
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order
America and the World in the Free Market Era
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Narrated by:
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Keith Sellon-Wright
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By:
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Gary Gerstle
About this listen
The epochal shift toward neoliberalism—a web of related policies that, broadly speaking, reduced the footprint of government in society and reassigned economic power to private market forces—that began in the United States and Great Britain in the late 1970s fundamentally changed the world. Today, the word "neoliberal" is often used to condemn a broad swath of policies, from prizing free market principles over people to advancing privatization programs in developing nations around the world.
To be sure, neoliberalism has contributed to a number of alarming trends, not least of which has been a massive growth in income inequality. Yet as the eminent historian Gary Gerstle argues in The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, these indictments fail to reckon with the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview had such persuasive hold on both the right and the left for three decades. As he shows, the neoliberal order that emerged in America in the 1970s fused ideas of deregulation with personal freedoms, open borders with cosmopolitanism, and globalization with the promise of increased prosperity for all. Along with tracing how this worldview emerged in America and grew to dominate the world, Gerstle explores the previously unrecognized extent to which its triumph was facilitated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its communist allies.
©2022 Gary Gerstle (P)2022 KaloramaListeners also enjoyed...
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In The Reactionary Mind, Robin traces conservatism back to its roots in the reaction against the French Revolution. He argues that the right was inspired, and is still united, by its hostility to emancipating the lower orders. Some conservatives endorse the free market; others oppose it. Some criticize the state; others celebrate it. Underlying these differences is the impulse to defend power and privilege against movements demanding freedom and equality - while simultaneously making populist appeals to the masses.
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This is a brilliant book.
- By Will2Combat on 04-10-19
By: Corey Robin
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The Betrayal
- How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America
- By: Ira Shapiro
- Narrated by: Paul Bellantoni
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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In two previous highly regarded books on the US Senate, Ira Shapiro chronicled the institution from its apogee in the 1970s through its decline in the decades since. Now, Shapiro turns his gaze to how the Senate responded to the challenges posed by the Trump administration and its prospects under President Biden. Shapiro documents the pivotal challenges facing the Senate during the Trump administration, arguing that the body's failure to provide leadership represents the most catastrophic failure of government in American history.
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Short, sweet, and to the point
- By Mike on 06-28-24
By: Ira Shapiro
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The Tragedy of Liberation
- A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957
- By: Frank Dikotter
- Narrated by: Bruce Mann
- Length: 14 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Following the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, after a bloody civil war, Mao hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City, and the world watched as the Communist revolution began to wash away the old order. Due to the secrecy surrounding the country's records, little has been known before now about the eight years that followed, preceding the massive famine and Great Leap Forward. The Tragedy of Liberation bears witness to a shocking, largely untold history.
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I don't believe this is read by a real person
- By Bjornie Herjolfson on 09-16-20
By: Frank Dikotter
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The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
- By: Christopher Lasch
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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In this challenging work, Christopher Lasch makes an accessible critique of what is wrong with the values and beliefs of America's professional and managerial elites. The distinguished historian argues that democracy today is threatened not by the masses, as Jose Ortega y Gasset ( The Revolt of the Masses) had said, but by the elites. These elites - mobile and increasingly global in outlook - refuse to accept limits or ties to nation and place.
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The last twenty years proves the author right
- By Del Lewis-Chia on 08-08-20
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When China Rules the World
- The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order
- By: Martin Jacques
- Narrated by: Scott Peterson
- Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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According to even the most conservative estimates, China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy by 2027 and will ascend to the position of world economic leader by 2050. But the full repercussions of China's ascendancy-for itself and the rest of the globe-have been surprisingly little explained or understood.
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Lucid explanation of global economic trends
- By David Blake on 01-04-10
By: Martin Jacques
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Profile of a Nation
- Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul
- By: Bandy X. Lee
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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An unprecedented report for unprecedented times, Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul is a unique and timely accomplishment by one of America’s leading intellectuals. Dr. Bandy Lee’s previous New York Times bestseller, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, opened the door to understanding the Trump presidency from a mental health perspective and has been published in many countries and languages. This new book goes beyond Donald Trump to explaining the followers who elevated him and the nation that tolerated ...
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An Analysis That could have saved the Nation
- By Tom on 11-17-24
By: Bandy X. Lee
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The Precipice
- Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change
- By: Noam Chomsky, C.J. Polychroniou
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Precipice, Noam Chomsky sheds light into the phenomenon of Trumpism, exposes the catastrophic nature and impact of Trump's policies on people, the environment, and the planet as a whole, and captures the dynamics of the brutal class warfare launched by the masters of capital to maintain and even enhance the features of a dog-eat-dog society to the unprecedented mobilization of millions of people against neoliberal capitalism, racism, and police violence.
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Of Incalculable Importance
- By Anonymous User on 12-15-21
By: Noam Chomsky, and others
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The Revenge of Geography
- What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate
- By: Robert D. Kaplan
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands.
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Painful to listen to
- By Bookworm on 12-27-13
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Empire of Illusion
- The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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We now live in two Americas. One - now the minority - functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other - the majority - is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority - which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected-presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade level. In this "other America", serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
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A superficial tirade
- By Diueine Monteiro on 04-24-18
By: Chris Hedges
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Trade Wars Are Class Wars
- How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace
- By: Matthew C. Klein, Michael Pettis
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Trade disputes are usually understood as conflicts between countries with competing national interests, but as Matthew C. Klein and Michael Pettis show in this book, they are often the unexpected result of domestic political choices to serve the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and ordinary retirees. Klein and Pettis trace the origins of today's trade wars to decisions made by politicians and business leaders in China, Europe, and the United States over the past 30 years.
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Narrator is robotic
- By dugmartssch on 05-22-20
By: Matthew C. Klein, and others
Excellent analysis of American political order after the 1960s
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What I expected, but written well.
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New Deal to now: full panorama
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9/10
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Well organized, if we’ll trod
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Well written and serves simple history.
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Impressive, conceive, and balanced
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Insightful an informative
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As a result, the book reads more like a history of the propaganda used to sell Neoliberalism, but presented as though it were actual history, as though it's purveyors actually believed the half-truths and outright lies by which they engineered public assent. In the author's telling, the promoters of Neoliberalism believed in trickle-down economics, believed that deregulation would lift as boats, believed that monopolies, a casino economy, tax breaks for the rich, precarious workers, and the minting of multi-billionaires was what America needed to recover from the quasi-communist harm done by the New Deal.
By this dodge, the author is largely freed from considering how his social circle might have deliberately, ruthlessly, sociopathically impoverished middle class. Of course, he can't avoid the topic of class warfare entirely. He acknowledges, in passing, that wealth inequality is a major outcome of Neoliberalism. But it didn't happen on purpose, for every president after Eisenhower had the best interest of the public at heart. They just couldn't foresee how their policies would play out. Their aims and ambitions were a world removed from those of Gilded Age robber-barons, union-busters, speculative bankers, propagandists, and monopolists. This time it would be different . . . somehow.
When covering the 2008 crash, the author notes that "not one banker went to jail." Does he ask why? Does he explain what they did that might have been criminal? No, and this is par for the course. At every turn his account is white-washed, expect where the corruption is to blatant to ignore, as in the lies leading up to the Iraq war. In nearly every other case, elites are simply over-ambitious or ignorant or incompetent. How the policies of these ignorant, incompetent elites always, and in every case funneled wealth upward for sixty years does not pique the author's curiosity much.
The Military Industrial Complex is also largely outside the author's preview, as though the rise of Neoliberalism did not go hand in hand with the war industry and empire building. Nor is there much analysis of advertising as the mechanism of Neoliberal control. The downsides of corporate news are discussed, but not really in terms of corporate profits and ownership by cynical, transnational billionaires bent on dividing the working class.
The author's assessment of the current situation is the weakest. Imagine the New York Times take on Obama, Occupy Wall Street, Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden. Obama had no choice but to bail out the banks--the world economy was teetering on the brink! Trump-as-racist is drummed in ad nauseum. The New Deal-like proposals of Bernie Sanders are not discussed in terms of their possible efficacy. Joe Biden, on the other hand, is a new FDR . . . if it weren't for big bad Joe Manchin.
Anyone familiar George Orwell's or Noam Chomsky's analysis of the conformity and subservience rampant among academic elites can see it played out quite blatantly here. I recommend Thomas Franks' "What's the Matter With Kansas," "Listen Liberal," and "Rendezvous With Oblivion" for a more honest account of the workings of Neoliberalism.
Cursory, unoriginal, class-blind
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Great account of the last hundred years
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