[Peace-discuss] a possible flier for the next Main Event

[C. G. Estabrook]

Jenifer Cartwright wrote:
> ...how on earth can Milton Friedman be considered "liberal" anything...?


Because he preached the virtues of the "*free* market."

    DON PEDRO. Why, then are you no maiden. Leonato,
    I am sorry you must hear: upon mine honor,
    Myself, my brother and this grieved count
    Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night
    Talk with a ruffian at her chamber-window
    Who hath indeed, most like a *liberal* villain,
    Confessed the vile encounters they have had
    A thousand times in secret.
       --Much Ado about Nothing 4.1

Neoliberal policies are designed to transfer control of the economy from the
government to the "private sector" (i.e., wealthy individuals and corporations).
That's the vile encounter at the heart of what the liberal villain Friedman did
(but hardly in secret: he was an accomplished publicist).  His work was a
paradigm case of what neoliberalism means. (Brother, can you paradigm?)

The problem is the protean word "liberal," from the Latin for "free," which
takes on a political meaning in the 18th century in the struggles for freedom
(and the reflection on them) from state feudalism, as in the French Revolution.

The problem was that freeing people from pre-capitalist political control was
shortly to subject them to (often greater) control by the class of owners, to
whom they must now sell their labor.  Paradoxically, "liberalism" came in 19th
century English (as in "Manchester Liberalism") to mean the freedom of the
owners to do what they wanted with their money, namely subjugate the workers.

(That paradox BTW may justify a comment by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai [d. 1976]:
asked about the historical effect of the 1789 French Revolution, he is said to
have replied, "Too soon to tell.")

"Neoliberalism" is the new (late 20th century) form of that 19th century
meaning, which Friedman represents.  McChesney describes it nicely in the 1999 
article that I quoted:

    "Neoliberalism is the defining political economic paradigm of our time - it 
refers to the policies and processes whereby a relative handful of private 
interests are permitted to control as much as possible of social life in order 
to maximize their personal profit. Associated initially with Reagan and 
Thatcher, neoliberalism has [since the 1970s] been the dominant global political 
economic trend adopted by political parties of the center, much of the 
traditional left, and the right. These parties and the policies they enact 
represent the immediate interests of extremely wealthy investors and less than 
one thousand large corporations.

    "Aside from some academics and members of the business community, the term
neoliberalism is largely unknown and unused by the public at large, especially
in the United States. There, to the contrary, neoliberal initiatives are
characterized as free market policies that encourage private enterprise and
consumer choice, reward personal responsibility and entrepreneurial initiative,
and undermine the dead hand of the incompetent, bureaucratic, and parasitic
government, which can never do good (even when well intentioned, which it rarely
is). A generation of corporate-financed public relations efforts has given these
terms and ideas a near-sacred aura. As a result, these phrases and the claims
they imply rarely require empirical defense, and are invoked to rationalize
anything from lowering taxes on the wealthy and scrapping environmental
regulations to dismantling public education and social welfare programs. Indeed,
any activity that might interfere with corporate domination of society is
automatically suspect because it would impede the workings of the free market,
which is advanced as the only rational, fair, and democratic allocator of goods
and services. At their most eloquent, proponents of neoliberalism sound as if
they are doing poor people, the environment, and everybody else a tremendous
service as they enact policies on behalf of the wealthy few."

--CGE