Contemporary economics are best explained by comparing two foundational thinkers that have contributed to the better understanding of liberalism, one being its proponent Adam Smith and the other being its most significant critic, Karl Marx. Both thinkers are profoundly important in locating and investigating the roots of neoliberalism as well as exploring alternatives ways to challenge neoliberal economics in the face of its post-cold war expansion as the inevitable and only alternative to redistribution and economic justice. This essay traces the emerging ideas of classical liberalism as articulated by Smith and their subsequent deployment in the debates that produced neoliberalism. In this context, Marx and Marxism are utilized to expose
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The end of WWII and the subsequent emergence of a consumer society with accompanied rise of the culture industry can be considered as the early shift from liberalism to neoliberalism. Its key principles including individual entrepreneurial freedoms and citizenship rights narrowly defined through consumerism. Essentially, by allowing more personal and economic freedoms the citizen would then contribute to the greater economy and society as a whole. The rise of neoliberal politics in the 1970s and 1980s was also closely tied to the Cold War where the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States was accompanied by securitization through economic relations. Many markets were untouchable due to communist regimes where the push to ‘neo-liberalize’ the world was articulated with the language of binary opposites of ‘freedom’ vs. ‘communism’ and ‘free markets’ vs. ‘controlled markets.’ The end of the Cold War allowed for a triumphant neoliberalism where the hegemonic position of the US in the international system from the 1990s on, opened up new opportunities to develop and increase its economic influence. The effort to open up markets and promoting free trade deals became more …show more content…
Marks argue for a radical break with capitalism not improving it. While Smith remains important in understanding the logic of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marks is perhaps more relevant today in understanding the historical shift from liberalism to neoliberalism which Smith did not tend to. What Marks understood was that history had one reoccurring pattern that of relations of domination across temporalities and while capitalism further facilitated and refined this process, socialism (and eventually communism) would confront this historical reoccurrence through worker control over the means of production. Marx believed that once the capitalist has set up the means of production, all value is created by the labor involved in producing whatever is being produced. In Marx 's view, presented in his 1867 tome Das Kapital (Capital), a capitalist 's profits come from exploiting labor, that i.e., from underpaying workers for the value that they are actually
The end of WWII and the subsequent emergence of a consumer society with accompanied rise of the culture industry can be considered as the early shift from liberalism to neoliberalism. Its key principles including individual entrepreneurial freedoms and citizenship rights narrowly defined through consumerism. Essentially, by allowing more personal and economic freedoms the citizen would then contribute to the greater economy and society as a whole. The rise of neoliberal politics in the 1970s and 1980s was also closely tied to the Cold War where the competition between the Soviet Union and the United States was accompanied by securitization through economic relations. Many markets were untouchable due to communist regimes where the push to ‘neo-liberalize’ the world was articulated with the language of binary opposites of ‘freedom’ vs. ‘communism’ and ‘free markets’ vs. ‘controlled markets.’ The end of the Cold War allowed for a triumphant neoliberalism where the hegemonic position of the US in the international system from the 1990s on, opened up new opportunities to develop and increase its economic influence. The effort to open up markets and promoting free trade deals became more …show more content…
Marks argue for a radical break with capitalism not improving it. While Smith remains important in understanding the logic of liberalism and neoliberalism, Marks is perhaps more relevant today in understanding the historical shift from liberalism to neoliberalism which Smith did not tend to. What Marks understood was that history had one reoccurring pattern that of relations of domination across temporalities and while capitalism further facilitated and refined this process, socialism (and eventually communism) would confront this historical reoccurrence through worker control over the means of production. Marx believed that once the capitalist has set up the means of production, all value is created by the labor involved in producing whatever is being produced. In Marx 's view, presented in his 1867 tome Das Kapital (Capital), a capitalist 's profits come from exploiting labor, that i.e., from underpaying workers for the value that they are actually