Political Memes

In contrast, neoliberalism is sometimes constructed as an ideological antagonist of both critical theorists and progressive liberal identities. Marxist scholars conceptualize neoliberalism as a particular historical regime of capitalism, more corrosive and iniquitous than the “embedded liberalism” of the post-war era in Europe and the United States. Similarly, socially progressive liberals criticize neoliberalism for subordinating public life to market forces and for displacing the welfare state commitments of the Keynesian era. Some on the political left collapse the distinction between liberalism and neoliberalism, seeing them as simply two ways of ideologically justifying capitalist rule. Conversely, some of those most likely to be identified as neoliberals are motivated by a deep hostility to political liberals, particularly in right-wing political discourses where liberal operates as code for left-liberal, even socialist, values that are opposed to a free market identity.

• Liberalism and Neoliberalism

Additional:

• How the Democrats Traded the New Deal for Neoliberalism

An alternative to both neoclassical and Keynesian explanations and solutions for capitalist crises emanates from the Marxian tradition. Its explanation stresses neither what Keynesians focus on (destabilizing maneuvers by self-seeking individual consumers, producers, merchants, and banks facing an inherently uncertain economy and/or possessing asymmetrical information in regard to markets) nor what neoclassicists pinpoint (market-destabilizing concentrations of private power by market participants and/or public power by the state). Rather, Marxian theory pursues the connections between capitalism's crises and its distinctive class structure (its particular juxtaposition of capitalists appropriating and distributing the surpluses workers produce). We propose to show these connections in the rest of this paper. On that basis, Marxian theory reaches very different conclusions from those of the neoclassical and Keynesian economists. Briefly, durable solutions to capitalist crises require, in the Marxian view, transition to a different class structure. That is because capitalism's class structure has so systematically and repeatedly contributed to crises in both the regulated and deregulated forms of capitalism. That is why Marxian theory does not share the fundamental conservatism of both neoclassical and Keynesian economics vis-à-vis capitalism.

• A Marxist explanation of the crisis

Additional:

• Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, Communism and Revolutions

• Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism