Neoliberal lives

Work, politics, nature, and health in the contemporary United States

Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson, Mark Hudson

• Editorial: Manchester University Press
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526110213
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Politique et relations internationales
• Categoría: Politique comparée

This book is about the transformation of America that has occurred over the past thirty-five years, as capitalist logic has expanded into previously protected spheres of life. This expansion has had devastating effects on the potential for human development. Looking at how human beings create themselves and their worlds on material foundations of health and the natural environment, through work and politics, the book chronicles how neoliberalism has limited human potential. At a time when neoliberalism's effects are stirring various forms of popular resistance and opposition, this is a manifesto of sorts for the range of processes that need to be confronted if human potential is to be freed from the increasingly cramped quarters to which neoliberalism has confined it.

1
A political economy for yacht owners

Just up the street from the Musée Picasso, in Antibes, France, a wandering tourist soaking in the Mediterranean atmosphere might stumble upon the Quai des Milliardaires, or at least the “Accès Interdite” sign at its gates. Beyond the sign, the wharves play host to a large proportion of the world's superyachts—generally understood to be pleasurecraft greater than 30 metres in length, but these days often exceeding 50 metres. The biggest sometimes won't fit, like the Octopus, which was owned by Microsoft co-founder, the late Paul Allen, who also owned the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association's Portland Trail Blazers team, and part of the Seattle Sounders Major League Soccer team. The Octopus is 126 metres, and requires a crew of 57 to keep its guests (it can fit 26 of them) comfortable, fed, and watered. Sadly for Mr. Allen, it is only the sixteenth largest superyacht in the world, though it does have a pool, a couple of helicopter pads, and a couple of submarines. Allen also owned a second superyacht (who doesn't need two superyachts?), Tatoosh, which is a more modest size, at a mere 92 metres, but seems more fun, with a movie theatre and a shaded, adjustable-depth swimming pool. For those aspirants who can't quite manage the build costs (estimated at $1 million per metre) and the annual operation (10 percent of the build cost annually), boats like Octopus and Tatoosh can be chartered. Apparently the second-largest superyacht in the world (Eclipse) goes for the bargain rate of $2 million per week, or almost $12,000 per hour. Food, fuel, water, and crew tips are additional, but for the celebrities, the hedge-fund managers, the global financiers, and the other 1 percent of the global population who hold half of its wealth, it's no problem.

Superyachts are operated and crewed in a largely regulation-free context. Crew—normally recently unemployed young adults, looking to pay off university or other debts, or maybe just looking for a taste of luxury-themed adventure and a glimpse of real wealth—are themselves reasonably well-paid, but work with no protections whatsoever. Twenty-hour days are not uncommon in the rigidly gender-divided labor force required to keep the untreated teak decking in top condition, the guests instructed in jet-ski operation, the toilets sparkling, and the drinks filled. Utter discretion is mandatory, as is utter obedience. Unsurprisingly, some owners are reported to be quite friendly and generous. But others are tyrannical, and it's luck of the draw from gig to gig. Crew refer to the yacht owners, in an unfortunate but telling shorthand, as “my owner.” Crew can be fired at a moment's notice without cause (unless “you just don't have the right look” can count as such) and serve utterly at the pleasure of either the owner or the renter. The yachts have also, until very recently, operated with little to no environmental regulation. The superyacht industry battled loudly against US-based regulations in 2016 that would require boats to be equipped with machinery to reduce their considerable nitrogen oxide emissions. With a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of fuel in the tank of a medium-sized superyacht, they are not very light on the carbon emissions, either. The US went through with the emissions regulations unilaterally, while the UN International Marine Organization abandoned its regulatory efforts.

The universe of the superyacht—with a tiny elite competing for status and prestige with one another, holding almost complete power over a dependent and subservient workforce, and operating in a regulatory void—is partially a result of many of the practices falling under the banner of “the neoliberal,” while it simultaneously holds within it the image of a neoliberal utopia. The class divisions that make the superyacht possible, the making of a world in its image, and the consequences for human well-being, are the subjects of this book.

Neoliberalism is an often polarizing term that is as likely to raise hackles as it is to generate sympathy and understanding. Part of the reason that the term “neoliberalism” causes, in some, an instant shiver of discomfort is that it is currently almost exclusively used by its critics, and not always with much specificity. This has allowed some to claim that neoliberalism is nothing but a “knee-jerk slur,” covering a host of different grievances (McWhorter, 2017). No one uses the term neoliberalism and then proceeds to wax poetic about the wonderful utopia created by its policies. It may be overused, and it may lack a single, agreed upon definition, but that does not mean that it is a useless term that means nothing and everything simultaneously. In fact, serious thinkers have given the definition of the term serious consideration.

Our aim is to define and illuminate neoliberalism within a coherent theoretical framework that allows for neoliberalism to be something, but not everything. In addition, we hope to reveal the pernicious effects of neoliberalization on some of the fundamental pillars of human development and flourishing. Through its effects on work, on human health, on our ignorance or enlightenment, on our capacities for politics, and our relations with non-human nature, we argue throughout this book that neoliberalism is stunting the vast majority of us.

Neoliberalism defined

The term has gained sufficient traction to enter the general lexicon. Collins dictionary, for example, defines neoliberalism as “a modern politico-economic theory favouring free trade, privatization, minimal government intervention in business, reduced public expenditure on social services, etc.” This is a list of commonly understood neoliberal policies. However, as Notre Dame economist Philip Mirowski perceptively points out, neoliberalism should not be reduced to a fixed list of “ten commandments, or six tenets,” but is an evolving ideology (Mirowski, 2009). The problem with the Collins definition is that it fails to provide a thread that runs through these policies, or a foundation upon which they are built. There is no obvious logic behind the list, and as such it leaves the term open to the charge of being a grab bag of policies that the Left doesn't like. In A Brief History of Neoliberalism, David Harvey provided a useful start: “Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices” (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). Crucially, this definition highlights the emphasis on individuals’ responsibility for their own economic fate, rather than having the state or any other collective (like a union) influence the distribution of goods and services in society. Neoliberalism is often associated with an expansion of the market both in terms of a retrenchment of the state and in terms of extending markets into places that they had not yet been (Heynen et al., 2007). According to Harvey, neoliberalism “holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market” (Harvey, 2005, p. 3).

Indeed, some of the political-philosophical roots of neoliberalism and some contemporary neoliberal rhetoric suggest that the state should simply withdraw from economic activity to be replaced by the market. Dardot and Laval document how, in fact, this conception of neoliberalism exists only due to the power and effectiveness of a strategic ideological push by early neoliberal theorists like Friedrich von Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, George Stigler, and Milton Friedman (Dardot & Laval, 2013, pp. 159–163). These intellectuals argued that “at bottom, the gulag and taxes were simply two elements on the same ideological continuum” (Dardot & Laval, 2013, p. 162), and so freedom ultimately depended on the strict limitation of the size and scope of the state. Friedman drew the line at 10–15 percent of national product (Friedman, 2003). In fact, it took an extraordinary and coordinated political effort involving intellectual, ideological, and above all political work to transform the state along neoliberal lines.

Despite the anti-government, pro-market rhetoric, the actual role of the state in neoliberalism is surprisingly active. As Mirowski argues, it is misleading to describe the trend towards neoliberal policy as a removal of the intrusive impediments imposed by the state on the natural state of free-market affairs. Mirowski's contribution in revealing this was to trace the “intricately structured long term philosophical and political project” that very deliberately sought to transform “common sense” from the postwar Keynesian consensus to neoliberalism (Mirowski, 2009, p. 426). This involved coordinating theory, funding think tanks, lobbying governments and placing people in important government policy making positions (Mirowski, 2014). David Kotz focuses on the crucial role that the business community played in the transformation to neoliberalism. According to Kotz, although US business may never have been completely enamoured of three pillars of the postwar Keynesian accord—collective bargaining with unions, Keynesian full employment macroeconomic policy, and the welfare state—under considerable pressure from workers, big business, at least, came to accept these three components as inevitable features of the broader policy environment. For reasons we will discuss later in this chapter, the leading members of the business community became disenchanted with this state of economic affairs and very deliberately set out to get neoliberal policies enacted at the state and federal level. As was the case with the coordination of intellectuals detailed by Mirowski, this involved coordinating and disseminating opinions under organizations like the Business Roundtable, funding think tanks and other institutions that supported the preferred policies, like those populated by the academics studied by Mirowski, and influencing political outcomes through campaign donations and lobbying (Kotz, 2015). So, the neoliberal turn was not a result of the better ideas of the free market triumphing over the statist ideas of the postwar accord. Nor was it an inevitable return to the “natural” state of the market from the artificially imposed constraints of the government. Rather, it was a conscious effort by business, and the intellectuals that provided its ideological justification, to transform the role of the state. As Mirowski states about neoliberalism, “the conditions for its existence must be constructed” (Mirowski, 2009, p. 434). Neoliberal theorists have long understood the central role of the state in effecting that construction (see Bourdieu, 2003; Peck, 2010; Dardot & Laval, 2013; Cahill & Konings, 2017).

As Mirowski points out, an important part of neoliberalism is an acknowledgement that the policy environment must be actively created. Yet, the fact that the business community and a group of intellectuals wanted to drive economic policy in a certain direction, and even the ample evidence that they organized to do so, does not inevitably lead to the conclusion that they succeeded in achieving these goals. If they did succeed, we still need to explain why. It is crucial, in this respect, that neoliberalism is understood in the broader context of the capitalist system and the particular historic moment in which it arose. As Cahill and Konings perceptively claim, only then can we understand why neoliberal ideas were embraced not only by business and their supporting intellectuals but much more broadly. The attempts to restructure capitalism after the late 1970s were conditioned and enabled by the economic malaise of the time and the fundamental dynamics of capitalism (Cahill & Konings, 2017).

If the claims about the small state are inaccurate, the emphasis on the market is also misleading. The state's role in neoliberalism is not so much to withdraw as it is to more blatantly side with business. It is true that in many areas neoliberal policy involves a reduction of the state and an increasing reliance on the market. As we shall see in Chapter 2, this is true of labor-market policy, in which context neoliberals argue that the redistributive role of the state, accomplished by regulating a minimum wage or providing income assistance, for example, must be minimized or eliminated. In this realm, the allegedly unstoppable forces of globalization and capital mobility are invoked to convince policy-makers that any active redistribution of income or wealth, or any regulation of wages, will result only in driving away jobs and investment, and hence do damage to those whom government want...