>
> > I disagree with the assumption that
> >populist/keynesian/welfarist programs --- essentially ameliorative and
aimed
> >at damping down class conflict --- should be seen as more
left/progressive
> >than neoliberalism.
Doug asked:
> Why? Could you expand on that?
Because, IMO, we're talking about a "good cop, bad cop" routine. Both (1) mid-20th C. conservatism (of which the Japanese LDP appears to be the last major bastion) with its adopted keynesianism, and (2) neo-liberalism serve(d) the interests of capital, in different ways. (1) primarily seeks to preserve existing social relations from the percieved threat of social disorder, i.e. by sacrificing some accumulation (to increased taxes) in the short-term, in order to preserve accumulation in general. Whereas, from the 1980s onwards, (2) used widespread disenchantment in the industrialised world, with the macroeconomic failures of left and right keynesianism, as its cue to roll back the welfare state etc.
I perhaps have slightly different perspective on this because of geography. And what I think has clouded the issue is that neoliberalism was first and most prominently instituted by politicians with conservative social agendas/policies: Pinochet, Thatcher, Reagan, et al. Not everywhere, though. By the late 80s the New Zealand Labour Party government, under finance minister Roger Douglas (father of the aptly-named "rogernomics"), was perhaps _the_ paragon of the neoliberal revolution, with terrible and almost immediate fallout in terms of poverty, crime and other social disorder. The Australian Labor Party was not far behind --- in what was called here "economic rationalism". However, the bigger revenue base of Australian governments enabled the ALP to recognise (to a much a greater extent than the NZLP) and combine things like privatisation/deregulation with increased social spending --- what Paul Keating called the "social wage".
regards,
Grant.