Post-Neoliberalism

Pathways for Transformative Economics and Politics

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MAGA, the Job Guarantee, and Post-Neoliberal Public Knowledge

Jakob Feinig

The surge of far-Right populism is enabled by a particular form of public knowledge – one shaped by the assumption that we are all part of a mechanism we can neither understand nor change: The Market. An effective counter-strategy is to cultivate forms of economic knowledge that enable democratic publics to see the market as an intelligible entity they can understand and change, knowledge that allows people to think about prices, money, and work as malleable forms of collective organization that they can steer towards a shared and inclusive welfare. An ethos of untested feasibilities, not New Deal nostalgia, should guide such post-neoliberal projects.

20 December 2024. Rubric 3
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Trump Wins While Americans Vote for Progressive Policies

Pavlina Tcherneva

In this Levy Economics Institute Policy Note, EDI Founding Director Pavlina Tcherneva describes a growing disconnect between economists’ and everyday peoples’ assessments of the economic situation. If the Presidential election was a rebuke of the Democratic Party’s economic messaging and policy, ballot measures demonstrated that a majority of Americans, even in Red states, support progressive policies.

11 November 2024. Rubric 1
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Can the Global South Prosper While the Neoliberal Order Is on Edge?

Anastasia Nesvetailova & Herman Mark Schwartz

Drawing on the United Nations’ 2024 Trade and Development Report, released today, Anastasia Nesvetailova (Head, Macroeconomic and Development Policies Branch, UN Trade and Development – UNCTAD) and Herman Mark Schwartz (Professor of Politics, University of Virginia) argue that as the current geopolitical economic order is unraveling, it is apparent that neither manufacturing, nor export-led growth, nor relative global security, have managed to deliver widespread wellbeing. With their disappearance, the prospects are even grimmer. For a new pathway to emerge, innovative approaches to structural transformation, industrial policies, financial governance and climate crisis, are essential.

29 October 2024. Rubric 6
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From Neoliberal to Authoritarian: The New Playbook of Higher Education

Noëlle McAfee

Neoliberal politics and tactics have come to be signature themes in higher education over the past 40 years, accompanied by the steady decimation of one of its pillars: shared governance. But of late something new seems to be afoot. Anyone watching the news this past spring could hardly avoid images of police in full riot gear descending on student protesters. Is this a reversal of neoliberalism or a new chapter in it?

24 October 2024. Rubric 2
a tangled pile of rusty chains, photo in black and white

How the Taxpayer Myth Gives Life to the Neoliberal Agenda

Eric Tymoigne

The taxpayer-driven narrative is not only politically reactionary and mentally stifling, but also reflects an incorrect understanding of federal government finances, economic facts, and logic. Such a narrative strongly influences the policy agenda; it frames issues and debates in a particular way, it restricts possible solutions and it marginalizes the voice of a significant portion of the population. Removing the taxpayers’ money narrative is one step toward improving the inclusivity of the democratic process and re-centering the public purpose in the policy making process.

08 October 2024. Rubric 5
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Growing Pains: Climate Change and the Socialist Transformation

Enzo Rossi

Both degrowth and ecomodernism share a commitment to democratic planning, but their competing narratives have been distorted by an over-reliance on speculative empirics and the allure of conflicting aesthetics. To overcome this, we must focus on developing a practical vision that combines elements from both camps, while replacing utopian visions with a strategy that builds outwards from concrete local struggles to democratise the economy.

02 October 2024. Rubric 6
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What Comes After Neoliberalism? Big Tech and Asset Managers as the New Rentiers

Panos Tsoukalis

Capitalism has changed in a way that is rendering the label ‘neoliberalism’ outdated. The increasing economic and political prominence of Big Tech and asset management corporations has transformed contemporary capitalism in several ways. Most crucially, it has brought the dominance of rent over profit, of appropriation over production. This has affected the fundamental logic of our political economy, thus placing the survival of capitalism in doubt.

25 September 2024. Rubric 3
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The Weaponization of Victimhood

Lilie Chouliaraki

Victimhood has always been a powerful vocabulary in the struggle for justice. Recently, however, in a paradoxical reversal, claims to victimhood are used by the privileged as a strategy for fortifying their positions of power. In an interview with Albena Azmanova, Lilie Chouliaraki addresses what she calls ‘the politics of pain’, discusses the way neoliberalism has enabled the reversal of victimhood, stresses the danger of confusing victimhood with structural vulnerability and advises strategies for countering the weaponisation of victimhood.

04 September 2024. Rubric 2
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Labour’s Ambitious Plans for UK Prosperity Require a Fiscal Re-Set

Josh Ryan-Collins

The Labour party’s victory presents an opportunity to reduce economic injustice and take decisive action to address climate change. And yet, the defunct neoliberal approach to fiscal policy threatens to needlessly hamstring these efforts. The fiscal rules Labour has set for itself may have helped them win the election, but they reflect a misunderstanding of the UK’s public financing institutional arrangements. Throwing off this fiscal straightjacket will be key to successfully implementing its policy agenda.

05 August 2024. Rubric 5
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Undoing Empire’s Hold on Democracy: An Anti-Imperialist Path out of the Crisis

Inés Valdez

The rise of populism in western democracies has much to do with the crumbling of the imperial bargain – it is a covert demand to restore it. Wealthy democracies were enabled by a capital-labour alliance in favour of growing prosperity, itself achieved through the imperialist subjugation of colonized peoples. The post-colonial order has not eliminated western democracies’ addiction to imperialism – it has only spawned new forms of subjugation, extraction and exploitation. The contemporary rise of racist populism is thus a grievance against the crumbling of the post-colonial order and the distributive pact western publics obtained by way of globalizing capitalism. If a truly democratic world is to emerge from the demise of neoliberalism, western societies need to purge themselves from their deep-seated imperialist habits and challenge domestic and global capitalism.

26 July 2024. Rubric 2
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Predatory Optimism

Mary Wrenn

Neoliberalism has proven to be resilient to criticism and counter-movements, particularly in the United States which is home to a deep and troubled history of can-do optimism and rugged individualism. Self-care through consumption, ‘perseverance porn’, and corporatized feminism offer striking examples of neoliberalism neutralizing all resistance. Despite neoliberalism’s durability, community has been and continues to be the key to humanity’s survival.

05 July 2024. Rubric 7
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Evolution and Revolution in the Field of Economics

James K. Galbraith

In his May 2024 keynote at an international conference in memory of Luigi Pasinetti held at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, Professor James Galbraith considers the revolutionary work of Luigi Pasinetti and how far the field of economics has yet to go. By connecting Pasinetti’s work to that of his predecessors (e.g., Keynes, Commons, Veblen, and Robinson), Galbraith emphasizes why mainstream theory is not yet grounded in scientific inquiry or principles. He insists that, far from patching up the flaws of neoclassical economics, it is time to complete the Keynesian revolution by developing a biophysical analytical framework that incorporates Pasinetti’s contributions to our understanding of time, money and distribution.

05 June 2024. Rubric 7
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Splintered Reality: On Identity Politics as De-Emancipation

Evgenii Dainov

In our age of radicalization, identity politics that was meant to protect disadvantaged groups has mutated into a dogma that has devoured the Enlightenment idea of ‘justice for all.’ The political result is de-emancipation, which in turns fuels more resentment, rage and radicalism. We urgently need to reboot the whole agenda of emancipation rooted in that struggle against privilege and for fairness that produced the possibility to be civil to all and enemy to none.

31 May 2024. Rubric 2
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Did We Do MMT During COVID? A Comment on Pavlina Tcherneva’s “Whatever It Takes”

L. Randall Wray

In this comment on Pavlina Tcherneva’s piece, L. Randall Wray examines how the COVID pandemic and subsequent policies reinforced the neoliberal order. He rejects the critics’ claim that the COVID response was informed by MMT and describes what adopting an MMT informed approach to “whatever it takes” would actually look like.

26 April 2024. Rubric 5
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Industrial Policy Is a Good Idea, but So Far We Don’t Have One

James K. Galbraith

In this piece originally published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Galbraith writes about how “The American state has lost the capacity for concentrated and decisive effort at the forefront of technology and the associated science”.

25 April 2024. Rubric 3
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Labour in a Post-Work Society: How Should It Be Organized?

Peter Fleming

Paid employment within the formal economy is facing an uncertain future. Prognoses range from tragic joblessness condemning us to a life of poverty, precarity, and maddening isolation, to lives emancipated from the drudgery of labour. Critical examinations of this post-work condition focus almost solely on the non-work side of the equation (e.g. free time, leisure, etc.). There is little sustained consideration of the work that will remain, who will do it, or how it will be organized.

02 April 2024. Rubric 4
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Whatever It Takes: How Neoliberalism Hijacked the Public Purse

Pavlina Tcherneva

The spectacular government spending post-2008 and post-2020 appeared to upend the neoliberal logic of the past decades, enabling bold public action and opening the door to a more just and democratic social order. Specific policy choices stamped out this opportunity. These pivotal moments did, however, point to policy levers that can facilitate a breakthrough.

01 March 2024. Rubric 5
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A Comment on Albena Azmanova’s “Precarity for All”

Arjun Appadurai

The turn to the populist right, and the implicit rejection of liberal democracy, are a form of doubling down on precarity. Counter to the widespread opinion that the growth of right-wing populism is caused by rising inequality or, alternatively, the need for security and stability in uncertain times, it should be viewed as an expression of a new found popular appetite for risk, transferred from the economy to politics. Right-wing risk-taking is a by-product of financialization and the revolution of rising expectations that it inflames.

08 February 2024. Rubric 1
Phillip Medhurst - Apocalypse 5, Opening the Seals, Wikimedia Creative Commons, attribution share-alike 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apocalypse_5._Opening_the_seals._Revelation_cap_6_v_9-11._Mortier%27s_Bible._Phillip_Medhurst_Collection.jpg

Entropy, the Theory of Value and the Future of Humanity

James K. Galbraith

In a keynote address to a conference on “Geopolitical Changes” at Kozminski University, Warsaw, on January 29, 2024, Professor James Galbraith called for economics to break with equilibrium dogma and re-found itself on the life principles that govern physics, biology and every existing mechanical and social system. Noting the distinguished presence of Professors Francis Fukuyama and E.S. Phelps, Galbraith called attention to the spectacular fallacies of “an end to history” and a “natural rate of unemployment,” arguing that these doctrines have helped blind our generation to the damage inflicted by rising resource costs and neoliberal policies of austerity and precarity, with dire consequences for households in wealthy societies, for their reproduction rates, and for the long-term viability of the species.

02 February 2024. Rubric 7
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How Capitalism Deforms the Logic of Work – and How to Reclaim It

Lisa Herzog

Work can be a source of identity and meaning, empowering people to be self-confident citizens, willing to stand up for themselves and others – but only if it is not subjected to the logic of capitalism, but to that of democracy. To counter the pressures of competitiveness and profitability that harm our relation to work, infusing it with precarity and inequality, we need solid social protections, a job guarantee, and workplace democracy. 

30 January 2024. Rubric 4
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Polymorphous Populism

Arjun Appadurai

As we witness populist insurgencies across the globe, we must ask why has the Left been so inept, and the Right so masterful, at capturing the terrain of emotion – anger, passion, love, desire. We must move away from the ‘hydraulic theory’, in which the rise of the Right is directly connected to the decline of the Left and ask, instead, which particular demagogic claims find emotional resonance among ordinary people in as different contexts as Trump’s America and Modi’s India. What makes them equally propitious terrains for the capture of the anti-democratic psyche?

10 January 2024. Rubric 1
Portrait of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)

Will Austerity and Precarity Finish Off the Human Species?

James K. Galbraith

The ultimate fate of a human society rests on its ability and willingness to reproduce itself over the long run. The combination between population decline and increase in longevity that is typical for wealthy societies can have consequences far more destructive than the explosion of a few bombs, writes James Galbraith. Growing economic insecurity exacerbates these tendencies. Yet the economics of the decision to reproduce has been of marginal interest to economists.

30 November 2023. Rubric 6
Black and white photo of cabin on a cliff

Precarity for All

Albena Azmanova

An epidemic of precarity has beset our societies. This is a condition of vulnerability — disempowerment rooted in social threats to lives, livelihoods and lifeworlds. It is experienced as incapacity to cope due to a discrepancy between responsibilities and power, between our growing obligations and the deficient abilities or resources we have to fulfill them. Precarity has become omnipresent — it is a transversal social injustice that cuts across differences in social class, education, employment, and income. Ubiquitous precarity is thus the hallmark of the 21st century. It harms people’s material and psychological welfare and hampers society’s capacity to manage adversity and govern itself. Precarity is politically produced and therefore can be undone. Will the precarious multitude find its way out of neoliberalism’s quagmire?

29 November 2023. Rubric 1
Aerial of a river

A Comment on Dani Rodrik’s “New Paradigm for Economic Policy”

James K. Galbraith

Galbraith argues that the neoclassical doctrine has taken over mainstream economics to the point where the two cannot be separated.  With this in mind, he challenges Rodrik’s argument that his “productivism” can be “mainstream,” except to the extent that the ideas are in fact neoclassical, which in key respects they are.  He further argues that Rodrik’s goals — good jobs at fair wages — can be pursued effectively only outside the mainstream/neoclassical paradigm, with or without its productivist variation.

21 November 2023. Rubric 7
Black and white image of the internals of a factory

Robert Reich, in Interview: Bringing Industrial Policy Back In

Robert Reich

As the faith in free trade withers, industrial policy is back in. Robert Reich traces the shifting views on industrial policy among the US political class since the Great Crash of 1929, surveys the damage the free trade dogma has done over the past four decades, and discusses the economic revolution President Biden has launched. As the imperative of competitiveness in the global economy persists, how far can we really deviate from the neoliberal policy formula of free markets and open economies? And what else can we do to stay the course?

20 November 2023. Rubric 3
A couple on a tight rope between buildings

Insecurity, Not Inequality

Ian Shapiro

The advent of populist politics has much more to do with the rise of insecurity than with the growth of inequality. The vast majority of working people are facing growing vulnerability and downward mobility. Understanding this is vital for finding the best political response. Economists who focus exclusively on inequality, and particularly income and wealth at the top, do the left a disservice.

19 November 2023. Rubric 1
Low-angle photograph of skyscrapers

A New Paradigm for Economic Policy and the Role of Mainstream Economics

Dani Rodrik

‘Productivism’ is a new approach to economic policy that prioritizes the dissemination of productive economic opportunities throughout all regions of the economy and segments of the labor force. In contrast to neoliberalism, it gives governments a significant role in achieving that goal. In contrast to the Keynesian welfare state, it focuses less on redistribution, social transfers, and macroeconomic management. And unlike both neoliberalism and Keynesianism, it is more skeptical towards technocrats and less hostile to populism in the economic sphere. Mainstream economics can be this paradigm’s ally, rather than its enemy.

18 November 2023. Rubric 7