Common Man’s Collapse: How The Neoliberal Model Has Failed And Left Us In This Mess
I was listening to the latest episode of Intercepted (one of my favorite podcasts) this past Wednesday and there was a brilliant discussion between host Jeremy Scahill and guest Vijay Prashad. Both are esteemed journalists in their own right but I was especially impressed with Prashad’s understanding of and ability to contextualize and orally convey history.
After examining in length the political situations in Venezuela, India and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Scahill asked Prashad to, “set Donald Trump’s rise to power in the context of all of this history,” that they had been discussing up to that point.
Given the complexity of the question, I found Prashad’s answer succinct, historically accurate and impressively powerful. It outlines the stance many of us on the left share and have fought against while simultaneously contextualizing how and why the world has changed in the past forty years for those who can’t seem to see the forest for the trees. Regardless of where one lands on the political spectrum, chances are you’re frustrated. Hopefully this brief passage addresses questions you didn’t even know you had, sobers you up and illuminates reality.
Their exchange begins at the 43:41 mark of the episode which ran 1h16min long. For the sake of brevity and your attention, the excerpt from the transcript is provided below. Please digest and absorb.
Well, you know it brings us back to this tax strike that began about 40 years ago. When basically government policy allowed the big elites to no longer pay taxes, corporate tax rates began to fall. You saw government budgets desiccate, municipal budgets basically devolve to nothing. At this point, the kind of liberal consensus, the liberal agenda, was to move in a direction what we call neoliberalism which basically accepted the fact that the rich were not going to pay taxes. They wanted to raise funds by selling off, you know, hard won public assets. They privatized. They opened up parts of human existence that had not been for money and commodified them. This was the way in which the liberals tried to finance this crisis of, you know, government budgets because the rich were not paying taxes. And they were not going to challenge the rich. In fact, they said that’s good. It creates entrepreneurialism. You see jobs trickle down. Essentially, this is the agenda of Tony Blair, of Bill Clinton, and you know around the world they have their cognates.
But by the financial crisis of 2007, the liberals were essentially totally delegitimized. So, when these neo-liberals are delegitimized, from the right appears, people like Donald Trump. But again, this is not a specific American story. This is a global story. The delegitimization of the liberals, whether it’s the Congress Party in India, or it’s you know to some extent, the Workers party in Brazil, the Democratic party in the United States, you get these far-right people show up. And they make strong claims saying that “We’re going to come, we’re going to grab the economy by the throat, we’re going to make it cough out jobs,” and then they make even more dramatic statement saying that the reason you don’t have a job is because the migrants, because these migrants come in and take your jobs. I mean, it’s a classic bait and switch. On the one hand, they quite correctly attack the neo-liberals saying that you’ve basically hollowed out the economy. They attack them saying that you know, you’re not able to provide well-being for the population. Well, that’s true. But then the bait and switch is they turn around and they say the reason why this is happening is because of the migrants.
They, in other words, the Trumps of the world, just like the Clintons of the world, don’t point their fingers at those 2,000, you know, billionaires and so on who are just not paying taxes. Who are not, who are sucking up social wealth and not providing any return to public finances to improve health, to improve education. And, by the way, to create public, you know, institutions that prevent people from desperation like universal health care. This is what public financing should have been. But because the left is weak now, the liberals have been delegitimized, the field is open to the right and not only to the right but these very vicious strongmen. So, my sense is that for some time now, we’re going to have to tolerate this sort of right-wing political presence until we build up the forces of the left to produce a robust critique of the way in which the wealthy have not been contributing at all. I mean, I don’t really want philanthropy. I want them to pay taxes.
Shoutout to the person (or people) who transcribe these hour+, politically dense podcasts every week for the audience to engage with. I appreciate your efforts.
Listen to or read the entire transcript of the episode:
Trump Headlines a Benefit Concert for Imperialism.
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