Neo Marxism and Neo liberalism

G86

Am I right in saying that neo liberalism is based on the old liberal beliefs and is a tool for capitalists? How does it correalate with neo marxism?

I'm just trying to get a grasp of this for a presentation, thanks for any help

Ostrom

It doesnt at all. Marx's major works are critiques of classical liberal theory (Ricardo, Smith...), amongst other schools of thought. What do you mean exactly by neo-marxism? The term neo-liberal is descriptive, used to show continuity/demonstrate parallels. l'm not sure to what extent you could describe it as a conscious strategy in those terms.

DadaKopf

They're not comparable. But they have a common historical pedigree.

Neo-liberalism is, broadly speaking, as efla described it. Although, it's also a historically specific, contemporary set of political-economic ideas.

Neo-Marxism, as I have read about it, refers to a bunch of developments in the marxian analysis that emerged around the 1970s. As more orthodox marxian ideas seemed less able to map a more complex world, new explanations economy and politics were developed. Marxian thought also expanded to incorporate culture. It became more nuanced. Names which emerged include Nicos Poulantzas, Ralph Miliband, Claus Offe and Jurgen Habermas.

But their common lineage is, roughly speaking, the political and economic crises in rich countries from the late 1960s to 1980s. Both liberal and marxian traditions sought to explain and develop solutions for what was going on at the time. In fact, in terms of liberal democratic theory, both neo-liberal and neo-marxist scholars reached a point of consensus before thing again split under the offensive mounted by the neo-liberals.

I've heard some people refer to newer variants of left-wing theory and practice as 'neo-marxist'. To me, this implies that marxism has not changed since Marx wrote Capital in the 1800s. Not true. But there has been another mutation of the marxian tradition in recent years that has returned to some of the new ideas that emerged in the 1960s, but the left has also embraced anarchism, indigenous rights, and far out post-foundationalist left philosophy.

Vichy

In my opinion, Neo-Liberalism has evolved basically as a branch of the New Left, with its anti-authoritarian notions, preference for decentralization and a sort of aimless, piecemeal interventionism which ends up being Quasi-Fascist in practice. It is important to point out that Neo-Liberalism is not 'capitalist', at least in the sense of laissez-faire. When the left recoiled from the totalitarian implications of a State-enforced anti-property egalitarianism - Bolshevik's, here's looking at you - the Old Left Stalinists got shut down. Neo-Liberalism is, basically, inconsistent liberalism.

Neo-Marxists are basically two groups: 1) the historians and 2) the idiots. Neo-Marxist historians are basically engaged in historical revisionism, partly in an attempt to save Marxism from its history but also in an honest attempt to discover what went wrong, and why it did. Gabriel Kolko is an excellent example. The Idiots are basically vulgar marxists who have rejected the State-Communism (or State-Capitalism, if you prefer) but have not really come up with any coherent alternative, and end up being the sort of super-interventionist twits that Neo-Marxist historians blame for things like the Progressive era. Nicolas Sakozy, President of France, is an excellent example of the second category of neo-marxists.

DadaKopf

Zizek seems to call neo-liberals 'liberal communists'. Interesting turn of phrase, but he says the Davos crowd call themselves this.

I don't understand how you see Sarkozy as a Marxist, though. Badiou calls him a Pétainist.

I don't quite get your ideological coordinates. Interesting though, please explain.

Vichy

I don't understand how you see Sarkozy as a Marxist, though.

He may not see himself as a Marxist, but if you read his book he clearly shows saturation with vulgar Marxism - direct and indirect. And, to be honest, how many French politicians are quasi-Marxist? My opinion of Sarkozy is in line with Schopenhauer's evaluation of Hegel, "a commonplace, inane, loathsome, repulsive and ignorant charlatan, who with unparalleled effrontery compiled a system of crazy nonsense that was trumpeted abroad as immortal wisdom by his mercenary followers..."

Don't think I'm being partisan here - I'm not French, and I dislike the French government in general - but I think Sarkozy is a sign of the decline of European intellectual standards. Not that this is a recent trend.

I don't quite get your ideological coordinates. Interesting though, please explain.

There really are no 'coordinates' - left, right and center are all smoke-and-mirrors. But historically and intellectually, Neo-Liberalism represents a retreat of liberals into a more classical Keynesian and American 'Chicago-School' sort of economic thinking, due to the mess hyper-Keynesianism made of everything. But it is basically just 'slapped on' to the New-Left that overtook America and the Continent in the 60s-70s. And they are still pretty friendly to social security, welfare, that sort of thing.

As far as the Neo-Marxists go, well, Marx took a blow, and then fifteen more, and it was clear that old Left Marxism was dying - though some Stalinists still roam the 'net (I think a guy named Sailer has a blog). The New Left were Marxists, but more Maoist than Stalinist. And, for a while, they actually made some good critiques of the Establishment. Of course, now they are the Establishment.

You can see here that - in my evaluation - (vulgar) Neo-Marxism and Neo-Liberalism are just kissing cousins, New Leftists. The 'hardcore' Neo-Marxists are mainly found as historians and they're usually not half bad. They tend to be more about 'back to Marx - with Criticism' and perhaps would be better called 'Revisionist Classical Marxism'.

DadaKopf

Where would you position someone like Antonio Negri, then?

Vichy

While I haven't read Negri, he seems like an example of a New Leftist of a bit older slant - with a more open Maoist-Lenninist view than the disguised and often unconscious Marxism they now demonstrate. Whether to call him 'vulgar' or not would require more investigation, though from what I gather I certainly wouldn't agree with many of his views. Of course, I'm not a Marxist.

DadaKopf

See, I'm not sure that catagorising 'Marxists' into two camps is tenable. It's simply too complex a landscape. And conversations like this get to the point of empty sign exchanges rather than the exchange of actual meaning and understanding.

Negri (and his co-author Michael Hardt) have attempted a new theoretical revival of marxian theory. They have developed an expansive synthesis philosophical strands into a very conceptually complex (and utopian) theory, taking in Spinoza, Bakthin, Marx, Foucault, Deleuze, Sellars, integrated with actual world events. They explicitly accept the potentially liberating extension of the technologies of late capitalism, particularly communications technologies and the extension of 'immaterial labour' to not simply compliment but gradually displace 'material labour'. They note the dismantling of liberal internationalism and the entry of the constant state of war, and the new ways in which late capitalism creates new forms of singularity. But, they say, this new totalising stage of capitalism contains within it the first real signs of a global democratic movement which can transform reality through the manner in which is makes communication possible and creates new kinds of human subjects. The 'Multitude' is their metaphor for this shift and mode of praxis for revolution - everyone is united in the general (abstract) effects of the late-capitalist system (the generation of poverty, material labour exploitation and exploitation through the colonisation of the self [e.g. performing roles at work - 'have a nice day, sir!']) but also singularly different from each other in the particular ways in which their specific context shapes and is shaped by their horizons of possibilities. Sometimes Negri's idea seem like a conceptually updated form of conservative marxian theories, other times it seems deeply radical and progressive. 'Empire' and 'Multitude' are very complex books and I simply cannot do justice to its scope and depth. But his ideas are fundamentally not authoritarian marxism-leninism or Stalinism; they are fundamentally autonomist and directly democratic, and Negri says the key to achieving this is communications technologies which weren't available in the past.

But Zizek calls all this 'left conservatism' despite Negri's embrace of the most contemporary aspects of late capitalism. It's possible, but then Zizek is accused of being a totalitarian, whether he uses such language ironically or not.

There's a subterranean tumult right now, a slowly-surfacing desire to know more about these kinds of ideas. But how can these threatening ideas survive the inevitable onslought by the devout capitalists and their agents?

Vichy

See, I'm not sure that catagorising 'Marxists' into two camps is tenable. It's simply too complex a landscape.

I wasn't attempting to do that - I agree with you. I was using the term Neo-Marxist of the vulgar reference to indicate the de facto and sometimes de jure Marxists we see in modern continental politics. And some argument can be given that the US President Obama is a vulgar Marxist. In the non-vulgar sense of Neo-Marxist, I simply meant the critical revisionist Marxists - who may, or may not, be New Leftists.

As I said, I have no real knowledge of Negri - I simply read a Wikipedia article and attempted a classification on that.

There's a subterranean tumult right now, a slowly-surfacing desire to know more about these kinds of ideas. But how can these threatening ideas survive the inevitable onslought by the devout capitalists and their agents?

Unless you mean 'capitalist' in the sense of 'interventionist Neo-Liberal Progressivism', capitalism has very few 'devout agents' and is practically non-existent. This is one thing Gabriel Kolko has done very well to point out - there is no such thing as property-contract laissez-faire at present, and probably never has been.

Although amicable to reading Marxists who aren't twits (this isn't a specifically Marxist prejudice I have, I don't like reading twits at all) I myself tend to lean strongly toward the Austrian school of economics.
However I think that the American libertarians (that is to say, Propertarians) tend to misunderstand Marx if they think of him as either an economist or an authoritarian. I think Marx was a moralizer, and extremely libertarian - moreso than American libertarians - but that he was so intent on abolishing the need for coercion that he never gave much thought to whether his proposed method would succeed.

Incidentially, I am not a libertarian - and I mean this in the same sense that I say Marx was a libertarian - because I am not a moralist. I also do not believe that 'liberty' makes any sense as an abstract 'social' goal. Liberty is intrinsicly personal, and the 'flip side' to power. I am free to do as I like when I have the power to do it. I also totally reject the idea of equalitarianism or egalitarianism. I think, as a descriptive statement, it is false. I do not see the attainment of 'equality' as either feasible nor really desireable.

This is not to say I am some sort of authoritarian elitist. I am thoroughly inegalitarian in the sense that I reject all ethical imperatives. However I find a society in which people can pursue their individual values and develop themselves desireable to live in. I happen to think that Statism, as well as restrictions on property, are very bad for individual liberty on consequentialist grounds - not simply theoretical (as in economics) but also empirical.

Ultimately, though, I find myself somewhat at odds with 'political philosophy', due to my rejection of ethical imperatives and my position as a philosophical egoist. Likewise, the irrelevance of individual action upon mass-society make me reject activism as kind of worthless (even if it might succeed, it would do so without my meager contributions). So much that I have to say in subjects of poli-sci/poli-philo are really more sociological analysis than anything.

Ostrom

Vichy wrote: »

I think Marx was a moralizer, and extremely libertarian - moreso than American libertarians - but that he was so intent on abolishing the need for coercion that he never gave much thought to whether his proposed method would succeed.

Interesting debate guys!

On the empirical front, and on your point, Smith and Anderson are producing some interesting papers (citations if you want) on Marx's later works, following on from Kraders' publication of the ethnological notebooks (with analysis and discussion).

The implication from his later (as yet untranslated from the German, as far as I am aware) studies in ethnology seems to suggest that his focus on pre-capitalist modes of production was an attempt not to support a universal theory of subsumption under capitalism, but to explore what communism may look like. Engels wrote much later on the German Marx and Russian Mir, and it is possible he may have written on the English three-field system as a form of primitive communism.

I think there may yet be scope for revision in the years to come, assuming it ever gets published, as it was initially due in 2005.

Joycey

Vichy wrote: »

Ultimately, though, I find myself somewhat at odds with 'political philosophy', due to my rejection of ethical imperatives and my position as a philosophical egoist. Likewise, the irrelevance of individual action upon mass-society make me reject activism as kind of worthless (even if it might succeed, it would do so without my meager contributions). So much that I have to say in subjects of poli-sci/poli-philo are really more sociological analysis than anything.

So on these grounds you have no qualms about polluting the environment, you dont vote and were some kind of a totalitarian regime attempt to gain power through violence (or some equivalent scenario) you wouldnt bother to fight against it.

How can individual action be worthless? Do Rupert Merdoch's actions not affect mass society? How about Obama? Clearly it depends on who the individual is, what the actions are, and in what context they are performed.

I take it that you mean that your personal actions with regard to demonstrating or protesting are useless. Maybe they are if taken at face value, but how are you to know who you indirectly influence through your devotion to the principles of direct action and political engagement?

It is through each individual recognising themselves as autonomous and self authorising that such a mentality spreads and change occurs. If you do not accept your position as someone who is capable of affecting change through your knowledge and power of analysis of the current state of things, but instead pretend that no such responsibility accords to you, then you have no right to criticise the status quo IMO.

Vichy

So on these grounds you have no qualms about polluting the environment,

This is just a matter of property claims. Obviously dumping potassium sulphate upstream from a previously occupied dwelling would be verbotten. But, insofar as by 'environment' you mean scorpions and redwoods - to Hell with them.

you dont vote and were some kind of a totalitarian regime attempt to gain power through violence (or some equivalent scenario) you wouldnt bother to fight against it.

In the case of both voting and totalitarian regimes - not that there is any necessary difference between the two - if they are able to act in that manner, they obviously have the tacit ideological and material support of the masses. I can not do anything about human stupidity, as much as I might like to.
But it's not as though as I would do nothing - I'd try to be aware enough to leave about 5-10 years before.

How can individual action be worthless?

It's not worthless - it can be extremely worthwhile to certain individuals. And obviously some people are better placed or more capable. But unless you are in those positions (which basically includes a tacit acceptance of the principles of these organizations) you are unlikely to be able to rapidly rise to them. Likewise, individuals in these positions are strongly constrained by institutional and material circumstances, the very basis of the institution itself constrains him thusly because these principles and organizations are the reason detre of the organization itself.

It's frankly not worth my time, and I think the most of them are delusional. I have better things to do with my time - like read, or sleep.