Speculative excess, deregulation, privatization, globalization and all the other features conventionally described under "neoliberalism" are _not_ the result of a "forgetfulness" that has returned us to the 1920s', or to the 1880s'. Rather, the phenomena associated with "neoliberalism" results in the assurance that capital will be bailed out, reregulated, converted to public ownership or protected should the situation become severe enough to demand this. The foundations of the state props installed by social-democratic reformers since the 1930's to promote capitalist accumulation are all still in place. The issue is, who gets to fine-tune the supporting structure, the working class or the capitalists? Since Reagan/Thatcher time, it has been the latter, once they realized in the 1970s' how these could act as a garrote around their own necks. The result today is not that of simple oppositions, but a more or less fine tuned cycle of privatization/nationalization, regulation/deregulation, etc. Lest anyone think, then, that the capitalists have got it all figured out, well, it comes at a price: the destruction of the elements that constitute bourgeois society: the distinction between public and private property, state and civil society (something else we're told we are "returning to" in connection with "neoliberalism"), the market and the plan. In short, our time continues to exhibit one or another of the symptoms of the terminal decline and decay of capitalism that first exploded upon humanity with the First World War and have been with us ever since.
It is impossible for capital to return to the past and still survive in the face of the truly immense development of social labor, unparalleled in history, since the end of WW2. Any real attempt to do so would shortly lead to political revolt, social revolution and the overthrow of capitalism, despite all the pronouncements of the end of socialism and the "death of communism".
The "return" only exists as ideological fantasy - unfortunately all to often reproduced in negative form in the minds of too many leftists .
Mark my word. The (capitalist) state will intervene swiftly if the crisis becomes severe enough, especially if it attains a threatening political dimension. The ideology of "neoliberalism" exists, in part, to prep leftists to give this intervention passive support, and to steer them away from independent political organization.
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA
At 05:20 PM 3/19/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Featured Views Published on Sunday, March 18, 2001 in the Observer
><http://www.observer.co.uk/> of London
>
>How the Market Made Us Stupid