Neoliberalism Part 4: This is What Democracy Looks Like

that's not fine. It's not fine at all, is in fact extremely grim and bad, which is part four of our series of deal Liberalism, i e. All of the bad things happened at once so in in in in a last episode, we talked about how throughout throughout most of the Third World or you know what was at the time known as the Third World, new liberalism is not really imposed by people voting for it. It's mostly imposed by either external forces via coup or by just

the I M going okay, just we're running the country now. Um, but this this, yeah, We're we're gonna shift our focus a bit this episode with the people who were I don't know, unfortunate enough, misguided enough, decided that they hated

each other enough to actually choose neoliberalism for themselves. Now, one of the sort of stories we've been tracing here on sort of a very broad arc is the reaction by Neil Bulls to kind of kind of compromise it have been worked out between labor and capital, particularly the US after sort of the open class warfare in the reteen thirties, and you know, they're essentially there's there's a kind of deal that's set up informally, which is so

the we're working class will stop literally constantly going on strike and showing up the strikes with like enormous numbers of guns and shooting at people, and they will you know, stop trying to overshow the government in exchange, the state gives you welfare programs, the state will give you a house. And this is this is particularly after what we're too the Americans say, just you know, does this matter homeownership campaign?

And you know, if if you're if you're, if you're you know, a union worker, particularly if you're a white man like this, this, you know, working working, working one of these union jobs will put you into the middle class. You can take vacations, you can have a house, um, you can get pensions. Your unions are legal now, which is the thing that like you know, hadn't happened before. And this is essentially, you know, this is essentially a

kind of insurgency tool. Um. The goal of this is to stop people from you know, doing the kinds of revolts that were happening in at the dirties. But by the nineteen seventies it's becoming very clear that this sort of the like can't it can't really be maintained because it's too expensive for sort of the capital states to

maintain and trying to maintain both well. And you know, the secondary thing here is is, you know, okay, so this deal specifically goes out to white men right now, throughout the sixties and seventies, you get a bunch of other people who are not white men attempting to enter the workplace, attempting you get the same bargain, and you know, they're in a lot of way significantly one militants. And this causes en normal sponsetermentional strife. You get you know,

the US is murdering the black panthers. You get similar stuff in the UK and the neoliberals basically are the people who just fully called this to tants off and are you know, essentially going to return to full scale

class war. And so now now we are we are finally getting to Reagan and Thatcher, and one day we will do a full episode about how Ronald Reagan, in a weird, shadowy cabal of Italian intelligence services rigged the nineteen eighty election by planting fake stories about Jimmy Carter's brother and the press, which is if you hear the story, Garrison, No, but it sounds like regular media manipulation that happens all

the time. Now, Yeah, yeah, it's it's yeah, there, there's, there's there's there's there's a whole three line there because you know a lot of those like same kind of intelligence tactics are gonna be used South the Iraq War, and there's there's this whole sort of thing. Then you know that there's also the specific Italian angle of uh yeah, the Italian States being run by this rogue Masonic lodge led by a fascist and it's it's a time this

is all going on there. But that's you know, I'm just I'm just thinking like Hunter Biden laptop and all of that. Yeah, yeah stuff. It's like, oh so that's just the same playbook. Yeah, it's it's the same thing, except like they were like actual intelligence people running it instead of just sort of like whatever, Tucker carloson Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwaal, trying to get people to care about this

thing that just nobody gives a single ship about. Yeah, you know, it was, it was, but the the Ages version of it was significantly more effective. And you know, the product of this is that Reagan sort of Reagan finds like the secret sauce for right wing politics, which is kind of you know, in in in some ways, and Nixon had been trying to develop it hadn't quite

gotten right, which is no, yeah, yeah, yeah. He he figures out that, you know, if you want to do new liberalism, if you want to destroy the unions, you want to show the welfare state, the way you do it is basically a combination of racist tax and welfare

recipients and you mobilize new religious right. And this is extremely effective and it's but I think it's also interesting and worth noting that, you know, if if you got all the back to episode one, like this is this is rope keys like white nationalism, like short German white nationalism. Thing is this is explicitly a ropeky sort of strategy for implenting the liberalism was the problem is he was German and Catholic, which meant that like it could never

work in the US. But you know, you get Reagan, suddenly you get the American version of it, that is, you know, white but American, and then also works off the sort of of off of the sort of mass Protestantism in the US, and this becomes a force study is responsible for like almost every bad thing that exists today in some form or another lot of them. Yeah, I mean not not often, but you know, I the thing,

things go extremely badly. And so Reagan wins this election and then almost exactly the same time, Margaret Thatcher wins the wins her election in in the UK, and that the combination of those two things, and also, as we talked about last episode, the Vulcar shock, where Volca raises the interest rates raised, defendation become so Vulcar is installed weirdly, not by Ronald Reagan but by Jimmy Carter, but is given this sort of mandate to just do whatever, literally

do whatever you have to to to get inflation under control. The thing that he decides to do is just literally nuke the entire world economy. You know, when we talked about the effects of this hat ont of the world and the last episode. But in the US this sets off a recession at last, basically from like nineteen seventy

nine to Night two. At the height of it, it's like it's I think we finally got more people unemployed during the pandemic, but I'm like sure that between World War Two and the pandemic, that was the single largest number pop who have been unemployed in the US, which

just yeah, it was just apocle, just apocle devastation. And you know, there's there's there's a whole thing here where the head of the a f l C. I OH is literally begging Vulcar like, please don't do this, like we can get inflation under control after, you know, after the economy recovers, and vocals just like no. The consequence of this is that you have you have an economy in which is no more sumber of people unemployed, and the unions are weak, and both Reagan and Thatcher sort

of see this. Now the unions in the UK are

in a sniffulty better position the American unions. Reagan is able to sort of smash the American unions very quickly there's there's the you know, the famous air traffic control strike where a bunch of American air traffic controllers go on strike technically illegally, and Reagan just has literally every single one of them fired and replaces them with just like like people from flight school, like people who just just like apt literally anyone he can just like pull

off the street who sort of kind of knows how to how to land an aircraft, like they put on people from the military. It's it's just like this absolutely wild sort of feet of strike breaking. And then you know, and when when when that falls and that that strike fails, you know, the air traffic controllers well, okay, funnily so,

the air traff controllers had actually backed Reagan. They were like the only union that backed Reagan in the election, and they immediately just get you know, they get gutted for it, which, like I have mixed feelings about because like, on the one hand, like, yeah, that's that's, that's what

you get. But on the other hand, this is basically what the stories this, This is the consequences that this is basically what the stories like trade unions in the US because at this at this point, everyone realizes that the unions are weak and they just start you know, there's you get to the point where employers are deliberately provoking strikes so that they can just fire all the unionized employees. And it's extra to be effective. In in Britain, the fight is a lot more intense um in in

in Entity. For Thatcher cuts cold, like basically Thatchery wants to provoke a fight with with the coal unions and so she basically wants to shut down a whole bunch of coal production and fire like twenty miners, and the miners go on strike, and they go on strike for over a year. But Thatcher had basically stockpiled enough cold

to stave off the worst effects of the strike. And then she makes these incredibly elaborate network of deals with like She's like this this whole scab driver like union, like basically this whole network of scab drivers, like make sure you can move the coal around while the strike's going on. There there's all of this stuff, and you know, and and she eventually is able to crush the coal strike. And this also just just completely annihilates like the British

trade union movement, I mean union participation. I think dreaming Thatcher's term alone falls and it's gotten way worse since then.

So so with those two incidents, the air traffic control and the coal did did those just kind of make people be disillusioned or did that just like pave the way for similar tactics to be acceptable for every other union that tried to do the same thing both And then the everthing was fear because you know, so with the air traffic controllers, right, the air traffic controllers are you know, these are the most highly skilled like people people in there there, These are a bunch of people

who are incredibly have the skilled and they're in there, in there in a logistic industry, right, so you know, in theory, these are the people who have like the maximum amount of impact if they would go on strike. And when Reagan shows that you can literally just fire twenty four thousand people of like the most highly skilled sort of workers in the in the US, you can fire them and just break the strike and nothing will happen, and you know the result is total defeat and none

of these people ever work again. That basically spreads this massive wave of fear through the union movements because you know, if they can fire those guys, they can fire anyone and then you know, the the employers just start doing it.

And the other thing that's been happening here is that for really since the end of the forties, the unions have kind of So we'll we'll talk about this more in in in an interview that's gonna come out probably next week about sort of the history American union movements, but American unions basically so American, like the union movement was built by radical organizers and in the forties and sort of moving on from there, all these people get

expelled from the labor movement and labor fights this basically incredibly intense battle against its own left flank, and you have you know, like for example, in in there's this thing called the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, right, which is a bunch of mostly black workers in Detroit, who are you know, they're there there there forming unions, they're going on a strike, but they're also fighting against the the u a W because the U a W is cooperating

too closely. But the bosses etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And there's there's there's these you know, there's there's basically this battle between like not even just basically between the unions ranked and file and the radicals and the sort of business union management, and in fighting that battle, the unions had basically like massively weakened themselves and then you know, and

bye bye bye. By the time you hit the eighties, especially in the US, the unions are just sort of a shell out their form ourselves, and and Reagan just sort of like smashes them aside. And Thatcher the British unions are much stronger, but you know, I mean that Thatcher is preparing to like like there she she has plans to like the army is going to come in and suppress the strike. There's these and especially there's there's just, i mean just an absolutely incredible amount of police violence.

Um that's you know, I mean, this is this is something that had happened before during strikes, but the the the the level of intensity of it is just like

massively increased. And there's also another thing that's happening basically at the same time with this, which is squeezing the units on the other side, which is there's this I guess you could call it like an internal class war inside the ruling class between well specifically inside inside of the sort of corporate management between the sort of traditional like manager CEO class and the sort of like I guess you could call them, I don't know, the sort

of Wall Street finance bank types and so so yeah, so one of the other things that that happens at the end of you know, basically after the war is the sort of class compromise was talking about like this, this happens inside of the company too, and people start

to see the corporation as like a social institution. It has you know, it's like, well, okay, so there's this alliance between middle management and the workers, and you know, it's like, okay, so we we both worked with each other, and you know, the compromises that you guys got to have unions, but the unions won't sort of disruptroduction. We'll all work together and we'll just make like I don't know,

we'll we'll make really really good ballpoint pens together. And so yeah, you have this in lince between sort of middle managements and these unions, you know, and this this is embedded into the structure of the corporation because you know, you not you not only have the unions, but you have corporations paying pensions. One of the things that that Reagan does is that Reagan starts, you know, Reagan does

this massive series of financial deregulations. And the other part of this agreement basically had been that like the high level of finance class has sort of stayed out of the way of management, and so management kind of like you know, the you get this like this independent sort of CEO class that that's that's a distinct thing that you know, that the people who come up through the company who managers and they worked away at the top, and this is a distinct thing from sort of the

finance people who are like they're not supposed to be allowed to like, you know, the touch production. But in the nineteen eighties, the finance people start to look at this and go, wait, hold on, why are we not running things? And the finance people have because they have the two things on their side. One they have a sort of neoliberal ideology, and the second thing they have is so Michael Milken he figures out how to do this thing called a leverage buyout option. It's it's it's

a it's a kind of complicated financial instrument. The short and simple explanation of what it is is he figures out a way too basically go into a bunch of debt, and he he gets he gets people to give him a bunch of money, like in the form of these bonds, and then he uses it to just buy out entire companies. He buys of the company. And if you own fit of the company, now you control, you have controlling interest. And so he goes in and she just he just

raises the stock prices of all these companies. And now you know, but I mean, now he's gone into an enormous amount of debts right in order to buy in order to buy this company, and so you know, in order to pay off that debt, he just starts strip money in the company. And so he starts, you know, anything that can be sold for money that he can put in his pocket to pay off his debt starts

getting sold. And you know, every anything the corporate that the company is doing, it doesn't immediate make money or doesn't immediately raise the stock price gets cut. And so you know, there there, there, there are there are two major things that a company has that don't immediately make money and don't raise the stock price, and that is pensions and research and development. And this this has you know, this, this, this, this, this becomes known as the sort of this is the

hustle takeover waves. It gets rebranded as mergers and acquisitions in the nineties, but it's it's this huge sort of wave, those these corporate scripts corporate America, and it turns the corporation from this kind of social body where it's like, well, everyone's cooperating and companies sort of have this responsibility to like provide for their workers and provide sort of for like the social good into literally the only like the single entire purpose of any company is to raise the

stock price. And this, yeah, this is really bad. Yeah, and and and you know the part about it that's awful is that, you know, okay, so all all literally all a corporate rad has to do in order to buy out one of these companies is be able to is be able to offer a price for the stock that's higher from the stock price of the company now. And this means even so they're they're they're there's a

very famous series of battles they buy out. An enormous number of companies get bought out into strip minds like this, and you know, and the over and again these are these are very very profitable companies, right, These are companies with large research and development budgets. These are companies that are making enormous amounts of money and they're just completely destroyed in order to sort of just like satiate these

just like absolute Google corporate, like vulture raider people. This is you know, if you remember, might be too young for this, but Romney's campaign for so yeah, one one of the reasons why Mitt Romney loses is that like he's one of these guys like he's he's like he's the big bang capital guy, and everyone's kind of looks at him and goes like, you're the reason we'd like

guide to this mess in the first place. But the problem, the problem is that these people who have enough money and they have enough power, they're able to do this and in order to stop them, so either there there

there's a massive there's a massive fight. A bunch of people try to take over good Year, who you know, they make the tires, they have the blimps, and Goodyear CEO is like fanatically opposed to all of this because you know, she she's she's from the old ceo crop who's like, well, okay, we're here to like make things instead of you know, increased stock prices. But the problem is the only way he can save off the raiders

is by increasing a stock price. And the only way to increase stock prices is by doing the things the corporate raiders are already doing. So she starts slashing contentions, he starts flashing with your development budgets. Yeah, and this and this. This sort of cycles because now you have you know, there's there, there's it's it's it's you're not only having pressure from you know, like the government, that's

that's anti union. The corporations themselves are being forced to become more anti union because they're you know, they now have this pressure on them from the top down, from from these sort of these sort of finance schools, and the finance schools in a lot of ways just the perfect nilable subjects, right because they only see the world

in money. They see everything as a market that they literally think that like they they are like these like shamans if if if there's a really good ethnography that I've plugged before on here called liquidated and an ethnography and void yet liquidated and ethnography of Wall Street, where an anthropologist goes onto Wall Street and works there for a while, and then you cannot much of interviews, doesn't

it doesn't athethpological stuff. And the way they talk about the market, they literally talk about it as if they're channeling it, right, like it's like something and they're like, these are yea, these are these are that's that's one of the new gods of of our world. That yeah, that's I mean, that's that. That's not an uncommon term

of phrase to describe stuff like this. Yeah, and and what what what what I think is they just think about it though, is that you know that conception of the market of like every person is just like a peer like completely socially unbounds like thing of capital all that you Oh, well, okay, if you lose your job here, you can just move to another firm, right, So this makes sense inside of the context of Wall Street because these people like like these Wall Street firms they have

they have like like thirty turned over a year, and so all these people are constantly being fired and shuffle on to the next job, and fired and shuffle onto the next job, and so you know, they so they they do they do this very common sort of fallacy thing where they assume that because this is the way that it works for them, but this is the way it's gonna work for everyone else. And then they genuine

and a lot of these people genuinely believe this. They're like, well, okay, so the things we're gonna with things that we're about to do, like, you know, when we destroy these workers entire lives when we should be you know, when we close their factories, when we take their pensions, when we literally destroyed like every community and every like thing that's every just in your lives, they're like, oh, they'll just pick themselves up and go to another place and they'll

be fine, because you know, if you're if you're you know, a Wall Street finance school, like, yeah, that's that's what happens when you get fired every three months. And so these people, these people basically take control of the entire overspective they do. They do this very quickly by you know, they start this in the sort of early eighties. And uh, Milliken, the guy who comes up with the junk bonds leveraged buyout scheme, like he he goes to jail for I

think securities fraud. Do they get him for fraud. But it doesn't it a lot of those guys got all of these people like he again, all of these people are just doing crime, Like now, yeah, that's how finance standards, this is how this is how the Action Park guy got kicked out. You got kicked out doing doing all the same stuff. And again, I want to put this out, like the stuff they're doing is so illegal that like even the Reagan administration was like, no, we have to

prosecute you. Like that's like, this is the this is the Ronald Reagan Justice departments. And they're like it was it was so much crib. Yeah, it's it's really bad. And and you know the result of this is just basically the total visceration of the working class just like as a movement. And you know, all the left wing parties are sort of shaped by this. And you know, and you know, we've been focusing on on the US and uh in the UK here, but this is not

the only place this happens. And you know, so one of the you know, like this this happens, this, this also starts happening like in socialist states. Um And we talked about this in more detail in our interview with Arnessa Kasutra about Bosnia. But one of the big things that Miloshevik is doing in Yugoslavia and when when he takes power and he starts like actually being a real political force inins in eighties, is he starts doing basically all of the same stuff that that that reagan A,

thatacher doing. He starts, he starts implementing shock adoction, he starts privatization, he starts um like marketization, he starts cutting stutting, cutting price controls, he starts sort of he starts doing I don't know if decollectimization is quite the right word, because Yugoslavia's economic system is complicated and weirder than uh

the SSRs. But you know, he does this, and this is one of the things that starts Yugoslavia's dethspiral, because you know, you have this enormous economic devastation from the increase in oil prices from the oil shock, and then that gets paired with, you know, the the economic devastation from everyone losing their benefits, people losing de pensions, the state on the industries going under and getting privatized, um the sort of like collective ownership structures imploding and the

product of this is that you know, Melosivic looks at this and it's like, Okay, how can I stay in power? And his answer is just genocide on that. It's just genocide on nationalism. And this sort of collapse a sort of state and social life is you know, and and the leaders at the top realizing that they can weaponize sort of nationalism is one of the things at least directly to the Boston and genocide. Now, towards the end

of the eighties, the whole Soviet block starts coming apart um. Yeah, you know, the Berlin Wall falls and eventually, you know, the Soviet Union dissolves, and the people who are trying to end the Soviet Union, the things that they want basically are like freedom of speech, the ability to like leave the country, and basically like Scandinavian style social democracy. And it was like reasonable coming from the Soviet Union.

Yeah yeah, and you know, I mean, these these people like you know, this is these you know, like they they they wanted to leave in Scandinavia and instead they got hey, welcome to the US, but like even worse. Yeah, and so yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's really bad. And you know what they getting said, is just these this enormous wave of privatizations. H the weldfare state just vanishes,

and you know this this causes basically like total societal collapse. Um. Like one of my one of my professors, and this this happens basically across the whole Soviet Block one of professions in college, and I think she was fumble Gary. Um. She she told me about how dream the nineties like when she when she was growing up, like she and her family would just the only thing they had to eat was raw millet because there's no food. There's there's

literally no food anywhere. The entire economy is collapsed. Nobody has any money, and so you know, it was like, well, okay, everyone, she's eating raw grain because you know that that's what that's that's the only thing you can you can you have to survive. And you know it's this it's it's literally so bad that in Russia it causes the single largest life expectant to drop in post World War Europe. It's like like it's the life expected to decrease is

about like four years because so many people die from this. Um. You know, and one of the one of the ways this happens is that there's so the way they're they're going to deal with like the state owned industry thing is they they okay, and I've never been able to figure this figure out if it was like they they actually took Murray Rothbard's plan for this, or if they just independently developed were a roth whereas plan for for for dissolving stated on the industries, which is give like

everyone who worked in a share of the company. And so they do this right, and everyone has these shares, but these shares are just like paper, and you can't

eat this paper. So a bunch of sort of like organized crime guys and the people who have been you know, like like the sort of the people who've been richer or like had been sort of connected party people who were just like I'm just gonna cash out start, you know, just just going through cities, and they're they'll you know, they'll be like, okay, we'll give you a pair of genes, like we'll give you some food if you give us their share, and you know, everyone people just give up

the shares. And the result of this is that like just every industry in Russia immediately falls under the control of just just like absolutely psychotic oligarchs, and you know, the the West definitely sharing this on that this this whole process is engineered by just a bunch of just like pure neoliberal Google like Harvards, like weird Harvard grads who gets sent into Russia and who are like, oh, we're gonna we're gonna run the Russian economy and we're

gonna like fix everything, and they just just absolutely destroy it. And you know, the West has the thing that they're they're you know, they're they're they're cheering on this whole process. They have this thing about how like everyone has to do belt tightening and you're gonna suffer for a bit

and it'll all be worth it. And meanwhile, Boris Jelson is just completely drunk off his asked like shelling the parliament with tanks, while like the U. S. Press is cheering, and you know there's the sort of like you know, the tragedy this is like it's not really like Russia got like more free, you know, like they still they still torture and disappeared anarchists and secret prisons, like you know, there's there they still just like randomly assassinated political dissidence

with through increasingly bizarre, like poison bullshit. Yeah, yeah, but you know, the big difference is that a bunch of Harvard grads made an indescribable amount of money. Now no one has any pensions, um, and there's there's this is great like this is a great Russian joke from this period that goes he's talking about the communists. Everything they ever told us about communism was a lie, but everything they ever told us about capitalism was absolutely true. Yeah,

that's that seems to be roughly accurate. Yeah, it's basically true. And you know, and and the product is sort of neoliberalism coming to Russia is that by by by the end of the nineties, Russia is just literally controlled by the mob and these sort of monsters, oligarchs. And Putin's campaign is like I am better than the mob, and I will bring them, I will bring the mob in,

the oligarchs under control. And this is you know, this is how Putin takes power because and he has failed to hold up to that probless to be fair, to be fair, the you are significantly less likely to just like randomly be kidnapped and ransoms. Not me, No, I have I have wrote for a website. He does not, like I cannot that's true. That's true. If yeah, if you kiss off Putin, you might be held for ransom.

But it's like, you know, the number of random people who don't do anything political, who are just like randomly held for ransom did kind of go down a bit and like that's all right, all right, you gotta hand it to Putin, Okay, I give him. Yeah, well, okay. The thing on hand to Putin is that he restored the state's monopoly on violence. Now that's not a good things now, but he did it. Yeah, he well, he

did it. And you know this this was the basis of sort of because his power and political support was that in sort of nationalism. And this is like you know, and and there's always just the sort of liberal line on on on Putin. He's like, oh he's an SKGB guy, and like oh, it's still communism again, and it's like no, like no, no, and and that this this brings me back to the single thing that I I need everyone to understand about near liiberalism, which is that near liberalism

does not decrease the size of the state. Like the there there were more, there were more bureaucrats now in the Russian State than there were under the Soviet Union. No, and it definitely in order for it to operate, definitely extends drastically that like the hands of the state in terms of like like like military, police, law enforcement, like

all those things. In order to keep this weird market driven thing alive, you need to have a lot of like enforcement on people who don't have but both both people who like actually make money and but most of the people who don't make very much money. So it increases not only like the bureaucratic state, but also like the enforcement armor the state. Yeah, and I think there's there's there's there's there's two interesting ways this happens. One

is that, well, okay, there's three ways happens. One is that anytime someone says they're gonna they're gonna do deregulation, like the deregulation does not mean that they're going to decrease the number of regulations there are. What it means is that the regulations are bad for this company, and so they're they're going they're going to they're going to add more regulations in a way that is good for

this company. And the thing is this actually this, you know, this net increases the size of the state right there. They're not like they're not like they're not decreasing the number of laws or whatever. They're you know, they're they're they're they're they're writing like incredibly like absolutely incomprehensible banking legislation that like, let's banks charge like interest rates that

previously only organized crime could do. And then there's there's another aspect of this, which is that, you know, so the the welfare that remains right, you know, it becomes means tested, and you know that means that there's so you have the bureaucracy right that like gives you things, and then you have another bureaucracy on top of that that decides whether or not you should be allowed to do the thing it puts you know, there's this this

is just just this like process of abject humiliation that you have to go through to receive anything, yeah, from the state. And it's like that sucks. And then because that is so awful, there's another layer of bureaucracy, which is like social workers and stuff, whose job it is, in large part is to help you bypass the second layer of bureaucracy, so that creates another layer. Yeah, there's

there's there's there's so much. Yeah it is, and but but this is you know this, this, this is one of the things in the ribals do, which is okay, so you know, you you have you have, you have your two doctrines. Right, you have the thing they actually believe, which is enormous, bureaucratic, military, state, and then you have the thing they claim to believe, which is, oh, the state needs to be smaller, the state needs to be decentralized,

the state shouldn't interfere in the market. And so whenever, whenever, like the things that they do get too bad, they have this other thing they can turn to you to go, oh, yeah, the reason there's too much bureaucracy is because the state's getting involved too much. Elect us and we will get rid of the bureaucracy. And then you elect them and they make the state bigger, and you know, you get

this started, perpetual cycle. I think the reason people get confused by this is that when when people when most people think of the state, right, they think of the state is something they provide services. You know that the quintessential thing of state does is build roads roads. Yeah, and you know, and when you know, when we can talk about how like the US building roads probably doomed the entire earth climate change. Oh yeah, no, like the way that we've done roads around cars and the type

of things we make roads. Yeah, it's horrible, but yeah it's awful. Yeah, but but there there's there's there's another thing about roads which is interesting, which is that roads are you know, so the original reason why states built roads was they can move armies around. And if this comes back to the core of what a state is, right, there is nothing in the actual core definition of a state, which is basically it's a higerarch couple of localized monopoly

on violence. Right, there's nothing in that that has that like says at all the state has to do anything for you, right like if if you know, if two guys with guns show up and sees a place, right, they can create a state. They don't have to give you anything. The state is the fundamental core of the state is just a bunch of armed people who can

order people around. And you know, but people people sort of can people sort of confuse the two and the neil Isms entire thing is increasing the increasing the military. You know that the part of the state that takes things from you at gunpoint and decreasing the part of the states that like gives you things. And you know, one of one of the there's one of one of the other things that that happens in this period is that labor increasingly stops being about making or doing anything

and just becomes pure guard labor. So, you know, the the the last big neliberal project that doesn't really get talked about as a deliberal project ever, is that mass incarceration is a deliberal project. It started under under Nixon and under Carter. But you know, so when when Reagan takes office that the American prison population is about three thousand. When he leaves office, he has basically doubled it to uh six, seven thousand. We have now more than doubled

it again. And you know it basically it you know, when whenever you get a large ne liberal administration, they they you know, they double it, right, it basically doubles again drained dwen the Clinton administration. You know, it keeps accelerating, and you know this is this is this is the other thing that that neoliberalism brings in, which is that Okay, so neo liberals and produces this enormous population of people who don't have any jobs, have no opportunities whatsoever, are

just screwed. So what do you do with them? And the answer is slavery. And basically everywhere that you stay u see neoliberalism. You see massive increases into prison population espect like the US is by far the worst example

of this, but this happens. You know that the seven is basically across the world and what what what you see is in place of you know, it's this is this one of the things that drives politics in sort of in rural reasons in the US, which is that you have these places that used to sort of have industry is used to particularly coal mining things like that, and it gets replaced by prisons because prisons, you know, having a prison in your sort of rural town is

is the only way to sort of ensure that you have a large economic base. And so you know, like local local city councils are you know, incredibly pro prison because it's like, oh, well, the president will bring your jobs and you know this means that Okay, so so the people a lot of people who are prison guards are just you know, fascists. But there's also people who

are prison guards who normally would just be workers. Yeah no, absolutely, yeah, who have just been sort of but you know, there's nothing left right and there they're fighting, you know, uh, Mike Davis talks about this, that they're finding this just incredibly desperate, ferocious struggle to like stay in the places they love and stay with their families, and stay with their friends, stay with their communities. And the only way they can do this is, you know, by becoming part

of this like just the neo liberal health state. And you know they don't like it either, but that's you know, that's what the liberalism is, right, is you no longer have a job. The only job available to you is picking up a gun and pointing it at someone who is exactly the same as you, except you know, they've been thrown into the slavery part of the system instead of the people holding the guns at the slavery part

of the system. And one of the things that that happens a lot of people just really conflate about what neoliberalism is is they can use it with libertarianism and they're not the same thing. And and this this is a condus is a very confusing problem because well, a, the term nea liberals don't get used in the US all that much. When people use it, they usually use

it to mean something bad. And that's just about it. Yeah, yeah, and and you know and and also another part of the problem is that even if you go into like the Montpellion Society, right which you know this is this is this is the arch new liberal institution, and it's just like basically like a think tank generator, there are

there are libertarians in there. There there are there are narco capitalists in the Montpellion Society, and the one Pellion Society is fighting this sort of constant internal battle between the people who actually believe the things that they say publicly, like you actually believe you should have a small state blah blah blah blah blah, and the people who understand that all the small states stuff is just like stuff you tell the masses in order to get them to

like slash welfare things while you just hire more cops. And probably the single biggest distinction between the libertarians and and the neo liberals is about border control. Now, if if you listen to New Liberals on Twitter, or you listen to Neil, or you listen to libertarians right, capitalism is supposed to have open borders, is supposed to be free movement to people, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Um, if you look at literally everything every neo liberal government has ever done,

it's exactly the opposite. It's they don't like that. Yeah, yeah, they hit it. And you know, the this whole thing about like oh you need workers to uh yeah, if if you, if you, if you let workers from other countries go into into the US, like oh they'll they'll, they'll decreased wages, blah blah blah blah. So the period in which the US like had strong unions and strong wages and stuff, with the period where there was like

basically no militarization on the Mexican border. I mean there were some and you know there there's there's there's a build up sort of dream the Vietnam War and they're they're there sort of been one back like around election revolution era. But you know it's it's nothing. It's literally nothing like it is today. Today. The US border is

this just absolute hellscape. Um. I mean just like there's there's there's this enormous perimeter of the U. S border where just the Constitution doesn't apply where like the Bill of Rights just doesn't exist. If if if you're if you're, if you're close enough to the border, it's just it's

all suspended. Uh, it's not entirely suspended, but like basically the border patrol can just do whatever the funk they want to you, and you know, like this is this, this is this is how the border patrol was able to be deployed in Portland, right because Portland's technically on the border and the border patrol has increased power is there and the actual goal is so people people are always going to move right, And what the new labels figured out was that you know, these these these enormous

miket labor populations, the best way you can exploit them as if they're just absolutely terrorized by just this, you know, an incredible sort of ferociously hostile, murderous just border regime run by fascists, and it works, like they kill, they kill enormous numbers of people, They do horrible things, They put people with concentration camps, they sterilize people they like, they sexually assault children, they disappear people they like, still

people's babies, and this is you know, this is what neoliberalism is, right, This, this is what it actually is in practice. This is you know, like, this is the this is the this is the policy that is imposed

money liberal states. And I think I want to end on that, and I want to end on a note about what the quintessential sort of figure of neoliberalism is, because I think, you know, in the neoliberals mind, right, the quintessential neoliberal figure like the small entrepreneur who's like guy who's you know, turned their own creativity and like harnessed it into like the ability to create value, and you know, they're creating things in the world and they're

reaching themselves. And I think a lot of leftists think of it as like the quintession of the liberal is you know, a Chicago, Chicago School of Economics person. Yeah, And I want to suggest that they quit. The single quintessential like neoliberal figure is a riot cop, and specifically specifically that the you know, if if you know, every everyone might now knows what a riot cop looks like. Right.

I want everyone to go back and even even from from like two thousand one, look at what a riot police officer looks like in two thousand one versus what they look like now, and then go back to even like the nineteen sixties and look look at look at what those guys look like. Yeah, I know, looking at the footage from the sixties and riot cops is really depressed it because they're like, I could take these guys. Yeah, they're they're just wearing T shirts. They're just guys. It's

it's way more of a fair fight. They have T shirts and sticks. We could have T shirts and sticks. That is that that's like the a arriety of the sixties. It sounds like now they also in some cases will be much more willing just to murder tons of people. Now there is that exception, but in like a big street brawl, it is it is generally a bit of a fair fight. I mean, I will say also, sixties police love love dogs. They love like sicking dogs and people,

which is really bad. Yeah, I'm I'm looking at it, looking at at the two thousand one riot cops, and yeah, they are not nearly as robot copy. Nope, that's what they are now. During the Chilean uprising in I was talking to someone in Chile and they were talking about how like they were describing it as like the cops were just like like something had a change, beating ninja turtles like it was like fighting the shredder. There. There's even even even the l a p. D. Riot cops

for the nineteen two riots. They're also still just wearing like shirts like they just have they just have colored shirts and one stick. Yeah and now versus now they're wearing there whatever dumb armor they have. Yeah. But you know, and this is this is you know and this, this is this is if if you want to trace the path in near liberalism, it's this. It's a lot of the army surplus stuff that like the police have gotten

a lot of. It's really scary. A lot of it also sucks, like a lot of those a t v S every like everyone who's ever had to drive them hates them. But you know, like like my my like absolutely tiny dinky town has a bear cat and that shouldn't that shouldn't be. And I know where it is too, Like I know where the bear cat is. It's like, there shouldn't be a bear cat. My town is a tax cutout, like it's it's literally a tax carve out

like that. That's the reason that's the really recent it exists, and it a bear cat and like, you know, this is this is sort of the this is the consequence of of of what ne o liiberalism, isn't it. Vicky uster Well talked about this on on on the Occupy episode. It's it's the cops become more like become more like the army. The army becomes more like the cops, and you know, the the result is this sort of pen out to con surveillance states, where like if you and

seven people stand on a sidewalk, sixteen cops will show up. Yeah, they've they've really uh excelled in making the capitalist realism Dumer philosophy be almost like the base philosophy for anyone who takes two seconds to think about the world that they live in. And you know, and this has been

really effective in a lot of ways. But you know, David Graeber point pointed this out, which is that the problem with doing this is that, you know, okay, so like the the the enormous amount of guard labor, right, the enormous amount of sort of prison guards, Like that's all unproductive labor, right, you know, you you you you make you make some of that money back off the companies make some of the money back off the slave labor, right, but like, but that in general there the guards aren't

adding anything. They're not they're not they're not producing any goods um and not really much service either. No, and and and this is you know this this this is a problem right because because neoliberalism is profit driven, and so you know, what you have is is that the system has a choice between either it functioning or it making it appear as if it's the only system. And it that's the thing is that it's it's it's kind

of profit driven. But honestly, the more that I the more that you've been talking, like, no, it's just about eliminating any alternative. So it's not not even profit driven. It's that it's forcing itself to be the only acceptable option. Yeah, that's how it gets so much of its power. Yeah, but but you know the problem with this is that all of that sort of ideological coercion only last as

long as the police can hold the streets. And which is they're good at it there there sometimes they're decent. You know. One of the story I want to end on is so there's you know, there has been in some with more varying degrees of success. There has actually been resistance in neoliberalism, and there are places where people have won the people. There are places where people have

run the I m f out those people. There's places where people have you know, defeated coups where they've like you know, where they've where they've they've they've successfully sort

of taken over the state. There's places where, you know, I mean there's there's there's places like you know, we're gonn talking about couple of things in Mexico, but yeah, I mean there's there's the Zapatistas who have you know, are constantly besieged, but have carved out a territory in which they have you know, like totally defeated the Mexican

almost really defeated the Mexican state. And I think one of the sort of forgotten incidents in in the two thousands is this uprising in Wahaka where they, yeah, there's a there's an enormous sort of a bunch of teachers

are going on strike. And you know, Wahawka's teachers unions are enormously powerful and incredibly radical, and so you know that they one of the things they do is that they go into the city and they have these like these giants started protest tents that they showed up and they have these like giant camps and she in six the police attack them, and so they start attacking and the and the teachers fight back, and so you have this you know this, this this massive battle erupts um

it's just in this city and you know this is this is all The police attack at like three in the morning, right, but they can they there's not enough of them. The clear teachers out and the teachers hold and they hold and they hold, and that the city of Wahaka wakes up to this just enormous battle in the streets between a bunch of just like teachers and the cops. And when Wahawka wakes up, they are just

like what the fuck is the us? And you know, they joined the teachers and they go fight the cops and they they they're largely successful in like like they beat them, they drive, they drive the police from the city and you know, and and for for for for for several months, the city is basically under the control of these like direct democratic councils and like they're there are these there are these things they call them mega marshes whire just a million people will do a march

to the streets and the police there's the police just can't stop them because you know, there's a million people.

And yeah, that's that's the only way that I've seen it be successful, whether it be you know, just to sure sheer massive people driving cops out of a police station, or you know, an entire city rallying behind people like in in in Portland when the fence came, it's like you need to have like everybody to show up, because they could fight two hundred like twin canarchists, they pretty easily.

You usually, um, but when you have like all of the moms and dads and regular people come up, that is much more of a complicated of fight on like on on their end, because yeah, we'll still have the teenage front liners throwing of the cops, but when you have like regular people behind them, that creates the whole media narrative and to be something totally different. And it got the Feds to back down in Portland when Trump

really wanted to not happen. And I think also the thing the thing that that was incre incredible hawk is it wasn't just people sort of like standing behind them, like like tens of thousands of people just joined the fight in in a way that you know, it like if you know, if if there's like fifty tho people in a city throwing bricks at you, like you you either have to start shooting into the crowd or try

to hold them. Can't You can't. And even when he started shooting into the crowd, yeah, they tried it, and disaster it made it made even the crowds were larger, and like, you know, one of the things that happens is that the the revolutionaries try to like you know, they go to the radio station or like okay, well you broadcast this radiotation says no, and they start seizing

radio stations all over all over the city. Yeah and they yeah, and then you know, and then they had they had these they had these like bonfires at the edge of the city where if it's at the meets, and like they're there's they're they're sending there, They're they're sending radio like messages like over over the radio stations they've taken over from like barricade to barricade, and you know, eventually the police and like the like the Mexican Army

shows up and at that point they're able to sort of retake the city. And there's a couple of other things happening in Mexico at this point that are sort of this is giants are left wing tied. And the way that it gets stopped is that the Mexican army basically fully kicks off the drug war and they kill I mean, I've seen numbers up to like eight hundred thousand people in ten years. They just they basically basically

genocides the indigenous population of of of Mexico. And you know, I think I think that's that's that's sort of a place to leave it, because you know, more big hopeful note to end to the show on. Yeah, but I mean I think I think it is it is worth it is you know, it's it's it's it's worth thinking about. Is one. It is possible to beat the police too.

The ruling class will literally bathe the entire country in blood, like they will destroy their own country is different the way I mean this gets discussed in the season happen here, But like the way the American military works, I think

it will be less likely to do that. Yeah, Well, I mean and I want I want to put this oi, like, so what the thing that the army doesn't directly murder people what they do is but what they do is basically like they they set off a bunch of fighting between the cartels and then and the cartels fucking murder enormous numbers people. You know, we will happily murder each other. But yeah, yeah, well and also you know, I mean it's it's also this is this is you know, the

thing with the Mexican state. It's it's very very difficult to tell where the cartels stop and where the Mexican Army begins because a lot of them are the same thing. And like you know, there's yeah, that's hopeful. Note to end on and just but just to make the ending a bit better, I do want to say I'm no longer going to call anyone uh neoliberal. I made this joke in the group chat yesterday and nobody responded to it, so it was set, So I'll say it now. I'm

only going they called them Thomas Anderson liberals. That that that that that's that is what I'm calling them now. Um, And I'll make everyone wait two seconds to understand what's going on and then sigh and then motion to get me out of the room. So thank you Chris for talking about them, and thank thank thank thank you all for joining us. That this this has been It could happen here. Um, you can find us on Instagram and Twitter.

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