When you look up neoliberalism on Wikipedia, it talks about Reagan, Thatcher, and Pinochet who are conservatives. But /r/neoliberal and Biden are neoliberals who are proud liberals

:confusion:

  • Knoll [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Is there a substantial difference between Reagan/Thatcher and Biden?

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Biden is a war hawk. Thatcher was to his left in global geopolitics, focusing the first tests of neoliberalism inwards and having very little interest in the current outward focus of neoliberals.

      Would Biden give HK back to China? Would he fuck.

      He is 100% to the right of Thatcher.

        • Awoo [she/her]
          ·
          edit-2
          3 years ago

          43 minutes later and I have only just realised you were making a sex joke.

      • glk [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Thatcher allowed occupants to buy the housing stock she privatised I can't see any contemporary leader in the west do that

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      The former is actively stripping the wire out of public institutions, while the latter might occasionally stumble into something not awful.

      • threshold [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        yeah sorry, i'm all for Biden bashing, but he is not Thatcher/Reagan domestically. However, Awoo correctly commented on his foreign policies which by virtue of being the leader of America makes him a noble peace prize winner (derogatory)

    • fairport [he/him,comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Thanks for writing this up, I really appreciate it.

      So basically both Reagan and Biden both neoliberal because they believe that free-market capitalism is the best economic system. But they disagree on cultural/identity issues and that's why they are in different parties (even though Biden used to agree with Reagan on many issues in the 70s and 80s like busing).

      But apparently, being a racist not in vogue in the Democratic party today so Biden has to play along so he doesn't alienate the voting base?

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      It goes further than upholding capitalism, neoliberalism does seek out deregulation, privatisation, and austerity as well (which has been sought by both "left" and "right" wing parties across much of the western hemisphere). Like you can uphold capitalism and have social democracy as well, neoliberalism is tearing away at that last bit of the social contract and deciding the market takes precedence over even minimal attempts to ease people's suffering.

  • Awoo [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Any moment now you're going to realise Biden is to the right of Thatcher.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Conservatism and liberalism overlap, especially in the modern political setup. They are not opposed to each other.

  • Ericthescruffy [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Both. Other people have given far more nuanced takes but the simplest way I think you can think of it is: Liberals and Conservatives oppose each other on social issues (lgbtq rights for example), but under both modern and classical definitions of these terms they all support free enterprise. Basically If you were going to do a venn diagram: liberalism, neoliberalism, and conservatism all overlap when it comes to the idea of private ownership. They have different nuances and viewpoints on specific tax rates, regulation, et al....but fundamentally they all accept private ownership of the means of production as a given.

  • black_mold_futures [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Liberal capitalists support the present state of the bourgeois ruling class. Defending property ownership is inherently conservative

  • SteamedHamberder [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    It can be either. The neolibs on the subreddit are going to skew liberal culturally, but as I learned on my neocon/neolib post, neocons like The Reagan/ Bush goons could certainly be considered economically neoliberal.

  • BelovedOldFriend [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    But /r/neoliberal and Biden are neoliberals who are proud liberals

    If this is your metric, there are (or were, last time I bothered to look) people with Thatcher and Reagan flairs in that subreddit, and fewer but still some who will say good things about Pinochet.