neoliberalism
Elizabeth Humphrys, ‘Australia under the Accord (1983-1996)’
Elizabeth Humphrys (University of Technology Sydney), 'Australia under the Accord (1983-1996): Simultaneously Deepening Corporatism and Advancing Neoliberalism'
This is the fifth seminar in the Semester 1 series of 2016 organised by the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney.
Date and Location:
Note the time change!
5 May 2016, Darlington Centre Boardroom, 4:30pm – 6.00pm
All welcome!
Does Reason Matter?
The academy is rooted in the axiom of the supremacy of reason.
Let us note that, in reality, academic ‘reasoning’ is typically paradigm-bound. Thus the conscientious rigorous academic will likely be engaging in a process of constrained ‘rationality’, never raising the head above the inherited parapet. The neoclassical economist is an exemplary representative of this routine. To think ‘outside the box’ is to imperil one’s career prospects.
But let us put that pervasive peccadillo aside and assume that the academic’s research and writing regime is at her/his most far-reaching, unconstrained, and admirable. The machine is powered by logic and evidence. There may also be a propelling force that encases in a set of values, let us assume ‘progressive’ (egalitarian, etc.).
And what if this apparatus is directed towards an analysis of some aspect of government policy? Not improbable.
Let us examine this issue in the context of the rise and implementation of that political agenda since the 1970s that is loosely labeled ‘neoliberalism’. Mountains of literature, academic and its popular offshoots, has been generated by progressive-minded academics not merely on the anti-egalitarian thrust of neoliberalism but also on its dysfunctionality.
Not least, the outcomes of the neoliberalist agenda do not cohere with the character nor the outcomes proffered by neoliberalism’s proponents.
All the key channels – deregulation, privatisation, public-private partnerships, managerialism, etc. – have been forensically examined by our well-meaning nay-sayers and the latter have pointed to outcomes contrary to the promises.
For example, in the banking sector, deregulation and privatisation have produced a succession of significant dysfunctionalities and corrupt practices. And this for a sector with a fundamental public role. Some of these adverse outcomes are transparently obvious to the general public, courtesy of a media that can’t avoid reporting on their general character. Yet the political and regulatory apparatus remains immune to the problems.
For the academic, complementing these known broad parameters in providing a more rigorous analysis of said sector, one is compelled to declaim – the evidence is there, why do not those in authority follow the evidence? Why do they not see reason!
Faced with this dissonance, our typical egghead academic plows on in the same furrow, refining the argument, inducing further evidence, simplifying the language, etc. The implicit mentality is that the evidence and reason must win out in the end.
I write this scenario from experience, as I have been preoccupied with government policy for my entire academic life. And I have become obsessed with the question of why those in authority do not confront the evidence and ‘see reason’. Apart from myriad articles in the mainstream media, I have written countless submissions to Parliamentary and official inquiries only to have the content of those submissions comprehensively ignored.
So the well-meaning academic is faced with an impasse. Frustration has long set in. Does one press ahead along the same lines hoping for what looks like needing a miracle to happen?
The stark reality is that those in authority do not see reason, and for good reason! They operate according to a different logic.
By all means, one should pursue and publicise an analysis of reactionary and dysfunctional government policies. But it is not enough. The official arguments for the implementation of the neoliberal agenda cannot be taken at face value, as if the political class has the same mindset as us ‘enlightened’ academics. One must allow the possibility that the proponents themselves don’t believe in the arguments they espouse. To endlessly criticise such claims from a rationalist perspective involves a considerable waste of talent and of energy.
But how to do otherwise? One confronts that acknowledging the impasse involves not merely a personal choice. It is a systemic issue, because harnessing the logic and evidence machine is what the academy does. It is its raison d’être. (Thus is the disdain when academics are found to have taken sponsorship from outside and both their work and the integrity of the institution compromised.)
One might surmise that the academic discipline of government/political science would be well placed to confront the impasse. Not so. This discipline remains as tied to the academic modus operandi as the rest.
A recent fashion in that discipline has been to emphasise the implementation of an ‘evidence-based’ policy regime – an idealist notion par excellence. Rare instances of application (cigarettes plain packaging) do not invalidate this idealist fantasy.
This impasse embodies a more subtle form of ivory tower-dom. And it needs to be acknowledged and redressed. Can one acknowledge that reason à la the academy rarely matters in the ‘real world’?
If one is not to participate in consigning the academy to continuing irrelevance, to the pursuit of utopian gestures, a change of orientation is required.
One needs to address directly the character of the political and policy-making process. It is an arena where lies and dissembling are an art form, ditto obfuscation and stonewalling. Apart from the circus of Parliamentary question time, letters from Members of Parliament in response to correspondence from the public enclosing observations/advice/entreaties provide evidentiary raw material for this state of play. Kafka is alive and well.
Cynicism and personal opportunism typically matter more than personal principle. In contemporary Australia, it is hard to find a politician at any level (certainly in the three major Parties) for whom the public interest is the motivation for their holding office.
In the face of government policies that appear to ‘make no sense’ (dysfunctional, as well as being inegalitarian on the moral compass), it is appropriate to look for the particular ‘rationality’ in that domain.
It is appropriate to inquire, whence the policies? In particular, are the policies dictated by sectional vested interests or by a ‘false’ ideology, or both?
Those who purvey neoliberal ideology are a multi-layered lot. Of this layering, there are undoubtedly true believers. The financial press, for example, has always been neoliberal – witness the stance of a succession of editors and key columnists at the Australian Financial Review. Select vested interests of necessity desire to render themselves opaque, so the employment of functionaries (if true believers, all the better) as public propagandists is an integral element of the influence peddling process. Then get them into the mainstream media as ‘informed’ opinion-makers. The Institute of Public Affairs is Exhibit A for this dual mechanism.
But how does one discern these and complementary elements in the origins of ‘bad’ policies? The typical academic is ill-equipped for the task. The bulk of the academic’s scholarly raw material is the work of other academics – a phenomenon I explored in an earlier piece ‘Oppose Book Worship’. A reinforced insularity may prevail, regardless of intentions to break out of the loop.
Equally as fundamental, the dogged pursuit of the political and policy-making process is intrinsically difficult. Some elements are secretive of necessity – release of government papers 25 years down the track consigns a deeper analysis and understanding purely to inquisitive historians.
Other elements are secretive by design because those involved would rather that the nature of their participation not be publicised. One is perennially reliant on investigative journalism, but that means is constrained by a media management complicit with those in authority, producing a tendency to sensationalist trivia (e.g. leadership battles).
Other possible channels of exposure are shackled. Whistleblowers are demonised, destroyed. Anti-corruption bodies are neutralised.
Even if the hurdle-jumping academic succeeds in providing a window into the political process on a particular policy development, say, and exposes this discovery to the broader public as well as the academic community, will it make any difference? Will it contribute to those with a capacity to influence matters ‘seeing reason’?
From my experience, no. One can see why academics stick to their last, or escape into topics both obscure and meaningless.
Reason matters, but its application remains caged, and it is generally an alien concept to politics. To appropriate W.H. Auden (who was referring to poetry):
For [Reason] makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its saying where executives
Would never want to tamper …
Believe in reason if it makes one feel good. But never over-estimate its power to persuade those who run the show.
Once more into the (neoliberal) breach
What do we mean when we call an idea or policy ‘neoliberal’? Does the term signify anything other than trends which are simply embedded in the process of capitalist development? Is it at all useful? That’s right – yet another article trying to figure out exactly what this ‘neoliberalism’ thing is all about. ‘Why bother?’ one might ask. After all, this debate has been ongoing for at least twenty years; each intervention aiming to clarify meaning seems only to add to the cacophony.
As messy as it might be, I believe this is an important discussion to have – and to keep having – as it speaks to some of the most pressing theoretical and practical challenges of our modern age: theoretically, it pushes us to justify the fundamental task of periodising capitalism, as well as challenging us to really think through the implications of ‘interdisciplinarity’; practically, it highlights ongoing strategic disagreement on the ‘left’, both in terms of how best to attack our capitalistic foes, while also speaking to the choice between reformation or revolution.
One of the many common criticisms of the term is that ‘no-one self-identifies as neoliberal’ – if those who are labelled ‘neoliberal’ reject the term, of what strategic use could the label be? Well firstly, that claim is not entirely true. Milton Friedman, the ‘ideal-typical’ neoliberal, briefly recognised the concept in a 1951 article, ‘Neoliberalism and its Prospects’. Generally speaking, however, it is true that the concept is rarely used for self-description. Indeed, ‘neoliberals’ line up to denounce the concept: from Austrian economists, to Blairites, to Australia’s own Institute of Public Affairs. The confusion around the meaning of ‘neoliberalism’ is used by these groups to declare that ‘neoliberalism’ is merely a ‘secret handshake’ used among those who harbour a general dislike of markets, and is indicative of pervasive intellectual laziness.
It is interesting to note that this need for specificity, so often used to denounce neoliberalism, can be seen to be resultant from the ‘scientistic’ epistemology which characterises neoliberalism. Foucauldian analyses of neoliberalism often note the epistemological imperialism of neoclassical economics (and positivism more generally), as part of neoliberal ‘governmentality’. That is, dismissing the term on the grounds of ‘non-specificity’ actually shows the pervasiveness of neoliberal epistemologies. This defence of ‘neoliberalism’ was made recently by Will Davies, who went on to point out the ridiculousness of purging all imprecise concepts from the humanities and social sciences. While perhaps not ‘pithy’ enough for this online-blog format, it is worth quoting Davies at length:
Since Jeremy Bentham, the English tradition of positivism has rested on the notion that only acutely defined terms are politically valid – a premise that can quickly flip into the idea that if I don’t know exactly what you mean, then you are talking nonsense. Benthamite utilitarianism has been slowly subsumed by welfare economics since the end of the 19th century, to the point where policy wonks can argue that esoteric terms such as ‘price elasticity’ or ‘market failure’ mean something, but ‘neoliberalism’ doesn’t. This implies that terminology is something to be overseen by HM Treasury (for example in its Green Book), which would be a surprising position for any devotee of George Orwell to find him or herself in.
And so the criticism that ‘neoliberalism is too vague’ is rejected. But does that mean we are to throw the flood gates wide open, and embrace complete, anarchic plurality of meaning? (Perhaps these conceptions will be able to compete via research funding, with a pseudo-market finding the ‘correct’ definition?) No, some limits must be drawn.
In particular – as I have argued in the latest issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy – conceptions of neoliberalism which see ‘free’ markets and ‘small’ states as characteristic of neoliberal practice must be refocused. While these ‘ideals’ are certainly evident in rhetoric and ideology, too many ostensibly progressive actors and intellectuals – including Kevin Rudd, Waleed Aly, and even Benjamin Kunkel – assume a direct link between ideas, and the policies enacted under those ideas. This assertion follows from the work of several historical materialists, such as Neil Brenner, Nik Theodore, Jamie Peck, Adam Tickell, and most recently (and most powerfully), Damien Cahill. These scholars have all forwarded ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ as a more-useful conception of the term, particularly in contrast with the widespread ‘free-market neoliberalism’ of authors such as Rudd.
‘Actually existing neoliberalism’ emphasises the stark disjuncture between neoliberal ideas and practices; rather than being characterised by receding state involvement in the economy, the neoliberal state is actually extensively involved in creating and extending markets. While ‘actually existing neoliberalism’ is marked by policies – such as deregulation, privatisation, and/or marketisation – which seem to conform to classic neoliberal modalities, in fact it extends or reconfigures the role of the state in facilitating new market arrangements which have particular class-distributional effects.
This is where we arrive at the problematic of periodising capitalism. Those otherwise-friendly scholars who criticise the explanatory power of neoliberalism from within critical thought – often of a Marxist bent – often do so by arguing that ‘everything that happens under neoliberalism happens under capitalism’. I agree. But does that mean that no significant changes have occurred in the global (or local) political economy? Of course not. Even if all ‘neoliberalism’ means is ‘the particular (shifting) crystalisation of class structures, social movements, and relative power of capital since the decline of Keynesianism’ – though I think it means more than that – it is still a worthwhile term to have in our vocabulary. These voices which push us to constantly (re)consider ‘what is ‘neo’ in neoliberalism?’ challenge us to constantly justify our periodisation, which is important. But this should not lead to abandoning the term.
While this short piece has in no way concluded the debate around neoliberalism, I hope that it has at least presented something of a case for the relevance and necessity of that debate. So where to now? If neoliberalism is indeed a lens which highlights significant trends and tendencies within the current context, what exactly is that lens showing us? Some of the most interesting research within the field of neoliberalism studies at the moment is considering the relationship between neoliberalism, the state, and democracy – recent experiences of austerity being constitutionalised and embedded in supra-national institutional frameworks illustrate this. In this space, ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ is emerging as a powerful framework. But whether one is considering the anti-democratic structure of the European Union, or the gendered impact of neoliberal financialisation, one thing is clear: the study of neoliberalism in these areas – as opposed to ‘free-market caricatures – is anything but ‘intellectual laziness’.