'Neoliberalism' has been a key concept used by progressive intellectuals to analyze and understand a whole bunch of political developments associated with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan and the subsequent, purportedly market friendly policies adopted in the Western world during the last thirty years. (In this narrative Jimmy Carter never receives the credit he deserves for his advocacy of deregulation.) In particular, the critique could point to the deployment of the principles of 'new public management,' which entailed that ideas from the private sector (competition, metrics, decentralization, etc.) were used to displace public sector values within the public public sector (in areas of education, healthcare, justice, welfare, etc.). In this (somewhat Marxist) narrative capital was winning at the expense of labor with unions under attacked and weakened by globalization and less favorable labor laws. With steadily rising equity and housing prices, the middle classes were turned into capitalists, too, and so sided with capital against the lower classes left behind.
The 2008-10 financial crisis bailed out capital at the expense of other (middle-class) taxpayers. It was a classic case of rent-seeking (private gain, social cost). It also undermined the myths about fair gains that underwrote the neoliberal consensus; it generated huge amount of anger and resentment. But nearly a decade later, with the hollowness of neoliberal policies exposed, it is notable that the aftermath of the great financial crisis did not realign voters to a truly progressive left (with the exception, perhaps, of Greece, which is a special case). If there has been a turn away from liberal values, it has not been -- despite Bernie Sanders's or Jeremy Corbyn's efforts -- toward socialism, but rather toward a nationalist-authorian-welfarist-right and, among some of our youth, toward International-militant-Islamism. Perhaps, that's because the modern left is too cosmopolitan for today's dispossessed.
But the truth is simpler and more depressing. Modern political economies have stacked the decks not just in favor of the already-rich-and-powerful (that's quite normal), but in favor of the educated (that's somewhat unusual in the history of mankind). Our economies reward the educated with employment and income (there are some national differences because of tax policies). In fact, the whole political-economy that is described as neoliberalism is run by the educated for the educated and those that wish to bribe the educated. (Hilary Clinton's education proposal which subsidizes the education of entrepreneurs is a nice example of this mind-set.) Universities are the gateways to social and professional success.
The previous paragraph is as true in China and France as it is in England and the United States. The interests of so-called human capital is promoted and protected by laws that insist on credentialing in the professions (medicine, accounting, academia, law, finance, etc.), that reward patents and trade-marks, and that allows various kinds of cartels to flourish in which complex financial instruments are sources of income, insurance and banking (too big too fall, etc.). That is to say, during the last thirty years the educated have been rent-seeking at the expense of the uneducated. It is no surprise, then, that the most technocratic institution of our age -- the central bank -- has never been so powerful.
Thus, our neoliberal status quo would be more aptly described as a (rent-seeking) epistemocracy--rule by experts for experts who use the instruments of state to protect their interests. The emblematic professional of an epistomocracy is the consultant [a brain for hire], who never suggests to fire management, but always recommends more salary for management and more contracts for, well, other consultants.
In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, much has written on the racism and ignorance of the average 'leave' voter (who, in some narratives, is victimized by media manipulation and outright lies). It's been noted that s/he is also on average less educated than the remain voter. The wisdom of allowing such voters a direct policy say (via a referendum) has been questioned, again,* from the 'right' (e.g. Jason Brennan) by those who wish to give voting rights only to educated and from the 'left' (Van Reybrouck) who wish to promote rational deliberation by having lotteries pick a few citizen-legislators who can be guided by experts to reasonable policy outcomes.
That is to say, what is new in our times is not that liberal societies that allow immigrants (and previously marginalized) to compete economically have generated a xenophobic and anti-Liberal response. As I have noted in reflecting on the roots of nineteenth century Zionism this is an endemic problem to Liberalism. What may be new is that the intellectual class that understands itself as speaking for the oppressed and against power, and -- in its romantic branch -- is waiting for, if not urging, the revolt of the masses, is, in fact, the power that must be destroyed if our epistemocracy should come to an end. When that end arrives is anybody's guess.
*Disclosure: I am no friend of referenda.
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