What is Neoliberalism?

 

Quinn Slobodian (2020) has written a recent book Globalists: The End of Empire and the birth of Neoliberalism. I'm in the process of reading it and the book has changed my perspective on Neoliberalsim. In 2018, I had been working on developing a "Neoliberalism Index" but I just couldn't capture the concept with a reasonable number of indicators. So, I decided it as really a hierarchical-concept that was best expressed by a number of indexes (see the hierarchy diagram above). But my concept of Neoliberalism was based purely in the American (Reagan) and British (Thatcher) popular political version. Slobodian opened my eyes to the wider intellectual history that dates back the WWI, the Great Depression and WWII. Let me report how I see Neoliberalsim now and how I think it might be destroyed by the two Trump Administrations which have just come to power again in the US.

First, let's recall how Germany destroyed in Liberal International Order by it's pursuit of World Domination during WWI. The World System and how it was to be reconstructed after WWI was a primary concern of the European Neoliberals. Tracing these concerns helps us understand what WWI was actually about and the role that the World System played in it and continues to play in Geopolitical Alignment.