Since 2008 scholars have discussed various "variants" of neoliberalism in its zombie phase: authoritarian neoliberalism, punitive neoliberalism, etc. Yet, what we are now witnessing in the West is something quite different from neoliberalism. New concepts are urgently needed.
Neoliberalism's key tenets are all in question:
1) Monetarism: already gone with post-2008 QE
2) Fiscal Conservatism: largest deficits since World War II
3) Global Trade: Biden is almost as protectionist as Trump
4) Low taxation: ppl are discussing a minimum global corporate tax!
1) Monetarism: already gone with post-2008 QE
2) Fiscal Conservatism: largest deficits since World War II
3) Global Trade: Biden is almost as protectionist as Trump
4) Low taxation: ppl are discussing a minimum global corporate tax!
Very difficut to chart what comes next, as it is a very fast moving terrain, and hard to discern conjunctural from structural trends. But many signs point to a more statist model of capitalism than the one we have witnessed from late in 1980s to 2010s.
Perhaps clearest trend is crisis of global trade. Besides China's "double circulation system", and Biden's "positive protectionism" I was recently reading also about Modi suggesting that India needs to "turn inward" economically so as to become + self-reliant.
This should not be read as autarchy. Not even North Korea the hermit state is autarchic (in fact can only survive thanks to Chinese support). But it is an attempt to rebalance an economic system whose level of international interconnectedness has become hard to sustain.
In a way discussions of populism in 2010s emerged as way to fill ideological void opened by neoliberalism's crisis. However, for the most it has been used as a negative (anti-neoliberalism) concept or a formalist one (populism as a logic). More substantive understanding needed.
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