I am personally for radical direct democracy, nothing less, nothing more, because I view the political as trumping the economic, feel free to purge me once the revolution is there but I am interested if there are other “alternative” takes
I am personally for radical direct democracy, nothing less, nothing more, because I view the political as trumping the economic, feel free to purge me once the revolution is there but I am interested if there are other “alternative” takes
The political flows out of the economics not the other way around, political philosophy is sustained and actualized by the political economy that underlies it, otherwise it’s just worldbuilding
Engels, Anti-Dühring (1877)
it’s your opinion, to me political institutions do, or at least can, meaningfully constrain the economy and its form, it is political will that led to the construction of soc democracies and to a non inclusion of the ussr in the market economy. On your edit, there are little to no natural laws, I reject that classical consensus, same reason I am not a marxist, I do not agree with the theory from Smith and Riccardo already, you might disagree or call me a post modernist but they still do not describe well today’s world
The ruling class did not buy into social democracy because it politically made sense, it didn’t, they bought in because of the material promises of Keynesian economic theory applied to macroeconomies in the post war era, it gave them a means to sustain their social position and wealth, it gave them a economic and material counter to the promises of soviet transitional state capitalism
But just like the economics of Keynesianism made social democracy it also broke it, it undermined the political institutions that you claim could constrain and form it, and this is the problem with “modernists”, history and data don’t meaningfully exist in your conception of social organization, so you just end up asserting idealistic narratives that are constantly contradicted by what we observe, which is neoliberalism distilled
neoliberalism is the epitome of politics over the economy since it doesn’t make sense for the continuity of either the institutions or the economy, in Europe for exemple, but the whole political class now was in school in the 90s and so internalized austerity and personal responsibility into its worldview, I do look at data and history, just beyond a sole economic or materialist view
Incorrect, neoliberalism as a historical phenomenon is the triumph of capital mobility over the constraining national politics of the westphalian nation-states, it is capital economism bursting out like a Xenomorph to devour all political and social barriers to the accumulation of capital, neoliberalism was born in the midst of the capital strikes of the 70’s and only fully realized politically half a decade later in the electoral victories of Thatcher and Reagan
Again your political institutions stood no chance when the political economy underlying it revolted against the social and political assumptions of said institutions
that’s your opinion, its reproduction is clearly through institutional biases and an avowed powerlessness of the state, yes it coincides with capital, through ideology as much as material conditions in the past, and now almost solely as ideology, neoliberalism in Germany, France or Spain is not a necessity for capital since government contracts are their own incentive to keep a strong state and taxation, it is will by ideologues to have reality conform to their neat ideas about the world, same with the ecb who doesn’t want inflation, it is not because of any material circumstance, it is just a bias towards the monetary doctrine borne out of, again, their education, and so the political, since it is not the sole capitalist doctrine
This is almost incomprehensible compared to the political economy over the political thesis.
in all honesty i do believe that every single part of the human system matters, but that for political purposes the political takes precedence or at least can, I am definitely not just a materialist though since i consider ideas and most importantly institutions, if equal weight, it is messy because it is fragmented and would take a full novel or more to outline everything
If ideas are so central to the rise of neoliberalism, why was it implemented more or less simultaneously in multiple ideologically independent regions of the world?