Neoliberalism it is one of the most complicated concepts among those that were coined in the 20th century. This is because it can be used both to describe the theories of two Post-War economic schools , the School from Chicago – represented by Milton Friedman – and the School Austrian – represented by Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises – and to qualify political practices from different countries implemented between the 1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, this concept was (and still is today) used by analysts on the left and right of the political-ideological scenario. As an example of this, both a Marxist intellectual and the Englishman Perry used this concept. Anderson , and the Brazilian José Guilherme Merquior , more in line with the liberal tradition.
However, to better understand what neoliberalism is, let's move on to the context of the post-war political-economic debate.
The Post-War and Mont Pèlerin Society
After Monday War World (1939-1945), the predominant political-economic model in Western Europe, especially in Great Britain, was that of social democracy, which produced the structure of the Welfare State. Social (theWelfare State ), in which the prerogative prevailed that the State should command the economy and manage resources to support citizens in areas such as health, education, housing, etc.
In addition, unions also exerted strong pressure on economic dynamics. At the same time, in the United States – a country that emerged from the Second World War as a dominant Western power –, the measures of state intervention in the economy, applied since the 1920s (a procedure that led to the Crisis of 1929 ), gained new impetus with the ideas of economist John M. Keynes and the New Deal policy , by President Franklin D. Roosevelt .
Against this interventionist stance by the State, intellectuals, most of them economists and/or sociologists, from different parts of the world, had in common the revision of the tradition of the liberalism classic – in force in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among them were Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Karl Popper, George Sitgler, among others. On April 1, 1947, under Hayek's command, these intellectuals gathered in Switzerland for the first conference of Mont Pèlerin , which gave rise to theMont Pèlerin Society , a brotherhood that deals with liberal ideas and the dynamics of the market economy.
The prestige that men like Hayek and Friedman (both won the Nobel Prize in economics years later) had from the 1970s onwards, especially in influencing governments such as those of Ronald Reagan , in the USA, and by Margaret Thatcher , in Great Britain, ended up being criticized by leftist intellectuals, defenders of state interventionism and the Welfare State. It was the journalistic echo generated by the position of these critics that generated the nickname “neoliberal”.
“Right” and “Left” Critiques of Neoliberalism
In general, left-wing criticism of neoliberalism focuses on aspects of economic policy such as:the process of privatization (or privatization) of companies, changes in labor and union legislation (with aimed at diminishing the power of unions), austerity measures such as cuts in social assistance programs, etc. These policies were not always applied in a “pure” way by governments considered “neoliberal”. In Brazil itself, one of the precursors of the privatization of public companies, Fernando Collor de Mello , also carried out one of the most serious acts of state intervention in the history of Brazil:the confiscation of savings.
On the other hand, the term “neoliberalism” was also criticized by representatives of liberalism in the second half of the 20th century, partly for the pejorative tone of the concept and, on the other hand, for the The fact that this concept does not account for the various segmentations of the liberal tradition of that period, such as that of libertarianism from Murray Rothbard – descendant of the Austrian School –, of liberalism sociological from Raymond Aron and Ernest Gellner , from liberalism conservative from Michael Oakeshott , among others.
*Image Credits:Shutterstock and David Fowler