Neoliberalism – what does it mean?

Wojciech Maziarski wrotethat he does not understand, from where in neoliberalism the prefix "neo" – "liberalism is liberalism, nothing peculiarly fresh in it". I'd love to explain.

Liberalism cannot be brought to tautology “photo is photo” . besides many different worldviews usage the same label.

W America my worldview is classified as highly liberal. That's how you specify politicians that I would vote for – like Elizabeth Warren is Bernie Sanders.

They propose taxing the richest, state control of corporations and strengthening trade unions. That is, solutions which in Poland we will classify as antiliberal.

This liberalism, which confesses Maziarski, is called neoliberalism precisely due to the fact that it was created respective decades ago as an intellectual opposition to the mainstream liberalism. This mainstream was besides erstwhile called “new liberalism” – derived from Leonard’s “New Liberalism” Hobhouse’a.

This is not the first or last case in the past of political doctrines, erstwhile any environment decides to cut off from the mainstream and self-determinates by adding “neo” or “new”. That's the answer to Maziarski's question.

Liberalism is peculiarly susceptible to specified divisions due to the fact that the notion of “freedom” cannot be defined precisely, let alone applied surgically. We all know this from life: at any point our freedom (e.g. to perceive to music loudly) goes into conflict with the freedom of the neighbour (e.g. to remainder in silence). Whose freedom is freer?

IN social conflicts, most people are convinced that they are fighting for freedom. Even jihadists. For, even the communists, due to the fact that communism, to remind Engels, is “a leap from the kingdom of necessity to kingdoms of freedomIt’s okay. ”

Everyone just understands freedom a small differently. So, if individual says that he is “a proponent of freedom”, he must be answered with the words of the prophet Milk: “But what else, Mr. Deke?”

It is said that the first philosopher in the modern planet to come to realize this.Liberal Beginnings” Kalyvasa and Katzelsona) was Adam Ferguson. He is simply a typical of the Scottish Enlightenment, whose neo-Roman republicanism has had specified a crucial influence on the American Founders' Fathers that he can be called the Founder of America.

As proto-liberal Ferguson praised the spirit of free trade, but noted that it had a negative impact on public morality. "In this we communicate the success of good Work; but light the Honours of human Nature: We furnish good Work; but education men, Gross, sordid, vod of sentiments and Manners" (I love Writing from that Age).

Ferguson's consequence to this problem was to establish a universal forced paramilitary service. Fighting side by side with our neighbours, we will get “Honours and Manners” and accomplish Ferguson’s ideal: “It’s a mix of the military Spirit with a civilian and commercial Policy”.

Ferguson's consequence present throws a mouse (or explains American obsession with Second Amendment), but the problem remains. From liberalism we like to hear “do what you want”, but in practice it is always accompanied by “do not want to do evil”.

Why? And here already different liberals respond differently – due to the fact that the Decalogue (conservative liberalism) or due to the fact that social solidarity (social liberalism).

Adam Smith, whom all Polish liberal can quote, and no 1 has read, gave different. Historians of ideas call it "the Smith problem" – early Smith was a strict moralist, late Smith began to believe in the virtue of selfishness.

Which Smith wrote “The Richness of Nations”? I don't know. At a crucial minute (Book I, Chapter 2) he simply writes that this goes beyond the subject of this work. This makes Smith's legacy recognized present by liberals of very different orientations.

Jerzy Szacki in his book “Liberalism After Communism“ Mirosław Dzielowski quotes, who said that in the times of the Polish People's Republic liberalism in Poland was a “one-man organization of Stefan Kisielewski”. The improvement of liberalism in Poland was not through the acquisition of all the wealth of this doctrine from the West, but through the columns of 1 author.

This explains the amazement of Polish liberals that there are also currents too the 1 which was promoted by Dzielewski from Kisielewski. That liberalism could be about something another than low taxes and privatization.

Damn provincialism. This is what I see erstwhile I look at Polish neoliberal publications.