So @NaomiAKlein made some important points on the @PitchforkEcon podcast about neoliberalism and the #GND. She said that while the popularity of purist neoliberal doctrine is not as popular pervasive, its success has been in convincingly asserting that #thereisnoalternative /1
This is because neoliberalism has effectively captured the public imagination in two critical ways. 1) Framing debates about Capitalism under the assumption that it is an immutable indivisible totality, while they themselves understand and act on the assumption it is not /2
Considerable energy is spent debating under the premise that the only contributions towards systemic alternatives must clearly guarantee the overcoming of the capitalist totality from the onset. Neoliberals however have spent 40 years shaping institutions to their liking /3
And 2) Is the commodifying of money in the social imaginary. As a legal instrument capable of mediating and mobilizing debts and obligations,💰must be viewed as a private and scarce object under neoliberalism & the public must confuse their household debts with the state’s /4
Urgent changes are thus contrained to a closed loop, chasing the flow of private money, looking for “pay fors” and implicitly relying on the very existence of the super rich in order to “fund” what we want via taxes or reducing spending elsewhere, a debate on their terms /5
The left blindsides itself when it reduces class and social struggle to taxing the rich to pay for things. This unnecessarily impedes and slows down urgent policy actions. It also obscures the substance beneath the financial and numeric veil, a battle for control of resources /6
It creates hysteria about public deficits and debt and illiteracy about monetary operations whether it be “sound finance socialists”, debt free money advocates, or prioritizing more ethical banking and lending over direct Gov spending and guaranteed democratic economic rights /7
Instead, we have to see Gov spending priorities as itself part of class and social struggles on the grounds of mobilizing resources for increases in community and public control. We have to see taxing the super rich as a disruption of their control and limits on power /8
Taxes and💰reductions on bad things also free up resources for better use. Reducing military spending 🚫 raise revenue but rather opposes militarism and opens resource space. This doesn’t mean we should wait to get started with #GND! Plenty of resource capacity available now /9
By resources I mean labor, technology, materials, and productive capacity. Lots available to get a #GND and a #JobGuarantee going while also building the political & organizational power needed to eliminate fossil fuels and put hard limits on the accumulation of wealth /10
To transcend neoliberalism and ultimately capitalism, we must understand💰as a public utility constrained only by the quality of its use and the availability of what it intends to mobilize. We must see that the substance of economic prosperity can be defined democratically /11
We must see that transformational changes can happen through interstitial mechanisms that build & foster a new world within a dying & decadent one. The #GND and #JG are but two pillars that allow us to take back the narrative and instead assert that #AnotherWorldisPossible, fin
