Re: <nettime> Troll factories in some shitty St Petersburg office?

[Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldrift@gmail.com>]

On 03/18/2018 04:04 PM, Eric Beck wrote:
> Neoliberalism is not really an institution-conceived and -directed 
> thing like you seem to think. To the extent that the term usefully 
> describes anything, it would apply to a more or less improvised set of 
> policy and political responses to both the economic downturn of 1973-82 
> and worldwide resistance and refusal. 

I hear you. Once I tried to retrace in detail the different forces that 
led to the Volcker interest-rate shock and so-called "monetary turn" in 
'81-82 (basically the beginning of contemporary financialization) and 
while it was possible to identify a lot of the major theoretical and 
policy inputs, there were also important twists that no one, or at 
least, very few seem to have expected. Plus all that was bipartisan, 
Volcker himself was a democrat, the Council on Foreign Relations which 
was so influential in those years was certainly liberal not 
conservative, so I would also agree that partisan political divides are 
not very good keys for analyzing political economy. Although there was a 
clear demand for a new doctrine from the owners of capital after '68 and 
even more intensely after the stagflation began in the early '70s, still 
it took two decades for the neoliberal doctrine to become such common 
sense that former social-democrats like Clinton and Blair could perfect 
its imposition on their own countries and most of the world, and get 
re-elected for doing so.

Right now (agreeing with Allan) I think it's so tumultuous that no 
future shape of the global political economy can be foreseen by anybody. 
What's happening is the continuing breakdown of the neoliberal order. 
Its contradictions struck the core countries with full force in 2008 and 
yet its collapse is far from over. Trump, for instance, has no strong 
economic doctrine, nor any workable vision of world order, his 
government is deeply incoherent and now he has kicked out both a major 
representative of global finance (Cohn) and of the top-tier extractive 
industries (Tillerson). What's left is a rabidly pro-industrial, 
anti-environmental, Christian fundamentalist/white supremacist gang of 
hip-shooting sycophants who stoke all the regressive political passions 
of an outdated and declining national-capitalist society.

Just to finish the point, if you want to retrace how a strong neoliberal 
doctrine did emerge, in addition to the stuff on Mont Pelerin that Kevin 
cites and you likely know, I'd follow his lead and check out the book 
Democracy in Chains, which tells how the economist and ideologue James 
Buchanan developed his ideas and found the people to spread and 
implement them. This process took longer than ten years, but still, it 
didn't just happen after the fact. Over decades, Buchanan's evolving 
ideas and those of his peers helped give the system the coherency to 
produce the new facts of financially driven globalization As Jonathan 
says, "This is also what we might expect from a theory of praxis. It 
develops, it is not born completely well thought out."

> It is remarkable, though, that you can write mellifluously about Russia 
> and Trump and psy-ops etc., but end up not having a single word to say 
> about the fact that the fascist US president and his coterie are working 
> on many fronts with the Russian state and its offshoots on reviving a 
> pan-Western traditionalism that is racist, sexist, antiqueer, and 
> eugenicist. That stuff is less sexy than brainwashing is, but it hits 
> people where they live and comprises the actual content that's being 
> whispered into people's ears.

There's a lot to say about that without a doubt, it's just not what I 
was trying to get at in a few short words. Also I'm not repeating what's 
said in the press about the threat that Russia poses to our democracy, 
blah blah blah. The point is that the far bigger threat comes from 
inside US capitalism. I am talking about a juncture where formal 
democracy of the kind we have known for a long time - with all its 
inequities and iniquities - either asserts itself institutionally or it 
is pushed aside in favor of an authoritarian order, potentially under 
the cover of war. To agree a bit with Angela, the neoliberal inheritance 
in all this does not come from Trump and certainly not from Bannon, but 
from Mercer and his daughter - billionnaire oligarchs who emerged from 
the world of computerized finance that was built by the theorists of 
Mont Pelerin (including Buchanan), the bankers and traders of London, 
New York, Chicago and Tokyo, and all those in government who saw them as 
the geese that lay the golden eggs. The plan that really does stretch 
from the Powell memo to today is that of restoring the class privilege 
of uncontested ownership of both financial and industrial capital, 
against the social-democratic transformations that began in the '30s 
with a very different set of doctrines including collective/state 
ownership and regulation. Yet as you point out, reality is a complex and 
chaotic mix of social forces, and Mercer's bid to buy covert 
computerized control over the political process is producing unforseen 
and unwanted consequences, just as the Koch support of the Tea Party 
also did. Populism is definitely not part of the classic, Buchanan-style 
playbook, and fascism even less, although a covert appeal to white 
supremacy definitely is part of it.

I think that as that appeal ceases to be covert, the neoliberal period 
is ending. The forces of contestation from many different levels of 
civil society are really tremendous, and they've kept growing in 
different phases since 2008. They stoke a conservative backlash which is 
equally impressive (or depressive). Given the global drift toward 
authoritarianism, if Trump were to survive political neutralization and 
impeachment, it is possible that some new figure of capitalism could be 
shaped in his wake over the next decade. Mercer, the Kochs and the other 
oligarchs who have emerged from the neoliberal period would undoubtedly 
have a lot of influence in such a case. But still, what ultimately 
crystallizes cannot be just a more authoritarian version of Mont 
Pelerin. As in every major crisis, the system has to change some of its 
fundamental tenets in order to keep others intact. We haven't mentioned 
the rise of Asia, or climate change - two other forces pushing 
inexorably for a system reset.

I don't reckon Trump will survive the present challenge with enough 
political capital to help constitute any kind of future hegemony. The 
reason is, neither he or any fascist can solve enough real problems to 
keep the system afloat. Still he's got this far and the threat is real. 
Whether the resolution of the current leadership crisis will really 
produce any reform of the networked media system and the public sphere 
it helps structure (or destructure) is anyone's guess. I'm not one of 
those who believes it has to get worse before it can get better. It 
could easily get worse and then get worser. Even if you don't think we 
live in a real democracy, still the institutional struggle has objective 
consequences.

Anyway, it's great if people contradict me and put forth other ideas. 
There's a lot more to cover - in terms of political theory, social 
network manipulation, neofascist ideology, changing international 
alignments, and the list goes on. I wanted to spark this debate because 
it helps everyone understand what's happening.

best, Brian




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