Sir, – As Declan Mansfield (May 19th) would have it, neoliberalism is a figment of the imagination, amounting in reality to nothing more than liberalism per se.
Both Hayek and Popper (neither an economist nor neoliberal) used the term in the 1930s. Probably its best-known exponent, Milton Friedman, used the term and wrote an essay in 1951 explaining the difference between neoliberalism and laissez faire; Friedman believed he had made real theoretical advances on classic liberal theory, which he describes as neoliberal.
Nor is liberalism an homogenous ideology. Among their enemies, obviously communism and socialism, neoliberals also numbered New Deal liberalism in the United States, and set out to dismantle the Keynesian liberalism of the UK postwar settlement.
Neoliberalism became a set of doctrinaire propositions along which its proponents believed societies should be ordered systematically, by brute force if necessary, as in Chile.
The results have been very good for some (the very rich) but decidedly mixed for many – high deficits, frequent recessions, structural unemployment, increased spending on welfare and public services, financial catastrophe, and a decidedly tawdry social fabric.
As for liberalism being the origin of republicanism, this will come as a surprise, not least to the Greeks and Romans. – Yours, etc,
EOIN DILLON,
Dublin 8.
A chara, – Declan Mansfield is wide of the mark in asserting that neoliberalism is a figment of the imagination. The ideology is hardwired into our economic system and runs off three key ideas – that fiscal policy is ineffective, that inflation is caused exclusively by money supply growth, and that the real economy quickly and automatically returns to full employment in response to negative shocks.– Is mise,
CATHAL RABBITTE,
Athenry,
Co Galway.