Slobodian talked about the the original neoliberals as being basically dominated by the ideology “The economic cannot ever be allowed to become political.“ That was shaped by their experience in the Austro-hungarian empire and it’s experiences with violent nationalism, but also obviously opposes socialism and has been pointed out, they believed that facsism “saved civilization“ from socialism. In either case though, this was bad, the path to endless conflict according to the original neoliberals.
The Austrian empire did this through monarchy, there was no voting on the monarch and so he could theoretically make decisions without popular input. This is what I mean when I said they wanted to re-create the Austrian empire.
I described the two ideologies that were bent in support of this as “clintonianism”, based on a specific utilitarian interpretation, and “libertarianism,“ based on commitment to property rights. Clintonianism can get some support among the poor and public-spirited people because it promises to improve their lot. Libertarianism can get some support among the moderately rich because they avoid taxes and regulations.
Both have some conflict with neoliberalism though, clintonianism still leaves the economy as somewhat political and libertarianism leaves the door open to total destabilization. But they’re good enough.
That is why though support of the pure-neoliberal position though is only going to found among the elite though, top level state officials and the ultra-wealthy. It’s a list of things you either can’t have or can’t do, it want a strong state to keep peace that does not redistribute wealth. That is why we are less familiar with this idea and more familiar with the other two sets of ideas, and that is why they are still important to the neoliberal project.
discoursedrome: what I find confusing about this line as I’ve encountered it is why they’re so neurotically hateful of bread and circuses/social safety net stuff instead of, like, viewing it as an investment in people not getting mad and killing you
I think this is a key point, neoliberals are not so much opposed to bread and circuses as they are to the idea that the public can get bread and circuses if they ask for them. If they’re provided by a ruler out of beneficence then it’s tolerable, but if the people can just ask for stuff that’s the path to a death spiral of increasing demands. That’s where they can differ with libertarians.
Interesting; I might need to read this.
It’s perplexing to me because the way I conceptualize it is that all rulerships function by some kind of majority consent, since that’s the only place it could possibly come from, and you can do various stuff to insulate the rulership against dissent but there’s still some kind of underlying economics of “the more you piss people off the more likely your regime is to explode”. Like, it always seems to me that if you’re predisposed to thinking of things economically then it makes more sense to think of it in the sense that people can always make efficacious demands, you can’t stop them, but you can adjust the cost of making efficacious demands in various ways to make it unlikely that they will. And there have to be various points where “give in to some of the demands” is the most cost-effective way to do that, but it feels like oftentimes neoliberal types rocket way past that point and end up reaping the whirlwind.
It is possible to set up a regime where the practical rule is “there is no political action you can take that will have any influence, the only way to resist the government’s demands involves the kind of rebellion that will completely destroy you and everything you care about.” And, yes, technically it is still possible to make efficacious demands under such a regime – you can sign up to destroy yourself and everything you care about, just to strike a blow, and if you’re mad enough maybe you will – but it is strategically reasonable for the government to say “if we set things up such that this is the tradeoff, not many people will want to make it.”
Which frankly sounds like a better deal, overall, than “we have to change our policies to thwart the people asking for bread and circuses just to show that we’re not giving in to them.”