence, in which the pillars of the Welfare State are built in western democracies. The State considerably increases its economic presence and control, in line with a society that conceives issues such as unemployment or poverty, problems of a collective nature. Meanwhile, neoliberal economists group their theses around two main groups: the Chicago School (Friedman) and the Austrian School (Hayek).
Thus, the population considers the State responsible for correcting these problems and mobilizes to achieve its objectives, so that governments gradually give in to their demands. This political trend will continue until the beginning of the 70s, when a new crisis will represent an unbeatable opportunity for neo-liberalism to gain a foothold in society and in the institutions of power.
In 1973, the United States and its allies in Western Europe entered a period of recession following the decision of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) not to supply them with more oil, on which they were highly dependent, on the occasion of their support for Israel. in the war dispute between it and the States of Syria and Egypt.
The most notable aspect of this recession was the phenomenon of stagflation, characterized by the coincidence of generalized price inflation with economic stagnation, which put Keynesian macroeconomic theses in check and provided a window of opportunity for heterodox theories. Neoliberalism took advantage of this situation and gradually positioned itself as the new hegemonic doctrine.
Implementation of neoliberal policies
In this context, neoliberalism would soon make its appearance on the political plane. On the one hand, Margaret Thatcher stands out, the famous Iron Lady, who became the first woman to preside over the United Kingdom in 1979 and who would have a great impact on British society; and on the other, crossing the pond, Ronald Reagan, a former actor, converted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party and who will represent American nationalism against the Soviet Union (USSR) at this time when he became president in 1981. Both Conservative in nature, they shared a political and economic vision of society and this would lead to an alignment between the two powers in terms of foreign policy.
Receiving financial advice from the so-called Chicago School (or Chicago Boys, with personalities like Friedman) and the Austrian School (with Hayek as one of the main exponents), they carried out a thorough deregulation of the financial sector (first cause of the financial crisis of 2008), vehemently attacked unions, reducing the bargaining power of workers, and carried out a tax reform in which indirect taxes were increased and direct taxes were reduced, causing a notable increase in inequality.
Thatcher took the neoliberal theses one step further, since while Reagan "betrayed" the neoliberal postulates by investing excessively in the military field (due to his disputes with the USSR), the Iron Lady dismantled the network of British public companies (a strategy that later part of the European right would copy, like José María Aznar in Spain, or even center-left parties), even considering the privatization of education.
In this way, the United Kingdom and the United States led the way to the rest of the world, with neoliberalism spreading throughout the globe (Europe, South America, Asia ...). However, the most daring neoliberal experiment was carried out a decade earlier in Chile, during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), supported by the United States as part of the Operation or Condor Plan. Long before Thatcher and Reagan occupied the front pages of the international press, in Chile a military dictatorship allowed the Chicago Boys to carry out their economic program without popular resistance. Hayek himself would argue that democracy was not an indispensable condition for neoliberalism, even more so if a democratic majority decided to go against "economic freedom".
Thus, after a sharp post-war recession, the South American country would experience great economic growth between 1977 and 1982, driven by the favorable international economic situation, described by Friedman as the Chile ’miracle of Chile’ ’. Despite this, foreign dependency would plummet the Chilean economy in '82 and neoliberal policies would condemn society to chronic inequality, from which it has not been possible to recover today.
Neoliberalism, more than an economic doctrine
After the neoliberal failures, the reader might think that it would be time, then, to change course and try other macroeconomic policies. Nothing is further from reality. The main cause of the survival of these theses is that the influence of neoliberalism was not only economic, but also social. From collectivism and solidarity, there has been an exacerbated individualization and a new conception of social problems, such as poverty or inequality, in which each person is exclusively responsible for them.
This phenomenon has been widely studied by intellectuals such as the English journalist Owen Jones, who in his book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, analyzes the situation of the working class in British post-tatcher society. Jones explains the consequences of Thatcher's legacy on British society. It denied the existence of a society and described the concept of clase ’class’ ’as a Marxist term. Under these ideas, lies the conception that the individual is fully responsible for his becoming and materializes in ideas such as the culture of effort or meritocracy.
Thus, a process of demonization of the working class has been carried out in which it is judged as lazy and sapphire, in which the hegemonic media have played a decisive role, showing as representative the chavs, in Spanish chonis or canis, of a whole social class. In this way, around 80% of the population is classified as a middle class, when in reality this percentage is only 50%, which shows a stigma towards the working class and the overestimation of its ability to rise socially, since a Meritocratic society is more a wish than a reality.
Likewise, the transformation of the neoliberal doctrine from heterodox to orthodox has closed the doors to alternative theories in economic science and has allowed the predominance of neoliberal economists in the discipline. In recent decades, most of the famous Nobel Prizes have been awarded to this type of economist (or, at the very least, liberals), demonstrating the coexistence between capital and high academic bodies.
In the social sphere, some economists, mostly men in expensive suits, have been increasing their presence in television gatherings to draw perfect curves to exemplify their success and spread the neoliberal theses. In this way, false economic premises have been spread among society, such as that the reduction of taxes increases state revenue or that private companies are more efficient than public companies, which have become incontestable truths, through these pseudoscientists. , which respond to very specific economic and personal interests.
Lately, they try to forecast the increase in unemployment with the increase in the minimum wage or the shortage of facemasks with the setting of a maximum price. And, although they do not stop making mistakes, it seems that the chewing gum, which represents their neoliberal fallacies, cannot be removed from the sole of the shoe. Without this social revolution and without the covert and continued dissemination of its theses in the media, neoliberalism could not have repeated a recipe in 2008.
With the power of the unions annihilated, a left lacking an alternative project after the shock of the fall of the USSR (1991) and a de-collectivized society, the neoliberals had a free hand to apply their "austerity" measures. Again, a distortion of another term, whose criticism has been led by Pepe Mujica (former Uruguayan president) as an example of personal austerity, in which neoliberal policies have been masked as austerity, which have caused a further increase in inequality in the last years.
In this case, former US President Barack Obama pursued relatively Keynesian policies after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers conglomerate in 2008, but the European Union (EU), under the strong leadership of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, applied the neoliberal recipe (of which now seems to have been forgotten), showing extreme concern for the debt of countries such as Portugal, Spain or Greece, but very little for the social reality of the popular classes in them. These policies, in addition to dire economic consequences, have triggered a widespread increase in Euroscepticism.
Social reaction and collective struggle
The COVID-19 Pandemic Is Exposing the Plague of Neoliberalism
Given this panorama, the coronavirus crisis represents another challenge for the political class. In countries like the US or Brazil, it seems that neoliberal theses will continue to play a central role, under the protection of far-rightists such as Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro, respectively. On the other hand, there are reasons to be optimistic, as the EU shows symptoms of having finally learned from its mistakes and has expressed its intention to inject money into the economies of the European countries most affected by the coronavirus and even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is committed to "spending, spending, spending", which would surely cause urticaria to Milton Friedman and must be causing it to Juan Ramón Rallo.
Even so, as has been pointed out throughout the article, the influence of neoliberalism is not only economic, but also social and political. A depoliticized society that is not capable of undertaking collective projects and struggles represents an easy prey for these doctrines and, therefore, will favor the enrichment of the upper classes, at the cost of the impoverishment of the working class.
Neoliberalism has revived in the collective imagination the ideas projected by pseudoscientific theories such as social Darwinism, with the premise that if people try hard they can get what they want, the poor is because he has not done enough and the problems Mental problems are solved by exercising and having positive thoughts.
An imaginary in which, when there is a crisis caused by the negligence of the economic and political elites, it is sold to ordinary people who "have lived beyond their means" and who have to "tighten their belts". At the same time, the vast majority of wealthy people have already been born wealthy or with class privileges and use their political influence and fiscal engineering to earn large dividends. In fact, the number of rich people increased during the past economic crisis.
Only from social activism and from collective awareness can the attacks of neoliberalism on the Welfare State and the growing inequality throughout the globe be confronted, as was demonstrated during the mobilizations spread almost all over the world between 2011 and 2014 (the 15-M in Spain, YoSoy132 in Mexico or OccupyWallStreet in the United States).
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