Neoliberals

 Recently, Freddie deBoer wrote a piece reviving the dispute between Matt Yglesias–style "neoliberals" and the Old Left position on social policy. It's an argument that has been happening in roughly the same form (and even between the same bloggers) since I was in college more than ten years ago. As deBoer summarizes the "neoliberal" position (used in a very specific sense here—not to be conflated with economic "neoliberalism" writ large, necessarily, though it has features in common with it), it essentially holds that the political left should pursue a pro-growth economic strategy—even if it means making common cause with Republicans in backing deregulation and gutting organized labor. Then—after this growth has taken place—the left should focus on redistributing the proceeds. It is at this second stage—the "redistribution" as opposed to "production" stage—that progressive social policy can finally kick into gear. 

I don't know if Matt Yglesias would accept this characterization of his position. But even if he is an imperfect avatar of this "neoliberal" ideology, it certainly exists out there. Obama administration officials back in the day used to talk about "expanding the pie." The idea was essentially the same as the one deBoer characterizes as the neoliberal position: they were saying that the Democratic Party needs to embrace many of the same policies as the Republicans—deregulation, a de-unionized workforce—for the sake of rapid growth; because once the "pie" of economic prosperity is large enough, there can then be a bigger slice available for everyone, after it has been partially redistributed through generous social programs. 

DeBoer is skeptical of the "neoliberal" position primarily because it requires making common cause with political rivals who will have less than zero interest in signing up for the second stage of the program—the "redistribution" stage. Democrats may be able to work with Republicans to deregulate the economy and crush organized labor—and indeed, union membership declined dramatically over the last fifty years, as Clinton-style "New Democrats" and their epigoni embraced economic positions all but indistinguishable from those of Republicans. But it seems to be only stage one—the "production" and "growth" stage—that was ever accomplished. The second stage, the coming "redistribution," seemed never to occur—because, to deBoer's point, the Republicans who were willing to make common cause with conservative Democrats on stage one had no appetite for the latter. 

Stage two then, ("redistribution") plays a role in the neoliberal framework that is something like the role of the "revolution" in the social democracy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a quasi-mystical event that can be indefinitely delayed. In his sociological classic, Political Parties, Robert Michels wrote of how the socialist parties of his era defended the growing apparatus of the party bureaucracy by saying that it was necessary as a "preparatory" stage to lay the ground-work for the coming revolution. But the latter, of course, never actually materializes. In the end, the "preparatory" stage becomes an end in itself. The party bureaucracy can keep expanding and enriching itself, and the "revolutionary" stage is indefinitely postponed. So it is with the "neoliberal" position. "Stage one" proceeds apace; but "stage two," which was supposed to justify the hardships imposed by stage one, never actually arrives. 

But why doesn't it arrive? The answer is in part the factor that deBoer describes—the political coalition that is required to accomplish stage one will not hold together for stage two. I would put an even finer point on this, however. Stage one, after all, requires not only forging a new political coalition between conservative Democrats and Republicans—it also requires demolishing one of the sources of political power for the coalition that preceded it. After all, a core element of "stage one" is that it involves dismantling the infrastructure of organized labor. This eliminates one of the core sources of political power for old school Democrats. By the same token, it destroys one of the only organized constituencies and political power players that would be pushing for the redistribution of "stage two." So the problem with "stage one" is not only that it forges a new coalition that will refuse to support "stage two"—it also smashes the previous coalition that would have endorsed it. 

These are the pragmatic and strategic objections to the neoliberal approach, then; but there are also principled ones. Even if I were persuaded that the neoliberal program could work, then, and that stage one could somehow lead to stage two (which I'm not), I also don't think it's desirable in itself. It seems to me it takes a very impoverished view of what human beings actually want from their economic lives. The neoliberal program assumes that people can be deprived of bargaining power and of any say over their working lives—and may even be drummed out of work—but that they can be compensated for these losses with cash transfer payments and other free public services ("redistribution"). The extreme form of this same idea is found among the "post-work" UBI advocates, who think technology is going to eliminate all human jobs, but that this will be okay because we will all get cash welfare payments to keep us alive. 

This view of economic life assumes that human needs are as simple as food and shelter. It portrays working people as possessing only "soup-logic and dumpling-reason," as Heine put it, in writing of the nineteenth century proletariat. Yet, people need more than just food on the table. They want bread and roses, as the labor leaders of an earlier generation put it. They want to not only be able to feed themselves, but to exercise meaningful control over their economic destinies. They want to have some say in the economic forces that shape their lives. Labor unions—and, even better, some form of industrial democracy—provide this to them. The neoliberal program—even in its hypothetical "redistribution" stage that never seems to arrive—does not. The best that it can offer is that the same economic elites that deprived workers of collective power will graciously write them a check every month as an act of condolence or mercy. 

And what exactly guarantees that these checks will always be forthcoming? Once the workers have been deprived of all bargaining power, what reason do the elites have to continue sustaining them indefinitely? Now we are back to the practical objections to the neoliberal approach, of course—but they appear to be unanswerable. The only way to have "redistribution" in any amount—under any scheme—is to ensure that the people who will actually benefit from such redistribution have collective power. So long as all political power remains in the hands of the wealthy, by contrast—who stand only to lose their slice of the "pie" that has just been "enlarged" so much at that first, "production" stage—then the pie will never get carved up. It will be eaten whole, with very little left over for the workers who bore the greatest sacrifices to bake it.