Sir, – As the writer of the “angry letter” quoted by Dan O’Brien (Opinion, June 12th) and castigated by him as a reactionary and for my use of the term “neoliberal” without defining it (together with our President, Michael D Higgins) I beg you allow me to reply.
First, I wrote more in sorrow than in anger at a policy resulting in the outsourcing of important public services to unknown foreign entities which thereby profit from them to the detriment of our own people.
Second, the term “neoliberal” has passed into common discourse to describe policies such as those. Its origin can be traced back to the economist Milton Friedman, an opponent of the Keynesian economics pursued in the US in the 1940s.
Broadly speaking, Friedman proposed governments should remove all rules and regulations which stood in the way of profit accumulation, they should sell off any assets which corporations could run at a profit, and that spending on social services should be cut back.
Certain elements in corporate America seized on those ideas and pursued them assiduously but without much success at first. However, an opportunity presented itself in Chile where Friedman was adviser to Pinochet. The socialist prime minister Allende had been pursuing a policy of nationalisation which was inimical to corporate America, resulting in the overthrow of Allende by Pinochet in a violent coup. Pinochet’s policies were not popular, but opposition was suppressed, leading not just to the impoverishment of many but their imprisonment, torture and death. A similar process occurred in Argentina leading to thousands of “disappeared” who are mourned to this day.
I am not suggesting those policies always go to such extremes, but they are frequently accompanied by various forms of suppression.They are, of course, favoured by big business to whom they give carte blanche.Friedman did not use the term “neoliberal”. A better term might be “corporatism” or perhaps “globalisation”. The main point is that those policies favour big business on a global scale, and their end-result is the maximising of profit.
It should never be forgotten that the public servant is duty bound to serve and promote the public good, whereas the loyalty of the corporation is in the first place to its shareholders. – Yours,etc,
WILLIAM SILKE,
Grattan Road, Galway.