Neoliberalism's Legacy: Globalization, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy

This podcast episode critically examines the trajectory of globalization since the 1980s, particularly the neoliberal project's emphasis on unfettered capital and goods flow. The discussion highlights how center-left governments, including the Clinton and Obama administrations, largely legitimized and continued the neoliberal turn initiated by Reagan and Thatcher, embracing free trade, financialization, and meritocratic ideology. This approach, it is argued, contributed significantly to the weakening of democracy and alienated the working and lower-middle classes, historically the base of social democratic parties, paving the way for the rise of various forms of populism.

A key distinction is drawn between different responses to the excesses of globalization. While right-wing populism (e.g., Trump, Le Pen) advocates for restricting labor flows and often carries nativist, anti-immigrant sentiments, a democratic socialist response (e.g., Sanders, Warren) proposes controlling capital and trade flows, increasing worker power, and decommodifying essential services like education and healthcare. The speakers debate the utility of the term "populism" itself, with one suggesting it risks delegitimizing legitimate ideological positions like socialism and nationalism, while the other defends its historical American usage to describe movements reclaiming power from economic elites, even acknowledging its early nativist elements.

The conversation delves into the "market triumphalist premise" that market mechanisms are the primary instruments for achieving the public good, a premise that even center-left parties failed to challenge. This market faith, it is suggested, stems from a liberal aspiration for neutrality toward substantive values, effectively allowing markets to sidestep contentious democratic deliberation about redistribution and revaluation of societal contributions. The financial crisis of 2008 is identified as a pivotal moment, where the bailout of Wall Street by both Republican and Democratic administrations, without fundamental restructuring or accountability, fueled widespread anger and injustice, giving rise to both the Occupy/Sanders movement on the left and the Tea Party/Trump movement on the right.

Ultimately, the episode argues that the failure of mainstream progressive politics to challenge the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism and market triumphalism created the conditions for the current political landscape. It emphasizes the need for democratic deliberation to re-evaluate economic contributions and redistribute wealth, suggesting that a "fear of democracy" has led to an over-reliance on market solutions. The speakers advocate for a shift in policy focus from controlling labor flows to more rigorously regulating capital and trade flows, alongside empowering workers and expanding public services, as a more robust and equitable response to globalization's challenges.

"People Like Us criticize the unfettered unregulated flow of capital and goods across borders but we tend to be in favor of more generous immigration policies which is the flow of people across borders."

"If you don't control free trade uh you don't control Capital flows then indeed the nativist alternative... is okay let's control the labor Flows In the end... we should control a lot more the capital flows and the trade flows."

"Calling them populist tend to to me is is generally a strategy to sort of delegitimate some of this this group."

"The success of right-wing populism the authoritarian nativist strand is arises as a symptom of the failure of progressive or Social Democratic politics."

"The decisive moment moment in recent times was the financial crisis of 2008 when first a Republican and then a democratic Administration... they both put in place a bailout of Wall Street."

"They didn't challenge the fundamental premise the market triumphalist premise namely that market mechanisms are the primary instruments for defining and achieving the public good."

"The market Faith arises from a certain liberal aspiration for neutrality toward substantive conceptions of values in the good life."

"This is in the end this is a fear of democracy this is a fear of democratic deliberation this is a fear of what I sometime refer to in my book capital and ideology as sort of opening the ponderous box of uh you know re redistribution but also revaluation."