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RE: "neo-liberal" Re:[xmca]schools-without-computers-by-choice-and-conviction-that-they-dont-help-kids



Although "neo-liberalism" can be discussed in terms of ideology, I think any account of "neo-conservatives" in the US needs to pay more attention to the biographical trajectories of people like Irving Kristol.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Kristol#Ideas

"In 1973, Michael Harrington [a democratic socialist] coined the term "neoconservatism" to describe those liberal intellectuals and political philosophers who were disaffected with the political and cultural attitudes dominating the Democratic Party and were moving toward a new form of conservatism. Intended by Harrington as a pejorative term, it was accepted by Kristol as an apt description of the ideas and policies exemplified by The Public Interest [journal]. Unlike liberals, for example, neoconservatives rejected most of the Great Society programs sponsored by Lyndon Johnson; and unlike traditional conservatives, they supported the more limited welfare state instituted by Roosevelt."

On Mon, 31 Oct 2011, Michael Glassman wrote:

This is all really interesting.  The neo-liberal I was referring to is an ever expanding universe but originally based in developmental economics and the work of Kenneth Arrow.  Basically it suggests that we can improve social communities (make them happier) by instituting global free market policies.  The way we prove this is by measuring some aggregate in society that it can be argued does increase happiness - usually that is GDP.  So neo-liberals look to increase GDP through dramatic free market interventions (the intervention is usually doing away with some non-free market institution).  Once the market works its magic it will then magically create demodractic institutions for watch over these wondrous developments.  By the way, from what I have heard this has not worked anywhere.  It has been translated to school reform and the idea that we have to measure increase in the ability of school systems to create happiness by some aggregate - and since the major aggregagte measure we have is standardized tests, we are supposed to use free market interventions to increase standardized tests and this will magicaly make everything better.  It is as Bill suggests a variation of neo-classical theory, which was actually terms neo-classical liberal theory in England for some time.

This has been rolled into neo-conservatism which is an American approach which suggests that the United State should impose its better form of free market capitalism on the rest of the world and recreate other governments in our own image.  The goal is to destroy any type of welfare system in a country and then use it as a laboratory for free market neo-liberal capitalism.  The most famous example was the Chilean coup of Allende.  The neo-conservative approach got rolled into the neo-liberal approach and now seems to be referred to as mostly ne0-liberalism.

Probably more than anybody was interested in.

Michael
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