NEO-LIBERALISM NEEDS TO DIE, AND QUICKLY.

[VIK LEWA]

DEATH BY NEO-LIBERALISM

Schoch (2006) may well be right to say that we cannot find happiness in isolation, and it is fair to say that happiness, for all its connotations of blissful epiphany, is a rather cautious, pragmatic and materialistic affair. It must lie within our reach and fall within the span of our days. Yet, for the pursuit of happiness to remain free and open, it, he rightly tells us, cannot be contingent on the acquisition of esoteric knowledge or the profession of certain beliefs.

When the right to find happiness comes with conditions—Yes, you can be happy, but only if ...—it certainly ceases to be a right, and it becomes, instead, a privilege. And like all grants, privileges, powers, favors, monopolies, and immunities, its conferral (and repeal) depends on someone else's authority. It is indeed a perversion and an "abomination" of that right and an offense against human dignity to attach too many strings to the offer of happiness. It actually constitutes a crime against truth and a no-holds-barred, full-frontal assault on freedom and happiness, pure and simple. This is arguably about radical exploitation and destruction, and we should all know by now that the ugly face of neo-liberalism, as described in Little (2019), entails the following: massive poverty and exclusion, exploitation, immiseration, ecological destruction, the perpetuation of a wide range of oppressive and destructive relations, and permanent emergency among other things. We get the brunt of what this really means and implies and entails. Arguably, it is an exploitation of the vulnerability of the flesh and a mere political tool to accomplish political and ideological ends. Even though explaining perversion in terms of biology seems obvious, "perversion," the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states, is opposed not only to "natural", but also to "normal", and the natural and the normal do not fully overlap.

Well, Neoliberalism's end cannot come soon enough. As if it wasn't clear enough or bad enough. It should go without saying by now. And just about everyone should know by now. It should go without saying, of course, that it, as described in Little (2019), means, and can only mean, massive poverty and exclusion, exploitation, immiseration, ecological destruction, the perpetuation of a wide range of oppressive and destructive relations, and permanent emergency among other things.

What It Really Is

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The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism:
The Collapse of an Economic Order?

Humiliation, Degradation, Dehumanization:
Human Dignity Violated

[VIK LEWA]

The End of 'Zombie Neoliberalism'?

Today, nearly 15 years after the 2008 crash, the long reign of “zombie neoliberalism” is finally ending. Or so the historians Yakov Feygin and Nils Gilman recently argued in a widely discussed essay for Noema magazine. In Feygin and Gilman’s account, the past few years have led a motley crew of constituencies to embrace big(ger) government. The pandemic alerted national-security hawks to the perils of global supply chains; in an emergency, nations would prioritize their own resource needs over those of trade partners. Outsourcing production of critical inputs to U.S. adversaries like China might maximize profits. But it did so at the cost of America’s self-sufficiency. Thus, many hawks reasoned, the federal government would need to take the reins and ensure that the U.S. could make the things it absolutely needed here at home — or, at the very least, within the borders of close allies. Idiosyncratic conservatives, meanwhile, came to believe that free trade and low wages were antithetical to their social politics. Traditional family structures required a sole male breadwinner whose labors enabled his wife to dedicate herself to child-rearing. And sole male breadwinners require high wages (ideally in masculine-coded employment). Thus, after Trump rhetorically disavowed free trade and championed government support for domestic manufacturing, some social conservatives embraced a Hamiltonian vision of state-led development.