Toussaint - A glance in the rear view mirror: neoliberal ideology from its origins to the present

Notes

Introduction

. The economic and financial crisis broke out in the United States in 2007, namely in the area of housing and mortgage with the bursting of a speculative bubble. From the start it hit major institutions both in the United States and in Europe (the UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, etc.). Simultaneously in 2007 a severe food crisis set in, affecting mainly the populations in developing countries (between the end of 2006 and 2009 the number of starving people has risen from 850 million to one billion). From 2008 on this multidimensional capitalist crisis has become a global one.

. Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007), Chapter 13.

A Glance in the Rearview Mirror

. Alan Greenspan tells in his autobiography that when he first read Adam Smith after the Second World War, interest in his theories was particularly low. He points out that free trade was almost a rude word and that the most prominent partisans of market capitalism were mavericks such as Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. He adds that it was at the end of the 1960s, at the outset of his public career, that the pendulum of economic thinking swung back towards Adam Smith. In Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence .

. See Eric Toussaint, The World Bank : A Critical Primer (London: Pluto Press, 2007), Chapter 11, South Korea: The Miracle Unmasked.

. This is referring to the liberal ideological trends experienced in the European continent and which clearly place themselves on the right-hand side of the political spectrum. In the United States the use of the term liberal has an entirely different meaning. The liberals of the United States belong to the center-left or moderate right. One such liberal and progressive figure in the United States is John Dewey (18591952). In particular, see John Dewey, The Future of Liberalism, The Journal of Philosophy , XXII, no. 9, 22530 in Howard Zinn, ed., New Deal Thought (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2003).

. Throughout the 1970s, the global economy entered a long phase of slow expansion which broke with the previous almost thirty years of unprecedented rapid economic growth, famously known as the Glorious Thirty.

. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature And Causes of the Wealth of Nations , 1776: Book IV, Chapter 2. http://www.adamsmith.org/ smith/won-b4-c2.htm.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book IV, Chapter 2.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book V, Chapter 1, Part 3. http://www. adamsmith.org/smith/won-b5-c1-pt-3.htm.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book I, Chapter 5. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c5.htm. Adam Smith further writes: Labor measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labor (salary, editors note) , but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit . (Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book I, Chapter 6. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c6.htm). Alan Greenspan, who claims to adhere to Adam Smiths thought, gives a particularly stupid definition of value: Value is what people believe it to be. What an idiot this Greenspan is! Poor Adam Smith. (Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence , 617).

. For Marx and the mercantilists, see Georges Labica and Grard Bensussan, Dictionnaire critique du marxisme (Paris: P.U.F, 1982), 740.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book II, Chapter 3. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b2-c3.htm.

. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_capital.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book II, Chapter 3.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book I, Chapter 8. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c8.htm.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book II, Chapter 5. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b2-c5.htm.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book I, Chapter 11, Conclusion of the chapter. http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-b1-c11-conclusion-of-the-chapter.htm.

. Smith, Wealth of Nations , Book IV, Chapter 7, Part 3. http://www. adamsmith.org/smith/won-b4-c7-pt-3.htm.

. This is true of Alan Greenspan, for example, who in his autobiography The Age of Turbulence, published in 2007, devotes seven pages of praise to Adam Smith, while cleansing his thought of any reference to wage labor as the source of profit, to the theory of labor value, or to class struggle (Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence, 33844).

. The International Workingmens Association (IWA), also known as the First International, was founded in 1864, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels among others. It united anti-authoritarian collectivists (such as Mikhail Bakunins international movement), Marxist collectivists, and mutualists (followers of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon). Political activists, unionists, and cooperativists worked together in this association. The First International was dissolved after the failure of the Paris Commune in 1871.

. Written between October 21 and 27, 1864; First published: in The Bee-Hive Newspaper , November 12, 1864, and in the pamphlet Address and Provisional Rules of the Working Mens International Association. London, November 1864.

. Jacques Adda, La mondialisation de lconomie (Paris: La Dcouverte, 1996), vol.1, 35.

. Michel Beaud and Gilles Dostaler, La pense conomique depuis Keynes (Paris: Seuil, 1996), 32.

. See John M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (London: MacMillan, 1964), chapter 23 entitled Notes on Mercantilism, where, like Marx, he emphasises the mercantilists contribution.

. See Beaud and Dostaler, La pense conomique depuis Keynes,

. Quoted in Beaud and Dostaler, La pense conomique depuis Keynes,

. Quoted in Beaud and Dostaler, La pense conomique depuis Keynes,

. Keynes, General Theory, Final Notes.

. Charles-Andr Udry, Los orgenes del neoliberalismo: F von Hayek: el apostol del neoliberalismo, Desde los Cuatro Puntos , no. 1 (1997)

. Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge Press, 1944).

. Perry Anderson, Histoire et leons du no-libralisme: La construction dune voie unique, Page Deux (October 1996).

. Milton Friedman, The Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1970).

. Beaud and Dostaler, La pense conomique depuis Keynes, 27475.

. Beaud and Dostaler, La pense conomique depuis Keynes,

. Quoted in Pierre Salama and Jacques Valier, Pauvret et in galits dans le tiers monde (Paris: La Dcouverte, 1994), 149.

. Ominami in Rafael Urriola ed., La globalizacin de los desajustes (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1996).

. Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power , 1995; quoted in Udry, Los orgenes del neoliberalismo.

. Jack Hirshleifer, The Expanding Domain of Economics, American Economic Review , vol. 75, No. 6, 1985, 53.

. Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W W Norton & Company, 2002), 35.

. Daniel Bensad, Marx lintempestif (Paris: Fayard, 1995), 178.

. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom , (96 in French ed.).

. World Bank, World Development Report: Workers in an Integrating World (Washington, 1995), 104.

. World Bank, World Development Report , 104.

. World Bank, World Development Report , 95.

. Quoted in Anderson, Histoire et leons du no-libralisme, 27.

. http://www.doingbusiness.org/documents/fullreport/2010/ DB10-full-report.pd.f

Doing Business 2010 is the seventh edition of a series of annual reports on regulations that facilitate or complicate the practice of doing business. The report presents quantitative indicators on the regulations of companies and the protection of property rights in a comparison of 183 countries. Regulations having repercussions on ten stages in the life cycle of a company are evaluated: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and closing a business. The data for Doing Business 2010 dates from June 1, 2009. The indicators serve to analyze economic results and to determine which reforms were effective, and why. The 2010 report covers 183 countries.