When explaining it simply, I use Naomi Klein’s definition that it’s the holy trinity of privatization, deregulation and austerity. Then of course there’s free trade which is a big part of it. But if imperialism was the expansion of capitalism into foreign lands, then neoliberalism is the expansion of capitalism into and the gradual eating away of the state through things like privatization, deregulation and austerity.
How does neoliberalism relate to libertarianism? They sound like they have the same methods
One major difference is libertarianism is anti-interventionist, neoliberalism is pro-imperialism because the only way to secure resources and enforce capitalist hegemony.
libertarianism is anti-interventionist
well at least they pretend they are
Fair point, libertarianism is like astrology, they just pick whatever parts are politically convenient for the moment.
They are the same. American libertarians just filter it through the petty bourgeoisie lens rooted in ideas of the American settler on the frontier rather than the academy.
When the Great Depression hit in the United States, the prevailing laissez-faire (I don't know if you learned about the "robber barons" in school, but think those guys) economic consensus largely collapsed, and with FDR the US embraced Keynesianism - think New Deal central planning. Europe embraced social democracy. In reaction to this, a bunch of guys such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and Milton Friedman set up the Mont Pelerin Society to resist ideas of state intervention in the economy. You can trace neoliberal economic consensus largely back to these guys.
So it is very similar to libertarianism, as it should be, since neoliberalism and libertarianism both look to classical liberal economics for influence, and most of those Mont Pelerin guys are loved by libertarians.
But as Norm_Chumpsky said below, neoliberals are very pro-imperialist, and they still see a use in the state for expanding free markets abroad. Libertarians are not as pro-intervention. But they both draw from largely the same ideology and same thinkers.
This is my amateur take.
The world order prioritizing state action to generate markets and mass privatization of previously social services. It claims to "stop state meddling" by stopping state meddling for the benefit of you and me, and instead meddles for the benefit of those who own. Industrial capital is appeased with globalization of labor and exploitation of global underclass, while financial capital is permitted to financialize the lives of those in the debt-ridden imperial core ( with housing, university, etc.) .
"Where did all this shit “start” is there like a guy who “declared liberalism” or something, or does it evolve with time? What’s the root of all this shit?
This unfortunately isn't something that can be explained succinctly. Marx developed dialectical materialism for explaining the processes of how these things develop over time. That's what you'll really want to look into. Knowing general world history is an important place to start though, since you'd need context on a lot of stuff.
To answer one question, Adam Smith was one of the first to look at how the economic order was changing in the late 1700s and develop a theory to describe what was emerging. If by "inventing" capitalism you mean he came up with the idea of individuals owning private property and operating it to produce commodities and generate profit, then no. He saw people were already starting to do that just based on the changing levels of technology, interconnected trade, and population growth and wrote extensively about it and its implications. Often, he thought many of the developments were actually bad (or had bad repercussions that needed amending at least), and was critical of this emerging capitalist system. Marx was a fan of Adam Smith and used a lot of Smith's writing as influence in some of his works.
Neoliberalism can be said to have started in the late 70s/early 80s, emblematically with noted intellectual Ronald Reagan and renowned humanitarian Margaret Thatcher who promoted massive deregulation waves and tax cuts for the rich. Ideologically, they promoted core tenets such as: government = bad, greedy individualism = good, subservience to corporations = good.
Even though we were promised it would all “trickle down” on us, wealth has instead been redistributed to the very top. This ushered in the era of the Great Regression, and when the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression hit us, we found that state power rushed to bailout the institutions and protect the elites whose fraudulent (and deregulated) behaviour caused the crisis in the first place. Not content with that, state power told us to tighten our belts.
I like to begin with that Margaret Thatcher quote "there is no such thing as society," and how neoliberalism is the perversion of the old liberal idea about how all humans are unique and dignified into the neoliberal idea that all humans are entrepreneurial bugs swarming around in The Market, which is the only real structure above the individual: no unions, no true religious organizations, eventually no families, no ethnic or linguistic groups cuz cosmopolitanism.
the wave of liberalism that entered politics after the postwar consensus an until today. It differs from the first wave of liberalism in that it is promoting globalization, a more fundamentalist approch to the market, and the recognition that the state has a larger-than-minimalist role to play, especially in enforcing market rules and rolling tanks over poor people.
people like to make elaborate lists of what is and isnt, but its really just a globally applied movement that came after the reconstruction-era social democracies.
This was one of my first introductions to the topic. probably better ones, but this is the one I watched. https://youtu.be/myH3gg5o0t0
I would say the injection of markets into and the commodification of all aspects of life. If imperialism is definable as the export of capital into foreign countries, neoliberalism is the parasitic financial capital scrounging upon what remains of imperialist society. Art is commodified. Social life is commodified. Even liberation is commodified. It's why television sucks and everyone has tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Its why not even "homeowners" really own their home and why corporations celebrate diversity. Its why tech giants can report massive losses and still be massively successful while we all slave away for them at jobs that aren't legally "jobs". As the rate of profit decreases, financial capital sinks its proboscis into new sources of revenue destroying what remains of society.
