Just a footnote. Why "neoliberal capitalism" rather than "capitalism"?
Carrol Cox
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I could have avoided it, but it was actually intentional. Re-reading the post, perhaps your right. There is something annoying about the term and its repetition. But...
According to current doxology, the capitalism we have now is not like that rigid, dreary, monolithic old capitalism of iron, coal, railroads, Karl Marx, and Emile Zola. Where are those smells of iron oxide, acrid coal dust, petroleum distillates, the oily printer's ink, the vast droning of presses stamping out the steel, stamping out the words, stamping out the dollars?
No, it's all new, liquid, mercurial, and in this bountiful effervescent largess, capitalism has completely bubbled over the old black lettered political needs of a public commons with its own phosphorescent wonders and freedom loving markets.
So it's called neoliberal, because it has eradicated the former needs of liberal society and substituted those of a total capitalist society, hence neoliberal capitalism, the new liberalism of capital.
And then too, Capitalism isn't enough, because of the implication that there is life somewhere beyond Capital, some enclave that isn't completely consumed by petty economic transactions and insidious merchandising. Not so with Neoliberal Capitalism. There is nothing beyond its transactional reach and merchandising grasp.
Sure I don't buy it entirely. But hell, naming it Capitalism sounds so, como se dice, dusty.
I assume you would argue that things haven't changed, but from my perspective they have.
Here is an example. There is a small school a block down from the shop in the now post-industrial area where I work. It was probably built in the forties or fifties. I am sure it was intended to be an elementary school because of its size and the small area of its playground. It faces the railroad tracks and is across the street from what had been a factory.
Now it is a middle school with kids that are too big and need a lot more room to run around. The rail line is rusting in place and slowly being covered over by road debris. The factory disappeared and was replace by a parking lot and a complex of offices running computerized business services of various sorts. It's not doing well because a lot of the offices are empty.
Meanwhile the school isn't doing well either. It went from two grade levels to three. The playground is so packed the kids can't do anything except play basketball with one basket or stand around in little groups behind their giant chain link fence---looking like refugees. This year they are back to uniforms giving the whole scene a prison look.
For several years while the old industrial area was transformed into fashion conscious dotcom office spaces, the school district was so broke it was literally taken over by the state and held in receivership. Now they are both in some surreal limbo facing each other in a mute stand off. The gleaming office spaces lay empty behind tinted glass and designer facades, and the school is crammed with kids behind rusting fences, and the never generous playground was reduced with temporary pre-fabs. The pre-fabs have ramps, but I've never seen a disabled kid there. Needless to say the kids are all black and the offices are all white. I use this route to test drive the power chairs I fix.
So in my mind this scene captures the difference between capitalism and neoliberal capitalism. The school gets smaller and smaller, more and more kids are crammed behind rusting fences and surrounded by vast stretches of a glittering emptiness and waste, built in a frenzy for the new wave of electric capital that never arrived. Meanwhile in the foreground a former UCB art major drives (very slowly) by in an endlessly repaired power wheelchair owned by some old lady institutionalized on Medicare.
Chuck Grimes