Donald Trump’s dismantling of administration, legal authority, and common decency are the logical end-game of a system of ideas, introduced in the 1940s by Hayek, Friedman and others of the early Mont-Pelerin society, that have become the common-sense baseline for most social interactions today: market-driven, property-oriented, and transactional.
Trump is terrifying not because he is aberrant: he is terrifying because he reveals what society has become.
The birth of neo-liberal ideas: 1940-1960
These ideas, first developed as counter-arguments to communist authoritariansim, can roughly be summarised as follows:
- minimal government intervention and regulation (in the name of individual freedom, which is a basic foundational belief).
- free and fair markets (because government coordination is replaced by market coordination, price signals being a distillation of distributed collective wisdom)
- protection of property rights and all that such rights imply (as an antidote to communist collectivisation, and as an important aspect of individual freedom).
They are coherent, and find support in some well-argued libertarian thinking1.
The shift to neo-liberal ideology: 1970s to today
By the time Thatcher (1979) and Reagan (1981) were elected in the UK and USA respectively, the Mont-Pelerin ideas had morphed into an ideological platform, backed by powerful business people (such as the Koch family), by think tanks (funded by powerful people), and by cherry-picked libertarian ideas1.
Neoliberal ideology has become the prevailing common-sense across all mainstream political parties. It resembles ideas put forward by Hayek and libertarian thinkers, but distorts them by prioritizing property rights over personal freedoms and over free and fair markets.
The ideology can roughly be summarised as follows:
- Protection of property rights and all that such rights imply (as a basic foundational belief).
- Minimal government intervention and regulation (EXCEPT in the service of point 1)
- Free and fair markets (but only in the service of points 1 and 2)
Property rights are an end in themselves, government’s role is to support property rights, and markets are in the service of property right holders.
Trump as a logical outcome of neoliberal ideology
1-Acquiring property (and keeping it) has become an ethical value
Today most people view housing as a financial investment, worry about stock-markets as pension savings grow or decline, measure their worth (and that of neighbours and colleagues) through their income and posessions….
No other system of values carries weight under neoliberalism: social, use, moral and ethical are conflated with economic value.2
Point 1 of neoliberalism has been internalised.
2-Government should get out of the way
“Government taxes our money: it prevents acquisition and accumulation because it levies taxes and should get out of the way”. This has become the “common-sense” belief of many people.
Even those of us who think differently, who believe that governments can and should manage services and invest in society’s long-term future, end up siding with this common sense, as government become less effective, starved of cash and serving private accumulation and property acquisition.
Government has been rendered ineffective (except as a means of furthering property rights and accumulation).
Point 2 of neoliberalism has become common-sense.
3- Markets everywhere
There is a market for ideas; students are advised to market themselves; there is a dating market; the question “What’s in it for me?” (i.e. “what do I get out of the transaction?”) guides our decisions; we walk around with a marketing device in our pockets, surveilled to allow marketers to perfect their targeting; we pay for doctors’ sick notes; …
Governments faclitate these “markets”, and society has quickly normalised them. Markets have colonised our minds.
Point 3 of neoliberalism has become intrinsic to the way we think and interact.
What’s in it for me?
Neoliberalism has become naturalised: we are all neo-liberals – Democrats, Labour Party, Liberals, and Conservatives alike. Only “naive”, “fringe”, or “idealistic” groups think differently.
As Philip Mirowski has argued, “neoliberal thought has become so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince disciples of its ultimate truth”. Since we are all disciples, we cannot see past it.
In this context, transactional (i.e. market-like) government by and for private interests is the logical next-step. Trump has taken it.
“What’s in it for Trump?” Ego and money.
“What’s in it for billionnaires?” Ego, (more) money and (more) power.
“What’s in it for Trump hangers-on?” Proximity to ego, money and power – and crumbs.
“What’s in it for Trump supporters?” A middle finger to the establishment (hey, university professors, lawyers and federal workers are upset: Trump must be doing something good!) and hope for crumbs.
“What’s in it for the rest of us?” A continuation of what has being going in since the 1980s, but with already depleted public wealth, infrastructure, services and expertise.
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FOOTNOTES
1 It is important to distinguish libertariansim from neoliberalism. Libertarianism is, at its core, a rejection of state-level central authority. There are right-wing libertarians (typically labelled ‘libertarians’ by critics of neoliberalism), and there are left-wing libertarians (typically called ‘anarchists’ by critics of the left). Thus, libertarian thought – which explores how societies could/should operate without central authority – has little to do with the left/right binary. Libertarian thinkers can be community-oriented, can recognize the need for basic safety nets, and can even reject private property. They can also preach violence, might-is-right, selfishness and bombing.
It is a specific type of libertarian thinking that has inspired neo-liberal ideology, an ideology that has picked and chosen ideas it likes while rejecting those it doesn’t (such as inheritance tax, which emerges across much libertarian thought). Peter Marshall’s book on anarchism takes a wide view and places left-wing anarchism within the wider family of libertarian thinking.
2 Elizabeth Anderson has written a fascinating and insightul book on this, called Value in Ethics and Economics. It is worth re-reading today.
Richard Shearmur 