after several very ugly days of working before Thanksgiving,
during which I was also sick, I finally have a couple of days off…
I shall be writing until the cough medicine kicks in and then
off for a nap…
I was just randomly thinking, throwing out idea’s in my head,
when I thought of Neoliberalism…and it got me to thinking,
what exactly is “Neoliberalism”?
Once again, one has to be careful to avoid mixing up
the economic and the political…we see the word “Neoliberal”
and we think because of the word “liberal” it has a political
connotation… but the very word is a economic word, not
a political word… and you have to understand that right from the start…
Neoliberalism is a right wing economic theory…embraced by right wing
thinkers and economist…for examples are Friedrich Hayek and Milton
Friedman and Ronald Raygun and Margret Thatcher and Alan Greenspan…
The Neoliberals favored less regulation, less government intervention,
eliminating price controls, lowering trade barriers and deregulating capital
markets… any of this sounds familiar? this is the basic Republican
message since the 1980’s…and its overarching value is freedom,
although it is a fake freedom and I get into that in a bit…
the basic idea is that the market can best work out its solutions
and the government will only make things worse… basic Raygunomics….
the political aspect was that by making the market free, you will enjoy
greater political freedom… but once again that makes the vital and false
assumption that suggest that freedom is connected to the economic and
not to the political… whereas as I have suggested, we are facing an economic
tyranny, not a political tyranny…and by giving such freedom to the economic
forces without any oversight, we allow those economic forces to control
and dominate our lives…
Now Neoliberalism does want an overall one world because it
will allow them to dominate the world economically and it
doesn’t really matter what the political status is because the
the economic can control the political as shown by the example
of the United States where we have the economic forces in
control of the government, not government of the people, for
the people by the people, but government of business, for business
and by business…and that is where we are at now…
and this is due to the complete capture of all the world’s government
by Neoliberalism…… and the basic failure of the concept of
Neoliberalism is that the Market forces that is supposed to be
open and free to act as it will, doesn’t… it is directed by those
economic forces to do the will of the dominating forces of Neoliberalism…
the enemy is not a political term, but the enemy is the economic
domination of Neoliberalism…let is take for example the massive
and overwhelming concentration of wealth, income inequality that
exists today… that is due to the Neoliberals economic policy…
8 people hold more wealth then half the world put together…
and if that isn’t complete and total dictatorship, then I don’t know what
is…if we allow this complete privatization of the public sphere, then
then how is the people, us, suppose to have control in our lives?
if the big corporations have complete control, then they have
no reason, no incentive to listen or engage with those who must
have their services… we have a dozen monopolies that dominate
the economic world… for example, exactly how many car companies are they?
not that many… we have 14 major global corporation that control more
then 60 auto brands in the world… we have 6 corporations that control
over 90% of American media… we have 5 companies that make the
breakfast cereal you eat… at every level, the corporations dominate
the economics life you lead…the solution it is said, is to vote with
your feet… but you can’t… where do we go to if every aspect of our lives
is dominated by only a few corporations?
we cannot quit our job because every single corporation is controlling
our fate by belonging to this Neoliberalism that has taken over
the earth…the economic domination and by controlling the
economic, they dominate the political…for example, the Koch
brothers simply buying up entire state legislatures, Wisconsin
and Nebraska for example…this buying and selling of our political
“leaders” and I use the word “leaders” loosely, has meant we have forfeited
any possible means to recover our lost political and economic freedom…
the corporations can dominate us by a simple demands that is followed
by the threat of leaving the city, state or country… and us losing those jobs…
for example, if you don’t give us complete autonomy over our taxes, we will simply pack
our bags and leave… and you will lose all your jobs…
we are completely at the mercy of big corporations if, if we accept the
notion that human beings are “Homo Economicus” but if we reject that notion
and discover that human beings are not economic beings, not even political
beings, but being who find their meaning outside of the economic
and outside of the political… we find our meaning in what makes us
more complete human beings…
at this point, I suspect that we must completely tear down
the system and rebuild it to better represent us as human beings…
Neoliberalism makes the economic the most important aspect
of our lives… and that is the beginning of the failure of Neoliberalism…
it begins at the very wrong start and end in the wrong place…
Neoliberalism doesn’t make the individual the center of
its theory, no, Neoliberalism makes the Market the center
and thus like communism and Catholicism and Christianity
makes the individual a secondary part of the overall
plan in which we are simply pawns to be used in some
overall scheme… we are sacrificial lambs in the eyes
of the market, of god, of dialectical materialism…
the individual has no other function then to serve its
master, regardless of the name of that master,
be it Neoliberalism or communism or Catholicism…
and we must reject that notion… but what is the solution?
how do we find “salvation”?
and by “salvation”, I would suggest is freedom from the various
ism’s and ideologies that seek to dominate and control our individual
lives…how are we suppose to “become who we are” if we are subject
to the domination of our corporate masters?
the first step is as always, become aware… understand what is happening…
what is the real value in your life? is it love or understanding or
finding justice or finding truth? the answer lies in how do we achieve
that value given the domination of the Neoliberal domination of our world…
the search for profits has devalued, dehumanized our values, be it love
or justice or truth and that is where we are today…we need to recover
that search for what it means to be human and that search isn’t about
profits or our being able to buy a new car or a new TV… no, “becoming who
you are” isn’t an economic or a political solution but an individual solution
and once you have discovered what it means to be human individually,
then and only then can you venture out into the world and try to create
the change that is necessary to recover our planet from the damaging
and destructive ism that is Neoliberalism…
Kropotkin