Small post on big topic: "Neoliberalism"

August 24, 2020

As this Google N-gram seems to suggest, the popularity of the word "neoliberalism" seems to have crested in 2016, and declined a little bit in the past several years--perhaps with the rise of the popularity of words like "fascism" and phrases like "white supremacy" to describe our current moment--the word still retains its power to charm, and not I think in a good way.

This exchange offers a very useful debate—from 2018—about the meaning of the term “neoliberalism.”  Daniel Rogers is always good to think with, and while the resistances to his critique here are sometimes worthwhile, I do think his view is more convincing, to me at least: “neoliberalism” obscures and mystifies, in a Manichean way, more than it illuminates. 

Maybe the story of its slight decline is telling us something that the roundtable confirms.