Climate, technology and chaos Blog

I’ve said similar things before, but neoliberal, supposedly free market economics, has not delivered the liberty, prosperity, general well-being or efficiency and responsiveness, that was promised and is still promised.

We have had 40 years of neoliberalism, and the world is getting worse. As a theory it has failed completely.

The Results

Neoliberalism has delivered:

• massive taxpayer support for wealthy corporations;
• tax cuts for wealthy people;
• suppression of unions and workers’ representation;
• cutbacks in government services to ordinary people;
• the purchase of politicians and policy by wealth;
• alienation of ordinary people from political processes, as their input is largely ignored, unless it can be made to support the power of wealth;
• growing inequality of wealth distribution with lower amounts of GDP going to workers, and more going to the very wealthy;
• wealth inequality reinforces dominance of politics by wealth and alienation of people from participation;
• massive military spending provided by taxpayers;
• privatisation of publicly owned property and loss of control or protection over that property;
• privatised services which are less helpful and more punitive;
• corporatised bureaucracy with no freedom for lower levels to actually help people;
• economic instability and crashes;
• larger and longer term unemployment;
• increased insecurity of work, with longer working hours, and more vulnerability to the employer’s whims (market discipline for workers, subsidies for large corporations);
• a precarious middle class which may well see its children being worse off than they were, and;
• a tendency for business to become monopolies.

It has also delivered corruption of truth, as information gets dominated by corporate PR, deception and hype.

Corporately funded ‘science’ is not independent of profit drives and thus announces findings which supports that profit, and suppresses findings which do not, thus building distrust in independent science and increasing uncertainty.

Its Successes

Neoliberalism’s main success has been to further plutocracy and the rule of wealth and misinformation, rather than rule by the people.

Wealth can buy, or shape, all other sources of power such as communication, information, laws, politicians, violence, organisation, religion, culture, rules of the markets, and so on. It does so in order to control citizens for the benefit of the powerful.

Neoliberalism limits the response to problems, as the only solution that neoliberals have for any problem is more neoliberalism, or ‘freer markets;’ more of the same which has generated our problem and which will probably make things even worse than they are now.

Given that neoliberals find it difficult to justify the results they have achieved in terms of their predictions and promises, they have to blame others and start culture wars to build loyalties, and prevent discussion.

Neoliberals seem incapable of taking responsibility for any of their actions, which is not surprising as the corporation has been designed to avoid responsibility, starting with limited liability and finishing with massive bonuses for apparently incompetent CEOs. There prime action is to always blame other (usually less powerful) people.

Neoliberalism is one reason we have not dealt with climate change, because action threatens the profits of powerful and profit-driven fossil fuel corporations.

Conclusion

The neoliberal experiment has been a complete disaster almost everywhere it has been applied. If these are the results of 40 years of application, we can assume that the theory has been applied, tested and found wanting.

However, as it benefits the large corporate sector and the very wealthy and, as they now control the political system and the media, it is improbable that it will be discarded, until complete social breakdown.

In order to change neoliberal destructiveness, we would have to destroy corporate power or the power of wealth, but that of course is illegal, and many people will tell you immoral. But if you don’t then you will remain governed, rather than governing.

Destroying the State, or reinstating the power of the people, without destroying the power of wealth would seem impossible.

Continued from Neoliberal Liberty and the market

Most human societies have not required States, and according to James Scott that includes some early, fairly large scale, settled agricultural societies. Many of these non-state based socieites seem to actively resist those processes that lead to State formation, such as: a) accumulation of wealth by kinship or position; b) the monopoly of approved violence, or; c) the monopoly of religious positions. Fighting the accumulation of wealth to prevent the State forming, is vitally important as the wealthy can, as I’ve said previously, often buy other forms of power, such as being able to afford military specialists over many generations.

This point about resistance to power is important; these stateless societies are not the kinds of societies praised by neoliberals. They are not capitalist societies. In particular they are not corporate capitalist societies. And, they are not necessarily societies in which everyone is free. Old people often rule over younger people, men over women etc.

However, in all these societies (as is normal), people co-operate, or team-up to expand their, and others, capabilities and survival chances, and (in this case) to prevent the formation of a State, or power elite, or wealth elite.

‘Teaming up’ will always occur. To some extent, corporations and states arise out of this natural trait and, as a result, have many institutional similarities and weaknesses. Humans are both competitive and collaborative creatures, and a society which does not realise this active ‘contradiction’ will probably be suppressive in some way or another. The point is that organisation, and disorganisation, do not necessarily require a State. States may come about when the activities which prevent them from forming are suspended.

My supposition, based on the behaviour of historical States, is that the main need for States arises to protect people from other States, or other large scale organisations. Once military states are established they tend to spread to gain resources to feed their soldiers and support the expansion. Similarly, corporations tend to spread to gain resources, and again historically have used violence to do so if people are not interested in providing resources, buying corporate products, or selling their own labour. As implied elsewhere, crony capitalism and the take-over or an existing State, or generation of a new State, are normal parts of capitalism. Capitalism does not exist without States, so capitalists are never going to completely break up the States they own, so they can keep the laws and threats which enable them to operate.

However, States and corporations are not monolithic bodies but sites of conflict, with competing departments, friction inside deparments, conflicting policies, different linkages to insitutions outside the themselves, different problems of survival, and so on. This factionalism may help liberty, if it stops one faction from exerting complete control. Again, the more the sources of power are kept separate, and wealth is controlled, the greater the chance that one source of power will not dominate.

Neoliberalism and the State

Neoliberalism promotes the idea that the weaker the state the more liberty we get.

There are clearly limits to this after a State has been established. A collapsed state is a weak state, and unlike real stateless societies, the collapsed state tends to involve continual violence. In this situation there may be little constructive liberty. People are reduced to attack and defense, and organisation for attack and defense. Survivial compulsion is dominant over every form of liberty.

The idea of the weak state is a driving idea in communism as well as in neoliberalism. The State is supposed wither away after the revolution. Of course the communist state doesn’t wither away because it is needed to impose order after the revolution and protect the revolution and is easily hijacked by ruthless people who appear dedicated to the revolution. The same seems true of the neoliberal State, it does not dissolve after the revolution, but reinforces the neoliberal takeover, attempts to put down opposition, and is easily hijacked by ruthless people.

I would tend to argue, unless contrary evidence is provided, that the evidence suggests that the neoliberal weak state, is strong when it comes to defending and ‘nannying’ the established corporate sector, while weak when it comes to defending or enabling ordinary people. For example, the neoliberal State would much rather protect established fossil fuel companies, than attempt to do anything about climate change, no matter how costly it is to the general population. In other words the neoliberal weak-State argument seems to be a deceptive rhetoric used to help support plutocracy – or government by the wealthy classes

This is largely a guess, based on observation of what has been happening over the last forty years of ‘small State’ and ‘free market’ talk (and forty years is long enough to assume that we have attained as much of the aims of the movement as is possible or likely). However, the point is that rather than assume a small state is necessarily responsive to voters/locals we have to look at how corporations interact with smaller States. This requires research, which is beyond the scope of this blog.

In neoliberal capitalism, do people get more or less control over their lives as a result of weakening the State? Getting more control over their lives seems unlikely unless the State is particularly bad.

Corporations vs the State

Corporations both need, and support the State, to support their ways of action and accumulation. However, they can easily dominate the State rather than be dominated, especially nowadays.

Modern corporations are motile. The have ‘span’, they have wealth. They may need an area of land, but they rarely need a particular area for ever. They use it for as long as it is profitable, and can move on. They can be multi-sited, officially based elsewhere to transfer revenues and profits out of the places they operate in.

On the other hand ‘States’ are place bound, they are in competition with other states, and they may have less money than corporations.

In this cirumstances there is a definate power imbalance.

Corporations can promise they will set up in the place with the lowest tax rates, lowest restrictions on pollution and so on, setting up a competition between weak States. The people of those States can be bombarded with pro-company propaganda (media disinformation) which does not specifically have to be untrue, but it can leave out harms, and exagerate benefits – just as Adani (with the help of its politicians and the Murdoch Empire) has exaggerated the numbers of jobs and revenue its mines will bring, and downplayed the likely danger to the water table, and other damages to the ecology. Poorer small states are more likely to agree, and thus earn less and become more able to poison their people, or ignore the massive degradation produced by corporate activity. Often if the area is poor, they may consider that the price of pollution is worth the jobs they might get.

They may find they never get those jobs of course, people may be flown in from elsewhere, due to local skill lacks, or the expected lack of imported labours’ ability to unify and challenge the disruption to local lives, their allocated work practices and wages given . The company may also not pay the wages fully and just move out if there is trouble – as stated previously they are motile with no lasting relations to place or the small State’s exercise of power. Or they can destroy the environment, take all the minerals etc. and leave waste and destruction behind. This kind of normal and passing behaviour, with no longer term investment, can produce short term booms which destroy local economies in the longer term, as seems to be recurrent with fracking.

Often small states do not know the consequences of some forms of development, say mining, and it can be difficult to challenge the corporation in courts to get resitution for the destruction. It might well have proven more economic and beneficial to support local companies, but they can have less influence as less wealthy.

Neoliberal Privatisation

A major part of the neoliberal weakening of the State is for the State to hand over common (tax payer owned) property to the private sector, or to contract out state services to the private sector. This is known as privatisation. Experience shows that this almost never delivers better, more liberty respecting services cheaper. It just means that more parts of life get handed over to the control of business, and that the power of business over the lives of people increases.

It has also increased the potential for corruption, and handing of public property to ‘friends’ at knock down prices, also costing government revenue, but giving free revenue to businesses.

Often public needs become controlled by non-local forces, and the State, and the popular voice, has little power to change things, without alienating these powerful forces. Thus when the State privatises water supplies, we gain situations in which rivers run dry because of large private storage, and towns die because they cannot afford the costs of the water (just as people may starve if they cannot grow their own food and cannot pay as much for food as people in some other market). Perhaps the wealthy keeping the water for their own profit or agriculture was the prime requirement of the privatisation. In one circumstance I heard of, the company who bought the water, turned the local reservoir land into housing estates, made a quick profit, and left the area with a water shortage.

Private jails are best served by rescidivism, and returning custom, rather than reform of criminals, and so on.

If you really believed business was more efficient than government, you would rent out poorly performing and unprofitable government ventures to private enterprise, to see if they could provide better services for less cost and make money out of this. However, neoliberals usually sell off, or give away, the profitable arms, or properties, of government, making sure the State debt increases, while allowing the new owners to deliver inferior services, sack staff and massively boost the incomes of their high-level executives. It’s a redistribution of property and income away from the people.

The Useful Function of the State

The State is a site of conflict, and political process. A participatory State has the capacity to include people in the politics of organising themselves and co-operating with others. Without a open State, such processes can only happen at a small scale, and large scale processes will be controlled by the dominant groups.

The theory of the small state also depends upon whether you think of liberty as absence of compulsion, or as being enabled and requiring people to be able to participate in governance with others. In reality the neoliberal state only opposes compulsion for the wealthy, and perhaps those who support them.

As we can see in Australia, the financial industry and building industries can committ massive crimes against its customers, but that is of little concern to the neoliberal State. Corporations are not compelled to be honest, while neoliberals are seeking to make sure that unions can be deregistered for failing to fill in forms absolutely correctly.

The neoliberal State, like the communist State, is in practice only vaguely participatory. It needs to reinforce the dominance to lower the chaos it generates, and lower possible action on behalf of ordinary peoples liberties. You elect representatives and then leave them alone to get on with whatever they choose to do, or choose to sell out to. The small State is to be controlled by the corporate class and their representatives alone, which is why popular participation is discouraged.

Conclusion

In a capitalist system, given that the corporate world remains strong, then it is even easier for them to take over a weakened state and set up stronger plutocracy and reduce liberty to that form of life which is compelled by the market that they largely manufacture the rules of. This may well be why the corporate sector encourages the theory of the small state as liberating. – although they always use the State the strengthen themselves and weaken others, by such acts as increased military spending, suppressing anti-capitalist protests, encouraging pollution, suppressing constraints on corporate power and profit, and making workers weaker by removing non-capitalist enabling support. This take over is relatively easy when they almost completely control the means of information.

Small states may be particularly vulnerable to strong corporate power, because the power differential is higher, and because of the absence of non-pro-corporate ideologies.

I suspect that, in our societies, you have to weaken the corporate sector to if you really want to weaken the State and allow liberty. You may also have to strengthen places of potential opposition against plutocracy.

Continues in: Recapitulations of Neoliberal Liberty and ways to remedy it.

Any argument about authoritarian politics, can depend on how you define left and right wing.

Usually the Right are those people who defend the established power relations and hierarchies, and the Left are those that challenge them by supporting people who have been declared outsiders or unworthy. While Conservatives also tend to support established power relations, it can be useful to distinguish conservatism from contemporary neoliberalism, as Conservatives may be skeptical of the benefits of unconstrained capitalism, and the radical transformations it brings. However, this distinction is not really maintained in this piece, even though it is politically vital…. See: Conservatism as philosophy and the posts referred to there.

The usual story is that the terms came into use during the period around the French Revolution when, in the National Assembly, the supporters of the King and aristocracy sat on the President (or presiding officer’s), right and the anti-royalist anti-aristocratic supporters of the revolution sat on his left.

In keeping with this tradition, those called ‘The Left’ in the English speaking world, tend to fight for workers’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights, minority race rights, refugee rights and so on, and the Right tends to fight against such rights, to declare that outsiders are dangerous and to increase the rights of the current dominant groups of capitalists and wealthy people. By supporting established power relations, the Right can also claim to be conservative – but sometimes by over-intensifying the powers of the dominant elite, it can end up destroying what it is supposed to be conserving.

While it is a customary piece of blather that Hitler and Mussolini where left wing, they opposed the left and were heavily supported by the right and the established hierarchies (capitalists, militarists, and so on); they opposed workers democracy, even in principal, and subordinated everything to the nation state, and the established hierarchy. They started persecuting and killing those they defined as dangerous but inferior outsiders (Jews, gypsies, gays, communists, pacifists, disabled people, etc). Eventually they started to replace the established hierarchy with their own. They were not ever pretending to be libertarian capitalists, of course, but that does not mean they were socialists.

Even nowadays (after it is quite clear what Nazism actually stood for), the mainstream Right seems happier working with, or excusing, neo-nazis and white supremacists, than they do working with or excusing anti-fascists who are trying to defend people against violence. This may not just be because both support hierarchies, but because the Right know there is a large chance the neo-fascists and white supremacists will vote for them.

Anyway, the problem for the left is quite obvious. Leftists aim for an overthrow of established powers; however should they achieve this by revolution, they usually have to impose an order, because the old hierarchy does not give in, other states may support the old hierarchy, they might still need a police force or national guard and so on. The French Revolution faced the threat of firstly the King subverting its aims, then the aristocracy some of whom fled and tried to persuade neighbouring states to invade, and the Church which was trying to preserve its aristocratic allies and their property, by stirring up counter-revolution among the peasantry. Austria, Prussia, Holland, Spain and England all opposed the Revolutionaries, at least partly to stop the idea of anti-hierarchy from spreading, and some of them engaged in open warfare against France. Similarly, the Russians faced deniable invading armies after the revolution who allied with the so called White Russians (who naturally persecuted inferiors), which left them on a war footing even after leaving WWI (which given the country could not afford war was a severe problem).

In imposing their new order, the left tends to become ‘rightists’ supporters of their new hierarchy, oppressors of those that challenge them, and so on. This direction gets reinforced when opportunistic authoritarians succeed in taking over “because it is necessary”, as did Stalin in Russia.

So the left revolution is so busy defending itself that it usually fails to be revolutionary or liberatory. This is a problem, because the regime justifies itself in terms of delivering freedom for ordinary people, when it is probably not doing that at all. People eventually notice the failure, and the best they give the regime is resigned and unenthusiastic tolerance.

Rightist revolutions are usually less troublesome for the winners. Being at home with the existing hierarchies, the right can use them and then fade them out gradually if they so choose. They can support traditional modes of ordering, usually with the same personnel, while making them more intense or militarised. They can free up people, in their old ‘policing’ jobs, to be more aggressive in supporting the establishment and persecuting outsiders – which is usually not very difficult. Their main risk is trying to gain legitimacy by demonstrating their military superiority over inferior types. This can increase problems, if they eventually encounter a better armed less tired force, or supply lines get stretched beyond the capacity to support them. To some extent this happened with the Righteous who supported the second Iraq War in the name of the New American Century, or of maintaining US dominance and oil supplies. However, if they stay within National Borders and pacify and celebrate existing powers, like Franco did in Spain with the support of the Church and the old aristocracy, they can be stable for quite a long while. Mussolini could probably have survived a lot longer than he did, but he went against his original suspicions of Hitler and joined with him in a series of unnecessary, unpopular (with the Italian people) and weakening wars.

This implies support for authority, can become a form of corruption. The Church in Spain for example, might have thought that supporting Franco was support for Spanish values and Church authority, and would lead to salvation for most of Spain, but they learnt to ignore torture and maltreatment of victims, and quite a lot of other Christian values as part of that support. Similarly, people on the right who support free markets as a form of liberty, and who gain power, tend to end up supporting the capitalist elite (because they have money) and end up supporting crony capitalism, state capture, anti-union laws, anti-protest laws and so on, because opposition to these pro-capitalist moves promotes inhibition of the market. They deliver liberty for the capitalist elite, rather than for ordinary people. This arrangement can also be quite stable for a while, although it might be looking precarious at the moment.

There is an argument that neoliberalism (lots of talk of free markets with state support for Capitalist elites) was first tried out in the dictatorship in Chili, and promoted by Hayek and Friedman. It is a complex argument and a lot of neoliberals object to this characterisation, but it rarely seems they are particularly interested in a democracy that threatens capitalist domination, whatever the people might want.

In terms of the Toynbee cycle, both left and right revolutions are trying to solve perceived major challenges to the social order. The Rightist revolution in the contemporary English speaking world quite possibly originated in dealing with the “crisis of democracy“; the fact that the non-revolutionary left had succeeded to such an extent that the elites where threatened by:

• minorities who now insisted they had a right to self governance, and to overturn the traditions (sexism, genderism, racism etc) which had held them down,
• the steadily increasing wages of the lower class, and State based social support, which gave them prosperity, freedom to participate in government, lack of fear of unemployment and disobedience to bosses, and
• the growing success of the environmental movement which threatened wealthy high polluters, environmental destruction for profit, nuclear power and the fossil fuel industry.

To the Right these collective factors promised chaos, and led to the campaign to make markets the supreme virtue and reinforce corporate dominance, while pretending to bring people a lack of governmental interference, or rather a lack of governmental support and an alienation from participation in their own self-government.

This movement has had the probably unintended consequence of accelerating and protecting environmental destruction, and the resultant destabilizing of world orders – which is likely to become a complete destructive crisis in the next ten to twenty years.

The Russian Left faced the problems of a decaying aristocratic government and a small comfortable middle class, both of whom could not see the growing unrest among the peasantry and workers who were seeing the country fall apart, with them being asked to take the burdens. There was also protest against a war that few really believed was in Russia’s interests, and Russia’s lack of an industrial base with which to produce modern armaments. While the Russians did solve the problem of Industrialisation in a very short time, it would be ignorant to deny this came at a great cost.

So, the answer to the question is complicated.

I’d say that by definition the vast majority of authoritarian states are right-wing, but they may not have started out that way, or intended to be so, they just become that way to defend themselves against the disorder that eventuated.