The Many Faces of Neoliberalism

Yesterday's Richard Cohen column was truly awful. So awful, in fact, that it's led Brad Delong to an unsound level of shrillness:

If anybody is interested, Richard Cohen could have discovered in less than two minutes that the term "neoliberalism" was coined to describe the Washington Monthly's Charlie Peters and his posse, who wanted a reality-based liberalism, an effective liberalism, a liberalism that sought truth from facts and that proposed policies not because they resonated with a liberal interest group but because they were good for the country and the world.

Now, look; the truth of the matter is that "neoliberalism" is a confusing term. Certainly, this is one neoliberalism -- Peters-style efforts to reformulate American liberalism after the disappointments of the 1970s. This neoliberalism is, however, a different thing from the Washington Consensus of the IMF and the World Bank that also goes by the name "neoliberalism." Even worse, these two ideas aren't completely distinct. And out of the points of overlap plus the realities of money, power, and politics comes the third neoliberalism -- the neoliberalism of the "business-friendly" Democratic Party politician. In recent years, to make things even worse, a substantial number of people who want to see major change in US foreign policy have started referring to liberal hawks as "neoliberal" based both on the "neoconservative" appellation and also the general sense of the "neoliberal" as being to the right of the standard liberal.

In short, it's a legitimately confusing term, and while one can (and should!) condemn Richard Cohen for many things, I think he's allowed to find it somewhat confusing.

Comments

Excellent! The blogosphere needs more of this kind of post, where the participants actually explain things to people. It's often more interesting than the "debating an issue" kind of post or the "analyze events under my specialized framework" kind of post. Seriously! And MY is good at it and should do more of it.

Posted by Christopher M | May 30, 2007 9:08 AM

The Onion man in the street would be justified in finding it confusing, but Cohen makes his living on this kind of thing.

I wonder if we could get the Onion to replace some of their man on the street regulars with Broder and Cohen? It would be funnier that way.

Posted by John Emerson | May 30, 2007 9:32 AM

I oftern think it's comical
(Fa la la, fa la la)
That Nature always does contrive
(Fa la la, la)
That ev'ry boy and ev'ry gal
That's born into this world alive
Is either a Neo-Liberal
Or else a Neo-Conservative
(Fa la la, fa la la)
Is either a Neo-Liberal
Or else a Neo-Conservative!

Posted by Gilbert and Sullivan | May 30, 2007 9:33 AM

But DeLong's point is not:
"Cohen is confused about a neologism, what a maroon!"

DeLong's point is:
1) Cohen makes no effort, not even googling, to try to inform himself and his readers about what meanings the neologism might actually have;
and
2) Cohen actually boasts about his own cluelessness in this regard, and makes it a premise of his column.

And that's a lot more worthy of condemnation than what you are describing, i.e. the sort of confusion anyone might face in trying to sort through a term with many uses.

It's not just fact-free punditry, it is willfully, gleefully fact-free.

Posted by thag | May 30, 2007 9:49 AM

What thag said. The problem isn't the confusion about the term - obviously neoliberalism means different things in different contexts. The problem is saying quite explicitly: "I don't know what neoliberalism means, but I'm going to call Bush one so I can be a contrarian."

Posted by Ginger Yellow | May 30, 2007 9:58 AM

It's entirely possible that (despite being an unfunny moron), Cohen knew exactly what neoliberal means, and that he just chose to ignore it so he could write a column calling Bush a (kind of) liberal.

Anything to be a contrarian, especially if it helps out Uncle Karl.

Posted by calling all toasters | May 30, 2007 11:15 AM

Cohen's use of the term "neoliberal" was so inane as to seem almost unintentional. I think all he was trying to say was that Bush has tendencies or dispositions or secret wet dreams known only to him and his soulmate Richard Cohen that aren't "conservative" (as that term was defined like 40 years ago) and are therefore "liberal," and he seems to have appended the prefix "neo" out of some kind of unconscious spasm.

The awfulness of this column is really exceptional. You read so much crap from the punditocracy these days that most of it slides off, but this was so supremely silly and incoherent that it bordered on stunning and I still can't stop thinking about it and banging my head on things. I hesitate to call it the most incoherent column I've ever read in a major publication, because, y'know, George Will exists, but it's up there.

Posted by Jake | May 30, 2007 11:27 AM

And then there's "neoliberalism" in the international relations sense, which is that complex interdependence among nations leads to greater stability and decreases the likelihood for war. Not totally distinct from the "neoliberalism" of the liberal hawks, but there are significant differences (soft vs. hard power, etc.)

Posted by Matthew Struhar | May 30, 2007 1:40 PM

There is a first, brief, abortive use of "neolliberalism" in the 1950s by Hayek and company, but they almost immediately change to "classical liberalism."

Other than that, I think Charlie Peters ownz "neoliberalism": The Washington Consensus international economic policy people were, IIRC, consciously picking up on what Peters was doing on the domestic side--keeping liberal goals but trying to ensure that policies were reality-based. And I always thought that national security "neoliberalism" was what I think of as soft-power liberalism, and was also part of Peters's original portfolio.

Posted by Brad DeLong | May 30, 2007 2:31 PM

i'd just like to point out that Brad DeLong failed to make Brad DeLong's point anywhere near as well as I made it, and that furthermore i was right about what Marshall Mcluhan meant, too.

don't listen to those famous people.

Posted by thag | May 30, 2007 3:13 PM

The topic of this post seems fairly tedious to me, but thag gets points for the great Annie Hall reference.

Posted by Fred | May 30, 2007 3:36 PM

Similarly, "neoconservatism" started out in the 1960s mostly meaning an empirical-oriented approach to domestic policy advocated by social scientists such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Nathan Glazer. Over the decades, it lost almost all interest in data-crunching (Charles Murray being an obvious, but lonely, exception), and most interest in domestic policy for that matter, in favor of advocating a bellicose Israel-centric foreign policy in the Middle East.

"Neoliberalism" started out in the 1970s as a response to the success of neoconservativsm as a data-based perspective on domestic policy, advocating roughly similar methodologies and programs, just further to the left.

Not surprisingly, however, the connotations of "neoliberalism" have evolved along the same path so that it now mostly means liberals who advocate a bellicose foreign policy, typically in the the Middle East, sometimes for Israel Uber Alles reasons (Marty Peretz), other times more generally (e.g., in Darfur) on more general grounds of humanitarianism-through-killing people.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 30, 2007 3:52 PM

The very fact that Cohen used a term he didn't understand or define and applied it to Bush indicates that he shouldn't have used it. Cohen's whole argument was idiotic, and it wasn't because "neo-liberal" is hard to define. Bush doesn't count as a liberal, neo or otherwise, in any way, shape, or form. The column was just another attempt, now that Bush is anathema, to pretend he wasn't REALLY a conservative.

Posted by ala | May 30, 2007 5:28 PM

Steve Sailer:

You might be interested in this Christopher Caldwell column from the Financial Times: It is best to stay out of Darfur. Every politician (e.g., Joe Biden) who recommends U.S. intervention there should be required to read Caldwell's column and write a 500 word essay explaining why he disagrees with it.

Posted by Fred | May 30, 2007 5:52 PM

Hopefully, Biden wouldn't plagiarize this one.

Posted by Fred | May 30, 2007 5:58 PM