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There is
frequently a confusion over the term “neoliberal” and
“neoliberalism”. It appears that especially in the US political
field, the terms liberal/neoliberal have different meaning, which
often brings misunderstanding between people from different countries
who discuss political issues on the internet.
Here is some
basic information about neoliberalism from Wikipedia:
Neoliberalism
is a term whose usage and definition have changed over time. Since
the 1980s, the term has been used by scholars in a wide variety of
social sciences and critics primarily in reference to the
resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire
economic liberalism. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, its
advocates supported extensive economic liberalization policies
such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade,
and reductions in government spending in order to enhance the role
of the private sector in the economy. Neoliberalism is famously
associated with the economic policies introduced by Margaret
Thatcher in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan in the United
States. The transition of consensus towards neoliberal policies
and the acceptance of neoliberal economic theories in the 1970s
are seen by some academics as the root of financialization, with
the financial crisis of 2007–08 one of the ultimate results.
Neoliberalism
was originally an economic philosophy that emerged among European
liberal scholars in the 1930s in an attempt to trace a so-called
‘Third’ or ‘Middle Way’ between the conflicting
philosophies of classical liberalism and socialist planning. The
impetus for this development arose from a desire to avoid
repeating the economic failures of the early 1930s, which were
mostly blamed on the economic policy of classical liberalism. In
the decades that followed, the use of the term neoliberal tended
to refer to theories at variance with the more laissez-faire
doctrine of classical liberalism, and promoted instead a market
economy under the guidance and rules of a strong state, a model
which came to be known as the social market economy.
In the 1960s, usage of the term
"neoliberal" heavily declined. When the term was
reintroduced in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet’s
economic reforms in Chile, the usage of the term had shifted. It
had not only become a term with negative connotations employed
principally by critics of market reform, but it also had shifted
in meaning from a moderate form of liberalism to a more radical
and laissez-faire capitalist set of ideas. Scholars now tended to
associate it with the theories of economists Friedrich Hayek and
Milton Friedman. Once the new meaning of neoliberalism was
established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it
diffused directly into the English-language study of political
economy. Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been
growing. The impact of the global 2008-09 crisis has also given
rise to new scholarship that critiques neoliberalism and seeks
developmental alternatives.
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Also, the
great documentary "The Shock Doctrine" based on the
corresponding book by Naomi Klein, is a good start on the neoliberal
doctrine:
In 1971,
Nixon ended the direct convertibility of the US dollar to gold, and
as dollar became the global reserve currency, the absolute dominance
of the banksters became definite.
Banks
and big corporations couldn't wait. Just two years later (September
1973), they proceed to another big experiment, so big that it's still
running. Through the U.S.-backed military coup in Chile that ousted
the democratically-elected President Salvador Allende, they establish
a 17-year dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet. Chile became the
first lab-rat of neoliberalism. Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys
advise dictator Pinochet to kill the state and privatize everything.
Chile was occupied by big cartels, US interests companies, people
suffered from poverty and from Pinochet's cruel regime.
IMF,
World Bank and other institutions, were the basic tools for the
invation to other countries during the next decades, and the result
was always mass destruction for the economies. Today, for the first
time, a Western developed area, called eurozone, is being tested.
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