Welcome to the more than English podcast where we discuss fascinating and influential ideas learning English along the way here we learn more than English I’m your host Steven welcome back to the podcast this is the fourth episode of the podcast liberalism part two in part one of liberalism we talked
About four axioms of liberalism which were that cooperation is a win-win that democracies don’t fight trade beats war and finally that soft power can triumph over hard power if these axians seem strange to you and you’re not familiar with them I strongly recommend watching the first part of liberalism in
This episode we’re going to delve a little deeper into this topic and in this case just like in part two of realism the second episode we’re going to look and compare uh two prominent types of of liberalism in this case Classical liberalism and neoliberalism at least the difference between classical and
Neoliberalism is basically how neoliberalism has differed from Classical liberalism over the years especially since the second half of the 21st century so let’s get started with the podcast remember if you hear a bell this means there’s some new Advanced vocabulary or maybe A New Concept so
Listen out and and you can also hear these definitions at the end before we get started discussing these two forms of liberalism I want to give you a quick note that here in this first series what is your worldview we’re discussing or at least the idea is to discuss many
Ideologies and see what the people who believe or follow those ideologies have to say about the world the idea is not that you find the one which you believe in 100% And you discard the rest but rather as I see it that each of these ideologies has some relevance some
Purpose depending on the situation for example with realism I gave the example of the current situation in Ukraine as a good example to see how a classical versus um structural realist would think about the conflict so before talking about how neoliberalism differs from Classical liberalism let’s delve a
Little deeper into what it really means to be a classical liberal for classical liberals old liberals the idea of Liberty or freedom and the pursuit of happiness or the pursuit of property are intimately related like we said in the last episode it was in the 18th century that liberalism became popular in the
International sphere especially as it opposed monchis and absolute rule one great great event which we can look at here is the French Revolution and the three words which symbolized this Revolution were fraternity my French is not so good but in English we can translate them to Liberty or Freedom equality and
Brotherhood or maybe better to say camaraderie so it’s quite clear to see that the French Revolution was a liberal Revolution the US Revolutionary War is another great example to show how liberalism started becoming popular in the 18th century for example the founding of the US was clearly influenced by European events such as
The French Revolution and European thinkers especially the 17th century British political philosopher and so-called father of liberalism John Lock he wrote that governments are instituted to secure people’s rights to life liberty and property but in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson wrote the US declaration of independence he edited out Lock’s right to property and
Substituted it with the right to the pursuit of happiness but actually if we look a little deeper the word property could have many meanings right on the one hand of course private property usually refers to having your own own your own har or apartment that you own but as
We talked about in the previous episode um this could also mean your property as in your individual rights as G and Steiner say classical liberals and Libertarians have often asserted that in some way Liberty and property are really the same thing it has been argued for example that all rights including
Liberty rights are forms of property others have maintained that property is itself a form of freedom and actually this point that we all have individual rights rather than shared rights or Community rides is a point of contention that we will talk about when we do the
Episode on socialism I have to tell you to be honest I’m not going to do this episode very soon because after this episode we’re going to change to another series for a few episodes but definitely we’re going to come back to it cuz it’s very important and very interesting but
Yeah just to let you know this idea that we have rights and are those rights individual rights as just me as a person or more for the group like a family like a community like a country it’s so yeah this is the point of contention do we have should we have individual rights
For every person or should our rights be shed among our our family our community and so on let’s not get ahead of ourselves though and that will be something we discuss later so let’s get back to talking about liberals so what does it mean to be liberated what does
It mean to be free well according to classical liberals unless people are free to make contracts and sell their labor to save their money and invest it how they see fit to create Enterprises and raise Capital then they are not truly free according to haak there can be no freedom of press if
The instruments of printing are under government control no freedom of assembly if the needed rooms are so controlled freedom of movement if the means of Transport are a Government monopoly what do you think about this let’s take the BBC for example well the BBC in the UK are kind
Of in a great area here they’re not completely a government organization but it’s definitely has some influence from the state so can we trust the BBC because they are related to the government you know in the comments so that’s Classical liberalism now let’s let’s get started with talking about neoliberalism so what is
Neoliberalism well actually it’s quite a new ideology as it was only at least it only came into fruition in the 1970s and while many people note the US and the UK as two of the first proponents of neoliberalism it it was actually Chile in South America which was the first
Country to adopt neoliberal policies including the story of the Chicago bars opposed to what their name might suggest the Chicago Bars were not from Chicago but rather from Chile in fact they were studying The Chicago School of Economics which was invented created by the legendary Economist Milton fredman Milton fredman is famous for
Saying that there is one and only social responsibility of business to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game which is to say engages in open and free competition without deception or
Fraud basically here we can say that for Milton Freedman the number one goal of business is to make profit regarding neoliberalism more specifically Milton Freedman emphasized minimum government interference in the economy and believed that International Free Trade would lead to more Innovation lower prices and better services for customers for example imagine two
Countries trading with each other if both countries reduce tariffs and other trade barriers it allows businesses in each country to freely buy and sell Goods across borders Freedman argued that this would lead to more competition lower prices for consumers and greater efficiency in production benefiting both Count’s economies and while while both classical
Liberals and neoliberals both share the idea that markets should be free and open neoliberals take this to the next level while classical liberals still believe in international trade and cooperation they reserve some things which are they feel are very important for their nation and maybe they should protect their Nation more than another
Nation so that could be by having protectionist measures for example Japan um for many many years has high import taxes on Rice coming from other countries this is because rice farming in Japan is such an essential part of their economy uh not just because it creates a lot of money or something like
That but rather because the rice making the rice farming industry in Japan employs so many people neoliberals on the other hand and Milton Freeman in particular believe that we should not protect local uh businesses especially or at least we should not have protectionist measures
To be in favor of one side or another so for neoliberals instead of giving subsidies or extra support to local farmers they may favor a system which is open to the world for people like Milton Freeman because uh having less taxes import taxes and so on and not favoring
A local business over a foreign one make can make the market more competitive and therefore there are some benefits because if there’s more competitiveness then hopefully the prices will be more competitive IE cheaper for the consumers so this is a key point for neoliberalism and economists like Milton fredman if we
Have a society where we don’t have any protectionist measures and you know whichever company thrives in a nation whether it be a local National company or an international company the market will figure it out and the market will decide which one is the best we should
Not favor one or the other by giving money to them or extra help but just see how the market goes and trust that the market will give the best results the point and the difference here between classical and neoliberals is that where classical Liberals are maybe more preemptive of national crises for
Example in instead of waiting until there’s a crisis with Farmers they help them so that hopefully there isn’t no crisis neoliberals try to trust the market but they intervene when they need to so the 2008 final financial crisis is a good example here leading up to 2008 neoliberal policies in the US against
The government intervention contributed to deregulation which allowed risky lending practices to flourish in the US banking sector these factors ultimately resulted in the housing market bubble and subsequent collapse triggering a global financial crisis even now in the UK the Health Service is a Public Health Service the
NHS the National Health Service so even though since the 1970s as we’ll talk about the UK has been more or less a neoliberal state still we have a public health system so we’re not completely neoliberal that’s because one key aspect of neoliberalism is privatization while the difference between a classical liberal and a
Socialist for example might be that a socialist thinks that many Industries should be run by the state classical liberals might just say that some essential Industries should be but generally we should try to avoid it essential Industries maybe like the health industry maybe transport train Network and so on like now in Germany
Still the transport network is public however since 1970 like I said Chile was the first to adopt some neoliberal principles policies but the UK and the US shortly followed and it was under Margaret Thatcher that in the UK we started to privatize some Industries I mentioned things like health and
Transport well another industry which is often at least the biggest one biggest part of it is run by the state St is regarding energy so for example gazprom in Russia is a state influenced at least Energy company in China as well and we cannot forget Saudi Arabia the
Government has a lot of control over their energy which gives them a lot of wealth well in the UK this was also the case for many years but under thater she privatized some of these industries like gas selling in the the company sorry selling the organization basically British gas to become a private
Organization and this was just the beginning because since then uh not only under Thatcher many other Industries in the UK have become prioritized including the the rail network the trains and even the post office so that’s one of the key differences between classical and neoliberals for classical liberals even
Though they don’t agree with the state owning many Industries in controlling the whole economy they still believe that some core Industries some core sectors should have some influence from the government for staunch neoliberals however basically anything can be privatized the reason why neoliberals prefer to let the market do its thing
And act autonomously and not intervene as much as possible is because they believe believe this will increase efficiency and they’re not wrong to be honest like we mentioned with Chile who were the first country to be neoliberal since the 1970s to the 1990s 2000s Etc Chile went from
Being a very poor country to being the richest country at least is on GDP per capita in South America it’s a success story more or less but if you look deeper it’s not as simple as it seems uh if you’re familiar with uh recent history for example Chile
Had a revolution maybe it wasn’t such a Monumental World moment as the case was with the French Revolution or the American Revolutionary War nevertheless this re Revolution was many would say a result of the neoliberal policies that have been in the country for many decades this is because even though
Chile has been growing consistently ly for a few decades in terms of their National wealth as a whole this wealth has not been distributed evenly that is to say that in the last 20 or 30 years while some Chileans have gotten Rich many have stayed Po and this is a
Critique that we can share among the US and the UK as well while all of these countries have gten richer over the last 30 years it’s no doubt and many people from all kinds of uh backgrounds have prospered there’s still a section of society a significant section which has
Remained poor despite the overall National growth and this leads us to a quick Point talking about the Democratic peace Theory we mentioned this in the last episode and the theory goes that two Democratic countries do not fight with each other at least not in some kind of Pop War not killing each other
In their own countries however we could list a lots of countries that although there’s no war in their country they are still involved in international conflict so for neoliberals they can still rationalize the Democratic peace Theory and getting involved in Wars because for them the war has some purpose some
Objective which is good for the world so even though it’s you know maybe intervening in another country Maybe invading or doing something in another country which is against their rights they’re doing it for the greater good so to conclude while classical and neoliberals have a lot of things in common at least
In the fundamental sense such as having a strong preference for individual rights and Liberty and freedom and so on uh these definitions of Liberty and freedom change a little bit because for classical liberals it’s not really about what individuals in another country are doing but more about providing a country
Where individuals their citizens can Thrive can be free can be equal and so on on the other hand for neoliberals well they live in globalization creating a world where let’s say we are all equal or where we can all work together and uh maybe that could be for a good thing and
You know we have to we have to say that in the last 50 years while democracy and so on has been flourishing been less conflict so there’s definitely some positive but at the same time because neoliberals want so much for democracy and so on to be Global they’re even
Willing to invade or to attack or send weapons to another country in order to meet that goal what do you think about that do you think let’s say you agree with individual rights and Liberty freedom and so on uh do you think that it’s enough for you to feel like this
And act like this in your own country or do you think that this is something that we must really try to spread to the whole world even if it causes conflict let me know and that’s all for this episode to summarize while classical and neoliberals both promote Liberty
Equality and the pursuit of happiness or perhap property they differ in specific areas for example as we just mentioned globalization and intervention as well as the two previous topics privatization and protectionism we can say that for neoliberals almost everything should be privatized and almost nothing should be protected whereas for classical liberals
They take a more lenient stance unfortunately we haven’t had time to cover topics like industrial complexes globalist institutions or monetary policy because wow it’s such a big topic neoliberalism and in 20 minutes there’s only so much we can do so hopefully we can talk about that stuff in the
Future let’s finish with a quote from will store a famous author who has written a lot about status I’ve actually extracted this quote from a recent podcast he was on and he spoke for a couple of minutes so he said a lot more than this but this is
The extracted version of the things which are most concise in his speech in the 1970s Thatcher and Reagan came up with this neoliberalism idea of increasing competition everywhere getting rid of the big state privatizing all the national Industries going to war with the unions Etc pater actually said in an interview
In 1981 that the method is economic but the object is to change the soul and she did that when you look at the changes in values between the 60s and80s money Fame and good looks all became dominant values we’ve become Pro profet obsessed celebrity obsessed individualists finally here is today’s
Key vocabulary page one to delve deeper into something to look at something in more detail in order to find new information to discard to throw something away or get rid of it because you no longer want or need it camaraderie a feeling of friendliness and Goodwill towards people that you
Share something with for example an office a country Tre or even a battlefield a Bard a place where someone lives gr area something that is not clearly one thing or the other to come to fruition when a plan or an idea becomes a reality protectionism the economic policy of
Restricting imports from other countries through import taxes quarters Etc page two preemptive something done to prevent an anticipated usually unpleasant situation or occurrence staunch firm in loyalty or principle faithful autonomously in a self-governing manner Monumental of outstanding significance Hot War open armed conflict between countries at War and finally to flourish
To be in a period of highest productivity to thrive Prosper thanks for watching guys and if you made it to the end of the podcast please like subscribe see you next time
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