Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order | Gary Gerstle
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
- In Episode 346 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge, Gary Gerstle. Dr. Gerstle is the author and editor of more than ten books, including the “Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order,” and his most recent, “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order,” which was chosen as a Best Book of 2022 by the Financial Times and Prospect Magazine.
Gerstle and Kofinas spend the first hour of their conversation discussing the last one hundred years of American history, which spans two political orders-that of the New Deal Order, which ascends in the early 1930s and comes apart in the mid-to-late 1970s and the Neoliberal Order, which begins its rise in the late 1970s-to-early-80s and starts to disintegrate in the mid-2010s during Obama’s second term in office and the election of Donald Trump.
The second hour of their conversation is devoted exclusively to understanding the rise and decline of the Neoliberal Order and how the excesses of that period have created the conditions for the political, economic, and social crises that are currently gripping the nation. Gerstle and Kofinas also speculate about what may come out of this period, what a new order could look like, what the various factions are that will drive it forward, and what policy ideas, priorities, and ideological frameworks are likely to animate it.
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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas
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Episode Recorded on 12/26/2023
Wow. This was an eduction in history and economics all rolled into one. Great questions and fascinating answers. We would not get a conversation like this on mainstream tv. Thanks.
What people understood in the late 19th and early 20th century was that the rise of the capitalists was tantamount to the rise of the Kings of the old world.
This title is misleading.The people want to dismantle Neolbieralsim but the Neoliberal order hasn't fallen at all, its grip on our politicians is as strong as ever.
Only if you count Trump as one of them?
you would have thought. That was the neoliberal bubble in 2008 in the Great Recession. It does need to. But what replaces it. Is the question.
I think that Gerstle's idea of 'political order' is useful when considering winning-streak, or dynasty dynamics. So his description of the New Deal sense of dynasty, winning seven out of nine presidential elections, and their dynasty even influencing policies undertaken by the Republicans etc. is pretty good. But I don't think he did a good job of conceptualizing the genealogy or evolution of the political concepts and theoretical perspectives themselves. For example, you could apply the exact same set of succession dynamics in the period prior to Gerstle's analysis: i.e. the Progressive Era (which championed welfare) followed by the New Era which championed a hallowing of the welfare state. State minimalism (the state's role is to enable open economies and social duties are consigned to private industry) vs welfare state (the state's role is to ensure civic equality and that inherently means limiting free market dynamics which tends towards inequality, winner-takes-all etc.) These are perennial ideas and can be traced back much much further.
Neoliberalism was a response to labor having the whip hand with regards to the economy post WWII. The New Deal basically introduced Keynesianism on steroids where full employment was the gov't policy going fwd. This was made through a giant expansion of the administrative state, state projects and orgs (TVA - Tennessee Valley Authority being the largest), etc to ensure Americans got back to work following the Great Depression and to ensure the strength of the US post WWII when soldiers were coming back from war. The problem with this policy is that over time it produces immense inflation because full employment in a semi-closed / protectionist / national economy means price increases are bounded by national economic borders and labor and wage demands now have high bargaining power which capitalists must take from profits in order to appease. The problem with this is that without profit, there is no incentive for future investment thus capital doesn't want to risk future projects with limited returns.
What this man in the interview is saying is that it started in the Reagan Revolution but it was actually Volker's Fed who initiated neoliberalism as a corrective measure in order to ensure the US and capitalism itself wasn't on the brink of collapse when he jacked up interest rates. People talk about interest rates are high today but it was up to 24% in the 70s under Volker. So in order to address such insurmountable inflation, neoliberalism was introduced which brought with it deregulation, opening borders to capital movement (followed by opening borders to labor and immigration/wage reduction policy), financialization of the economy, globalized supply chains (thank Nixon and the opening of China), etc. If you look at charts, the productivity growth started climbing but wages became stagnant because global labor now became the thing and capital could move out of its national boundaries and move all across the world looking for the lowest wage and highest return. The hollowing out of the industrial base was a result and over time this lead to the decline of major Rust Belt cities (Detroit, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc) and much of the response was what would be called the MAGA Trump shock in reaction.
To doh917 that was ɓig mouthful there,and pretty much explained the last hundred years to perfection of how many things happened and why and how they have become economicly dependant on each other to work this system how you described. It could be much worse in some ways and better in others,let's keep tweeking it to see what else we come up with.😅😊
Flamin' excellent! This deserves a worldwide screening & audience. 👍🤔 ( Green Fire UK ) 🌈🦉
Incredible conversation Ty for hosting this guest - I will definitely read his book 📕
Great stuff, thanks again!
Remarkable chat.
So good, I listened to it a 2nd time. It was on the 2nd pass I suddenly recognized that I had an arguably better insight into post 1960s social change than offered by either of these guys.
Clinton and Reagan and Bush and Obama and Biden all behaved as a function of one omnipotent and primal drive that had nothing to do with cultural currents or social change.
These leaders all labored daily to satisfy one thing.....greed. Overlooking or not mentioning that architecture for their administrations renders these insights...hmmm.....pointless.
Trump? Incoherent mostly and then selfish.
OK. Biden is pretty much the same as Trump.
What fall? We have no healthcare, no welfare system, no safety net, no free college, poor public transportation, poor public housing and private banks. It looks alive and well to me.
Then why do thousands of people legal & illegal come to the USA every month. They ain't going to China or Russia!
And yet, with " No healthcare" we have one of the longest natural life spans IN THE WORLLD! Go get a job!
@@gregorybrennan8539 “we are still neoliberal but actually it’s good!!!”
@@gregorybrennan8539life expectancy and QoL is america is falling YoY. So no, it's not working and fast getting worse.
@@ai_serf welfare spending is also rising YoY, so that cannot be the problem. I heard America already spends as much on public healthcare per person as some Western European countries.
WOW! Amazing. Could be one of the best HF episodes ever. Keep it up man
Read Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order and the recent book on the neoliberal order for a PhD reading list on modern American history. Definitely recommend reading both. I agree with Demetri that the Neoliberal order ends with what feels like an unnecessary injection of contemporary "liberal" political analysis but it can be excused in light of the quality analysis throughout.
Where can we find the second part?
The quadrupling of oil prices resulting from the You Kippur war in October 1973, was in fact engineered in March of the same year where the leaked meeting minutes called for a 400% spike in oil prices, and when the Shaw of Iran went higher, the King of Saudi Arabia sent his oil minister to ask the Shaw what he was doing? The answer was; "If his excellency wants an answer to this question he will need to fly to Washington and ask Henry Kissinger. In short Kissinger was the architect driving the oil price 4 fold to create a post Bretton woods "Petro Dollar"
The Johnson Administration wasn't an instance of overreach. The Civil Rights movement, and the New Left threatened the empire and pointed to a more radically democratic form of democratic capitalism. The loss in Vietnam, the destruction of the Jim Crow south and the emergence of stagflation in the 1970s generated a political reconfiguration in the United States. This emerging situation provided the elite and the oligarchy took advantage of the situation to push for the completion of a maximalist program we now call Neoliberalism.
Thank you❣️🕊️
A fascinating discussion!
Good stuff this is really interesting 😊
Superb
Outstanding weave of concepts, a model of how history should be taught. Most historical discussions do not involve the elephant in the room aka communism
Man it would be nice to have less government and a government of the people...
That would be Socialism. The rule of the working class or the majority of people rather than the elite.
Workers MUST own and control the means of production. Anything less is slavery.
Makes me wonder about the term 'Military-Industrial' in terms of shifting political order. Is 'military' then more 'New Deal', being cyclically shifted by the needs of the 'industrial', which favors the 'neoliberal?' If so, then both ends are not against the sway of central tyranny. Perhaps, as such, they appear to resonate and sustain a 'New World' order? The timelines seem supportive.
Very important and interesting subject but uninspired delivery.
Gerstle was surprised by Brexit and Trump and, avoiding the "Deplorable" explanation, correctly IMO identifies the problem.
- Traditional liberalism: government serving the people and constraining capitalism.
- Neo-liberalism: government serving capitalism and constraining the people.
Trouble was, the government grew and accrued more power to itself in both roles.
That's the problem that misteriously everyone ignore
Demetri has another good podcast with Matt Stoller (author of Goliath). That podcast pairs well with Gerstle's podcast.
divine central authority for nations
Got to remember the new deal was a 10 year debacle that only ended with the war.
How does the earned income tax credit fit into the liberal versus neo-liberal orders? Its goal seems to be to give everyone a fair income for their work, but it is supported by many neo-liberal advocates.
It is an economic benefit collected after the fact, when income tax returns are filed, to make up for a family's earnings which fall beneath a certain congressionally specified level...I would call it Neoliberal in a sense that the money sent to the qualifying working family, stress "earned income credit" comes from the public, and thus is a subsidy to the low wages, for example that the private sector service sector pays...and thus releaves them and the nation of paying better wages, granting child care leave, health insurance ...and of course it became popular with both paries at the nadir of union power and a decades long running shrinking share of the national wage pie by workers, and no national mimimum wage increases to keep up with inflation or productivity gains. What I have just added is of course largely missing from mainstream media discussions of the economy, and the type of center right orientation you find on CNN in matters of political economy. Is it an unfair subsidy to employers who don't pay enough? I lean that way in interpretation.
@@williamneil8862 Without the EITC, would these low wage jobs be equally low wage anyways? If so, then the tax credit isn't allowing companies to pay low wages because they would pay low wages anyways.
I think the experience since Covid in the hospitality sector indicates that wages rose because workers weren't coming back for both low pay and high medical risks...how many recipients of EITC that will push off the eligibilty thresholds I don't know. I don't know that the EITC is the determining factor in the great imbalance in income and wealth that Times magazine covered via the Rand Study in Sept of 2020, the transfer upwards to the top 10% of some $51 Trillion dollars from 1975-2018...but combined with Union busting and Union self-destruction, no serious effort to keep the national minimum wage in alignment either with inflation or productivity gains, the imbalance in pay between CEO's and line workers...there was no national force, ideological or practically in capitalism to pull wages up so government stepped in where the private sector failed. @@lonecandle5786
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results...unless you call yourself a neoliberal 😂!!
And of course, hardly even a reference to imperialism. Just "the threat of communism" (in other countries!).
The speaker seems to conflate communists and socialists as being essentially identical. This is not true, was not true in the early 20th century, is not true now. In fact, in the pre WW2 era, communists and socialists in Europe and America were often at odds with each other: they disagreed strongly about many things. Socialist and communist is not identical by any means
Ernest Hemingway
58:28
The one main reason most bureaucrats get into politics is to spend more money we dont really have on more things we don't really need and feel they did something heroically important.😅😊
tectonic events, and you start at 2016?!? THE event was Kiev 2014. One can argue the other two are aftershocks of Ukraine.
You know this dude was ready to shake the pom poms for Bernie when he complained about his poll numbers in hour 2… haha. Gave Dmitri my money for the year though because he’s been freaking phenomenal the last few months. Have a lot of catching up to do😊
The Left irons out the Boom-Bust cycle by eliminating the Boom part.
His answer is socialism or communism as a replacement.
The transformation of American race relations had nothing to do with winning support in Africa during the Cold War. If it had we’d have long sense abandoned the project in the fact so much of Africa degenerating into kleptocracy-socialist dystopias. Rather, Civil Rights was about the nation’s internal power competitions. It was about the desire of the mercantilist cosmopolitan elitist culture of the coastal/urban political class to marginalize the White majority of the country. That is why they are still promoting claims of “systemic racial oppression” to this day. The historical timelines simply don’t match the historical narrative being pushed here.
Not sure where it is that N Lib. Is falling anywhere.
The first 4 and a 1/2 minutes could easily be compressed into one meaningful sentence. Why bother with the rest?
"Free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness."
Grade-schoolers! What's wrong with this mis-quoted quote? What does it reveal about the author's conception of rights?
Dictatorship of the Proletariat means rule by the working class.
Free enterprise is quite OK under socialist government. But private capitalism is not. Capitalism is against free enterprise which it crushes with privately-owned monopolies.
Stalin removed the committment to world socialist revolution with the "Socialism in One State" policy in 1932.
P
So communism is what helped the workers of the world? One problem with his thesis. He’s only talking about the US but what happened to the countries where communism was implemented?
The gap between rich and poor was eliminated, so that everyone was poor. Do we prefer that everyone be poor? Do we feel that countries that take communism to its final point are better than the US? I must reject that thesis.
Dr Gerstle, you professed that you are an academic and studied history for 4 decades. What exposed your academic weaknesses is that you believed in what the tabloid papers tell you about Donald Trump…. Do you have more serious reading materials or do you have other methods in studying history or political science? Very disappointing interview. Hidden Forces you could do better yourself.
LMFAO. Poor baby . Trump won. Brexkt happens. It's the world that's wrong. Not me. Wahhbbbb
You can argue about Trump, but Brexit most definitely was a disaster for the UK
So we elected a known lying womanizer, that lacked any personal integrity or accountability out of the blue for no reason. He won because so many wanted change.
The presenter is just trying to get to the underlying reason so many wanted change. I know its social media but you are free to put some actual thought into your responses instead of gloating like small child. And Trump lost 2020 so theres that.
Communism was? It's still here dude.
This guy sound like a well trained bolshevik product by the ivy league propaganda factory.
Gweastl was not advocating, he was trying to understand and explain.
He helped me understand the M.O. of 175 year old failed Communism better, and why Communism is out to destroy Capitalism, America, and its reasons to dominate the world. Also, why it has failed and has always remained a dictatorship instead of ever getting close to it Utopian fairytale.
We may have a gap in income in the USA, but we do not have a significant lifestyle gap! If a person can cooperate with the rules in the systems the USA have in place to help our low income people, our poor live very well in America! We all do. We live well because we are a wealthy Capitalist society that can afford to take good care of the needy in the USA.
You sound like a right wing libertarian psychopath, well trained by your psychopathic billionaire masters to think that the state and the social contract are oppressive rather than essential components of a thriving civilization.
Interesting topic and points, but one of the least charismatic interviewees yet. For someone whose career seems to be about this subject, Dr. Gerstle has the delivery of a man bored to death with it.
Reminds me of every history professor I ever had. A pretty boring bunch as speakers but they do love what they are talking about. They are informed.
As interesting as his information was, I kept thinking he had a delivery as dry as Ben Stein's.
No offense intended to anyone.. but listening to his explanations around the varying systemic possibilities and what would probably prevail reminds me of just how utterly Imbecilc a "world view" really is.... A "world view" is the height of bigotry... Just thinking out loud this isn't directed at the guys on the screen in any way 😊
You forget the Cold War paralellism: Allende in Chile was violently ousted by Nixon and Kissinger in 1973 (since 1970) because Italy and France wanted to copy the example on a center left variant. Anticommunism mcCarthysm, nazism, were stronger than antistatism. Friedman und Hitler converge and explain things better.