d . garcia on Wed, 15 Sep 2021 12:01:16 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> On the return of the interventionist state

Thanks Paolo for this very interesting article. Just a few questions that I imagine will be answered by reading the book.
I am unclear what is meant here by ‘the state’. Is it interchangeable with ‘government’? Does the argument that neoliberalism (market fundamentalism) is being replaced by ‘neostatism’ mean that you see neoliberalism as a kind of polity or set of constitutional arrangements rather than an economic orthodoxy?
To take one example the most powerful decision-making body in the EU is the European Commission is comprised of unelected officials whose principal task is to ensure that no national election of a member state will ever overturn the parameters of the neo-liberal orthodoxy. Anyone who doubts this should remember what happened to Greece in the debt crisis of 2009/10. So do you see the Commission as an example of a ‘neostate’? Or is it something else again? Is the EU Commission included in the book?
I am curious whether your analysis of the neo-state addresses the current position of ‘liberal democracy’which (for better or for worse) is in a (over used word) crisis. It seems to me that the liberal view of the state continues to trade on the old the increasingly tired old ruse of making a virtue of obscuring the answer to the question, who governs? them or us, people or government. This deliberate ambiguity is the beating heart of classical liberalism and seen as a way holding the line between tyranny vs mob rule. But its effect is simply to keep the status quo in place. This dubious magic trick (once described as the manufacturing of consent) has apart at the seams to be replaced by a techno/populist logic that depends on the ‘manufacture of dissent’.
None of this hall of mirrors would matter if we were not facing a climate emergency that needs decision, action and immediate deep change. 

I am looking forward to reading the book.


On 2021-09-14 11:10, Paolo Gerbaudo wrote:

Dear All,

I would like to share some ideas contained in my new Verso book The
Great Recoil, which I think some of you will be interested in.

The key argument of the book is that we are moving away from
neoliberalism and towards and neo-statism, a return of the
interventionist state fundamentally concerned with issues of
protection and security (in their manifold, regressive and
progressive, manifestations). This neo-statism is visible at different
levels: 1) in massive state mobilisation during the pandemic, 2) in
the return of deficit spending and some elements of trade
protectionism and industrial policy; 3) in the way in which climate
change and the green transition seem to call for a return of state
dirigisme.

This neo-statism should be seen as the ideological (or better
meta-ideological) master frame of a new ideological era, comparable to
previous ideological eras (social-democratic and neoliberal as the
most recent ones). It does not automatically mean a return of
socialism or social-democracy. Rather it means that political common
sense is changing and moving away from notion of self-regulating
markets, forcing both the left and the right to find adaptive
positions in this new landscape.

The dividing question is who the new post-pandemic state should
protect and from what. For the right it is obviously immigrants and
foreign forces those that pose a threat, as well as the poor that
demand redistribution away from the rich. But also the left is
articulating its own discourse of state protection: from the mending
of social safety nets, to the focus on health and care, to end with
the discourse of safe-guarding democracy by the likes of AOC and Ilhan
Omar.

While until recently political debate was focused on the question of
how should we manage the market, the key question now is how to use
the state, with which means and to what ends. This has huge
implications for strategy, discourse and practice. Now that the
phantasy of self-regulating market and anti-power suspicion has partly
dissolved the key question becomes what should be done with the state,
and how its complicity in massive social inequality should be
addressed.

I hope this is of interest. I'd be glad to hear your ideas on this and
particularly to what extent you agree with this diagnosis of
neo-statism acquiring centre-stage in post-pandemic politics and what
the implications may be.

For more information on the book:

https://www.versobooks.com/books/3774-the-great-recoil

Best,

Paolo
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