I am personally for radical direct democracy, nothing less, nothing more, because I view the political as trumping the economic, feel free to purge me once the revolution is there but I am interested if there are other “alternative” takes

  • sagarmatha [none/use name]
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    4 years ago

    neoliberalism is the epitome of politics over the economy since it doesn’t make sense for the continuity of either the institutions or the economy, in Europe for exemple, but the whole political class now was in school in the 90s and so internalized austerity and personal responsibility into its worldview, I do look at data and history, just beyond a sole economic or materialist view

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]
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      4 years ago

      Incorrect, neoliberalism as a historical phenomenon is the triumph of capital mobility over the constraining national politics of the westphalian nation-states, it is capital economism bursting out like a Xenomorph to devour all political and social barriers to the accumulation of capital, neoliberalism was born in the midst of the capital strikes of the 70's and only fully realized politically half a decade later in the electoral victories of Thatcher and Reagan

      Again your political institutions stood no chance when the political economy underlying it revolted against the social and political assumptions of said institutions

      • sagarmatha [none/use name]
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        4 years ago

        that’s your opinion, its reproduction is clearly through institutional biases and an avowed powerlessness of the state, yes it coincides with capital, through ideology as much as material conditions in the past, and now almost solely as ideology, neoliberalism in Germany, France or Spain is not a necessity for capital since government contracts are their own incentive to keep a strong state and taxation, it is will by ideologues to have reality conform to their neat ideas about the world, same with the ecb who doesn’t want inflation, it is not because of any material circumstance, it is just a bias towards the monetary doctrine borne out of, again, their education, and so the political, since it is not the sole capitalist doctrine

        • PaulWall [he/him]
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          4 years ago

          This is almost incomprehensible compared to the political economy over the political thesis.

          • sagarmatha [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            in all honesty i do believe that every single part of the human system matters, but that for political purposes the political takes precedence or at least can, I am definitely not just a materialist though since i consider ideas and most importantly institutions, if equal weight, it is messy because it is fragmented and would take a full novel or more to outline everything

            • p_sharikov [he/him]
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              4 years ago

              If ideas are so central to the rise of neoliberalism, why was it implemented more or less simultaneously in multiple ideologically independent regions of the world?

              • sagarmatha [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                what do you mean ideologically independent? if you believe in the class analysis no ideology of the top is independent and if you look at history US-EU ties plus american advisers in south america and the former ussr territory, plus the hegemony of the us in media, plus the predominance of neolibs in the scientific publications of the time, which later seeped into the higher education are clear explanations

        • CyborgMarx [any, any]
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          4 years ago

          Its reproduction is sustained by a global investor class that realize its goals thru the institutions of those countries, this is what I mean when I claim modernists have no conception of history or in this case class, instead of recognizing the material incentives of a CLASS of people who wish to preserve their social position against the historical pressures of socialist movements, you instead mystify the education of government technocrats, mistaking selection pressures in political organization for determining the causation of neoliberalism

          Ideology is not sustained in a vacuum of ideas, and the only "necessity" capital is motivated by is unrestrained accumulation of more capital, an internal logic that contradicts the idealistic narrative of class collaboration you've been alluding to

          • sagarmatha [none/use name]
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            4 years ago

            believe what you want, not everything is around class, and certainly goal realization, since the ideology goes against the local bourgeois, and if you give some if the what about the larger class, that’s the point, it might have been, on neoliberalism, at some point, driven by class antagonism but it is now just pure ideology who seeped internationally, regardless of material conditions, we are not going into a service and idea economy for nothing, the immaterial (not in the internet sense) infrastructure affects us as much, and I would argue more, than the material conditions

            • CyborgMarx [any, any]
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              4 years ago

              The material resources of the local bourgeois can not match that of the national and global investor class which is why the dominant ideology reflects the interests of the largest capitalist blocs, which again follows from the internal logic of capitalism, the largest accumulators determine the shape and expression of the dominant political philosophy and to claim neoliberal ideology is no longer concerned with class antagonism is genuinely one the most bizarre statements I've read in a while, neoliberal ideology is class antagonism made manifest, it's an utter rejection of social democratic class collaboration and an expression of the will of the capitalists to dominate the global working class, I'm starting to suspect you don't really have a coherent grasp on the terms you're using: Just what do words like class, ideology, and capitalism actually mean to you?

              we are not going into a service and idea economy for nothing, the immaterial (not in the internet sense) infrastructure affects us as much, and I would argue more, than the material conditions

              We're not going into an "idea" economy we're heading into a DATA economy where capitalist blocs compete for collective organizational data to undermine both competitors and national labor rights, it's the evolution of neoliberalism into its digitalist stage, its highest form

              • sagarmatha [none/use name]
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                4 years ago

                you’re missing the point and reiterating the same point which again, in practice, doesn’t pan out, neoliberalism is not effective for capitalism ie continued accumulation of surplus, but the leaders’ ideology, ie their belief there is no other reasonable way, means that they continue policies who do not benefit anyone, even more for the ecb monetarism, as proven with covid and earlier qe, capitalists prefer stimulus, it just isn’t in the central bankers’ realm of possibility

                • CyborgMarx [any, any]
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                  4 years ago

                  neoliberalism is not effective for capitalism ie continued accumulation of surplus

                  Legit, what world are you living in?

                  capitalists prefer stimulus

                  Capitalists do not "prefer" stimulus, they see it as a market disruption that obfuscates private sector price signals, in many ways they're right, you need to read some Michał Kalecki

                  • sagarmatha [none/use name]
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                    4 years ago

                    i do not and no they don’t, they don’t fing care about price signals, not even about selling anything in the first place, like stock buybacks, there are plenty of examples that they are caring about narrower and narrower metrics further away from reality, for which stimulus do wonder or government contracts for that matter, I AM NOT talking from an american perspective, but for the eurozone for example my points are valid, i already said that neoliberalism was initiated (in the us) by materialist conditions, every metric is shit, there is stagnation and that’s neoliberalism they are injecting everywhere