“By neoliberalism I mean the global capitalist system shaped around a core of neoliberal practices and institutions , themselves guided by a widespread and spontaneously reproduced ideology, and ruled by an elite which acts in a neoliberal way, whatever conflicting and moderating ideas it holds in its head”
Erm, neoliberalism is neoliberalism then?
Might be worth Mason cracking open a dictionary. Where definitions never, but never, use the word that is being defined in order to define it.
Sounds like turtles all the way down. Which, I assume, means god is a neo-liberal.
“..a widespread and spontaneously reproduced ideology…”
Or ‘buying and selling’ as the rest of the world calls it.
‘When I define neoliberalism,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
And this man is a professional communicator?
“global capitalist system shaped around a core of neoliberal practices” well which is it?
“spontaneously reproduced ideology,” aka “what people keep choosing”
“ruled by an elite ” presumably also reinforced spontaneously, ie some form of meritocracy
” whatever conflicting and moderating ideas it holds in its head” it’s either crazy, or Mason is wrong. So it must be crazy. Also, is neoliberal ideology fundamentally conflicted, but Mason can’t think of any examples? Or does it pick up conflicting ideas from time to time, making not an ideology?
Lovely stuff, better than the cryptic crossword.
If this was Excel, he’d have gotten a circular reference warning. Sadly, MS-Word doesn’t have this feature.
I heard Evan Davies ask Art Laffer about this on the R4 Today prog a while back. AL said ”neo-liberal” economics is just economics.
Mason keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he think it means.
With apologies to Inigo Montoya.
“Ruled by an elite”. It isn’t the ruled by an elite bit he dislikes, after all he is a hard-line communist. It just happens to be the wrong elite, even if it is imaginary.
Just for shits and giggles I looked up neoliberalism on Wikipedia. It’s all slightly unhinged. In particular, the section on feminist criticism of neoliberalism is the usual meaningless drivel of “masculinism”, “normative” and other SocSci buzzwords. Utterly impenetrable and meaningless.
Mason, demonstrating the success of the market, has spotted a way to make some cash and has written a book to appeal to his followers. You have to admire it.
Lefties like Mason have the same problem with free-markets that creationists have with evolution – they just cannot undertand that it just *is*, without requiring higher forces to control it.
Hence why the lefties want to replace this mythical cabal with their own Politburo, and creationists want there to be a god.
I think Philip Collins in the Times (behind paywall unfortunately) nailed it:
‘Apparently, I am a ‘neoliberal’, if this is defined as someone willing to engage with reality then I have to plead guilty’
Increasingly the Corbyn/Murphy campaign is descending into ‘tin foil hat’ territory – the scenes in the Bunker in the movie ‘Downfall’ spring to mind….
Our dear friend Ritchie even thinks the ‘personalisation agenda’ in social care (effectively, the right of service users to decide how public money is spent on them) is ‘neoliberal claptrap’
Here: http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/06/02/southern-cross-is-the-model-for-the-privatisation-of-the-nhs/
He’s blamed a lot of weird stuff on neoliberalism but this one takes the biscuit.
I wonder how this fits in with Mason’s definition?
GlenDorran. I believe the correct response to this these days is: Cock on!
The opacity is the point. I don’t think Orwell’s description has been bettered.
““The great enemy of clear language is insincerity,” wrote George Orwell, “and when there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.””
I find it very strange that Mason has any credibility at all. The market for his species of lefty bullshit is surely very limited.
Does he ever give any examples of neo-liberal institutions and practices?
“Increasingly the Corbyn/Murphy campaign is descending into ‘tin foil hat’ territory – the scenes in the Bunker in the movie ‘Downfall’ spring to mind….”
Except Hitler was very clearly losing, whereas Corbyn might actually be about to win.
“Except Hitler was very clearly losing, whereas Corbyn might actually be about to win.”
In an Operation Barbarossa sense?
In a Syriza sense – they won, didn’t they?
re: Theophrastus
“I find it very strange that Mason has any credibility at all. The market for his species of lefty bullshit is surely very limited.”
Well that twat Owen Jones has apparently sold a couple of hundred thousand books, so there’s a bigger market for fuckwitterry than you think…
‘Mason keeps using that word. I do not think it means what he think it means.
With apologies to Inigo Montoya’.
I was thinking more of the Tim Robbins puppet in ‘Team America’, and his ‘corporations being corporationey’ monologue.
‘Neo’ now seems to be the short-hand term for ‘I don’t like it and I think it’s nasty’. We’ve had ‘neo-conservatism’, now we’ve got ‘neo-liberalism’. What next? ‘Neo-democrats?’
“Neo”, with the correct inflection, is the sound racing cars make as they pass you, leaving a destroyed planet in their wake.
This must be the derivation.
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