More 'nonsense upon stilts'? Dead-end pathways of neoliberal thought; the 'debate' on neoliberalism as a rearguard action (original) (raw)

More 'nonsense upon stilts'? Dead-end pathways of neoliberal thought; the 'debate' on neoliberalism as a rearguard action

2022, Dead-end pathways of neoliberal thought (to be published in The Concise ISSR Companion to Contemporary Ideological Thought by Van der Kooij, H. (ed.) et al. - in progress)

Neoliberal policies are continued unabatedly and shamelessly in many countries, as if despite all the destruction that has been done nothing could harm the protagonists and propagandists. On the other hand, the more problematic the continuation of neoliberalism as a policy ideology becomes, the more articles appear from scholars proclaiming that neoliberalism 'as such does not exist', or at least that the economic (market) policies pursued should not be subsumed under this heading. Many researchers such as anthropologist Fletcher (Wageningen University, WUR, the Netherlands) and others believe that a 'debate' is needed on the proper positioning of the term «neoliberalism». By doing so, they (implicitly) indicate that in academic circles there is quite a lot going on concerning ideological positioning in relation to the (pretended) academic 'neutrality' and independence which is so indispen-sable for free and well-founded scientific practice. Despite the fact that there are often - and many - references to (a selection of) available relevant literature, it appears that the references are often placed in a (too) narrow framework, as a result of which the purport of critical considerations in particular is violated and lost. But as Jeremy Bentham has put it, 'nonsense upon stilts' offers no insight and even less perspective. This (apparent) contradiction between policy implementation and ideological policy criticism indicates that in academic circles there is a good deal of 'blind spot' surrounding the practical ideological consequences, from which one seems to be hiding rather than openly facing up to these major issues and including them in analyses and reflections. In order to bring some balance into this, we will subject some of the core arguments put forward to closer scrutiny and see to what extent they really make sense. We shall demonstrate that this is less the case than is pretended and will show where reasoning fails. We will outline that many actual questions and (institutional) problems are to be traced back to the way in which, next to economical reasoning and views, political-philosophic debates on parallel matters such as concepts of choice, success, health and well-being are being performed. This paper presents a critical position that can be taken towards mainstream views concerning some key-findings on neoliberal welfare and austerity-policy that have been dominant during recent years and before. In order to see to a feasible change in this respect, some perspectives offered may appear worth considering.