> "With results like these, what will the epitaph for neoliberalism look like? I think historians will conclude it was a form of capitalism that systematically prioritized political imperatives over economic ones. Given a choice between a course of action that would make capitalism seem the only possible economic system, and one that would transform capitalism into a viable, long-term economic system, neoliberalism chooses the former every time. "
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> That's just not true. "Neoliberalism" used the power of the state, among other things, to raise profits and upper class incomes. It's been very very successful on its own terms. To say otherwise is strange.
I agree with you on this, generally if not in the particulars. It's disheartening to see Graeber endorse the Harvey/Klein subtractive/passive line on the state's role in "neoliberalism." (Though he probably follows the Baffler's editorial preferences in doing so. Know the publication you are writing for, etc.) He clings, as many anarchists do, to rationalist ways of thinking. The state was extremely active during neoliberalism, just not in the usual ways. I don't understand the political upshot of thinking (pretending?) otherwise.
And the idea that neoliberalism saw the rise of politics over economics is just odd. I've always thought just the opposite, where states themselves become, partially at least, enterprises guided by economic calculation more than political efficiency.
To me neoliberalism was so successful that right now states can't act as stimulative motors for the economy in anything like the way the used to be able to, which I bet you disagree with strenuously.
>But he also thinks Bush invaded Iraq to derail the antiglobo movement.
Not knowing what the Bush admin was thinking, and the overdetermined way these things are, well, determined, this is a great unknown. But if you take antiglobo in a very large sense, Graeber's thesis is not at all unreasonable.