Quinn Slobodian - Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism

Neoliberals hate the state. Or do they? In the first intellectual history of neoliberal globalism, Quinn Slobodian follows a group of thinkers from the ashes of the Habsburg Empire to the creation of the World Trade Organization to show that neoliberalism emerged less to shrink government and abolish regulations than to redeploy them at a global level.
Quinn Slobodian is a historian of modern German and international history with a focus on North-South politics, social movements, and the intellectual history of neoliberalism. He is the author of Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany, and the editor of Comrades of Color: East Germany in the Cold War World. He has just completed a book manuscript with the title Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism and is co-editing a volume on neoliberalism with Dieter Plehwe and Philip Mirowski. His new project on the rise of international economic law has been supported by an NEH fellowship and an ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellowship. He will spend 2017-18 in residence at the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University. As in his research, Slobodian’s teaching places histories of modern Europe in the history of the larger world. This goal is pursued in classes on the history of world economic orders, gender and sexuality, and cities. In Slobodian’s courses, students learn about the events and processes that shaped modern Europe while keeping an eye on the margins, and the unrealized histories of the continent's last two centuries.
Listen to podcast interview with Quinn: / quinn-slobodian-global...

[@tomhall7633]

I actually learned a few things and stumbled upon a few avenues of inquiry and was reassured by the quality of the audience questions, and all before I've had my breakfast.

[@kevmal]

Bought the book, great reading so far, opens the mind and for me, confirms a few view points on what exactly the WTO and EU are, and that's just the first 30 pages. Can't wait to finish the whole book.

[@lanceringquist815]

"free trade is simply a economic deceit."

[@lanceringquist815]

"in the 90s under bill clinton, much of the free trade movement “ceased to be empirical”, And without an interest in facts, it is hard to govern well for long."

[@TheLivirus]

I think one of the greater risks to democracy is our current tendency to measure the legitimacy of our system in terms of GDP. We may soon face a world where authoritarian regimes like China outperforms western democracies economically. If we cling to the growth centered narrative, we risk losing faith in democracy and abandon it for more authoritarian models. We have to start to remind ourselves what we value about democracy, besides its economic performance.

[@jamiekloer6534]

China also is pits to much importance on gdp not taking account of there own peoples well being. Their environment is being ruined they are going in debt to achieve gdp at the expense of the people.

[@platosbeard4449]

Imagine the authoritarian regimes of the west calling China authoritarian. No less the most authoritarian regime of all, the USA.

[@lanceringquist815]

"anytime you hear a free trader express concern for others, remember, THEY ARE FRAUDS!"

[@firefox5926]

either because they are lying to you that they care about people or they are lying to you that that are a neoliberal lol

[@darinsingleton3553]

I love that Wil Wheaton went back too school to get a degree in economics.

[@garybryant4293]

?😂😂😂

[@Yor_gamma_ix_bae]

It’s the wil you thought he’d grow into.

[@Knaeben]

Well, that was a waste of time

[@lanceringquist815]

"free traders fear and disdain protectionists because they directly target the system through which they accumulate wealth and privilege and they threaten their ability to exercise it as a divine right thats inevitable. While it’s not pleasant to have to confront the venom which free traders spew in unguarded moments, it’s useful for free traders to reveal the intensity of their hatred and for all of us to recognize the interests they serve(their own)."

[@19andrewhb92]

Who would you consider to be a free trader?

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

This goes both ways. Protectionists acquire wealth by restrictions

[@lanceringquist815]

"bill clinton sold the false promise that “getting government out of the way of trade” would unleash abundant opportunities for everyone, lifting all boats. We know how that movie ended.

[@fyt54321]

@Karl Quetzacoatl No, yes, no, no, no and yes. Lame. Try again.

[@lanceringquist815]

"The essential point is that it’s the free trade ideology that has run out of steam, and to the extent that it was adopted by most mainstream political parties, it’s taking them down with it. Resistance to this ideology has little to do with generation change, immigration, wokeness or any other ideas. It has to do with the total and complete failure of the ideology, and its disastrous effects on society.'

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Blaming the wrong goat

[@lanceringquist815]

"Free trade isn't really a coherent ideology, but a series of frantic improvisations in the face of economic failure, Theory came a long way after practice, which is why the whole free trade “project” has been so incoherent. So what we have is sets of traditional “Right” and “Left” parties which swallowed the free trade poison and are choking on it."

[@lanceringquist815]

"behind the facade of pragmatism there has remained an unchanging free trade objective: “the maintenance of private regimes of power” - usually social and economic hierarchies - against threats from more egalitarian forces. Once democracy arrived, free traders were faced with a harder task, They needed “to make privilege popular."

[@jenpsakiscousin4589]

"Free trade is not trade or free, it's Labor Arbitrage" Paul Craig Roberts

[@Scratch7]

I wondered where Norman Collier's microphone ended up. Just messin', thanks for the content.

[@lanceringquist815]

"it does not matter if free trade depends on completely unrealistic, implausible, contradictory assumptions, as long as it delivers the right answer."

[@roc7880]

the force of nastalgia. dangerous stuff

[@lanceringquist815]

"I think free traders cling to a world view and push aside facts that are inconvenient to their ideology more than anyone else on the ideological spectrum. You have to work really hard to pretend that “free trade” policies make an ounce of sense, given our massive structural issues domestically and internationally. I find that their logic is often incoherent and has little relation to objective reality."

[@grubernitsch]

11:00 The very descendants of said Austrian chamber of commerce have just pushed through a 12h working day labour law - without provoking a general strike. Strikes were not not being proposed by our labour leaders, for it is their institutional memory of the 'Justizpalastbrand', the Juli-Revolte of 1927, that prohibits this.

[@MarkoKraguljac]

I believe all this could be more succinctly expressed in much simpler terms, with minimal "scholarly obfuscation" and still be closer to the truth, thus more revealing and useful. Great talk nonetheless.

[@buzoff4642]

Economics turned on its head. Serving investors, and not the public. Bizarre this should be referred to as "free" market, as it is anti "market driven".

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

Economics doesn't "serve" anyone. It simply describes events as they unfold on the market under a given set of circumstances. Anything else is politics. If you're a "political economist" that's fine, but be honest

[@buzoff4642]

@@user-hu3iy9gz5j That's reporting, not Economics. And I don't think it's any coincidence the economic advisors have been serving the interests of the disproportionately wealthy.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

@@buzoff4642 Of course they have. Who do you think economic advisors are? If a median income person hired an economic advisor we would expect the advisor to serve their interests as well. And no, it's not mere reporting. To report is to note from observation, economics is a science of understanding. The report of an active observer is, without a tangible knowledge about economic laws and standards, ultimately ignorant on the matter

[@buzoff4642]

@@user-hu3iy9gz5j Governments hire economic advisors. And their prolific training is at Ivy League schools, who are honed for investor interests. It's no coincidence perpetuating, Summers and Furman, at Harvard, for instance.

[@lanceringquist815]

"Free trade rhetoric almost always serves a magical function: It erases ugly, violent political realities and replaces them with clean, natural progress. To its evangelists, free trade isn’t just a way to maximize profits and production. It offers a path to the elimination of human evil."

[@karl1799]

Came here from Apollonian Germ

[@mns8732]

I'll read his book because I think its important although I'm skeptical that he's not an apologist for the market centered order that allows very few player to own most economic power. Or I'll listen to it on audible.

[@Ramenmemes]

wow and Rick Perlstein next? I'm loving these.

[@hogpen]

48:46 _pets plushie_

[@thomassimmons1950]

Men like Mises can sell their garbage because they believe (THEY) are above the required sacrifice.

[@eottoe2001]

Thanks for explaining why so many libertarians with racist views hold up Mises as their idol.

[@lanceringquist815]

"free trade is a batch of elaborate theories that had no relevance outside academia"

[@lanceringquist815]

"I personally think any Democrat who wants to beat Trump had better recognize that job losses to trade are a huge issue with his voters and pooh-poohing them as not recognizing the evils of automation is…well…a sure loser."

[@thegreatsookini]

J yes MMO

[@mns8732]

Woah, Chief Hayek wasn't Jewish. And even if he was kinda sorta he didn't identify as such even though his extended family was jewish his family was not, of which I'm glad , Hayek is a theorist , and never ran a business. Or an economy either.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

If he ran a buisness he would be a CEO. If he ran an economy a politician. These are not the occupations of a an economist

[@mns8732]

​@@user-hu3iy9gz5j You know nothing about CEOs, nor running a political economy. Hayek had little interpersonal skills, he couldn't delegate, skills needed to run a large organization. As the reporter said, Hayek was an administrative cog.

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

@@mns8732 You're rambling

[@ParcelOfRogue]

According to UK Trade Diplomat Civil Servants (National Government Public Sector) , "there is no such thing as Free Trade. Trade is more like the rules of the road". This sits awkwardly with right wing Tory governments reared on Friedman, Hayek, Raan etc., who are pushing a completely fictional case for promoting trade via brexit, leaving the largest and most free, free trade area in the world in the EU, with the largest external group of free trade agreements and with the fastest growing gains to additional free trade agreements around the world in recent years.

[@ParcelOfRogue]

...Ayn Rand etc

[@user-hu3iy9gz5j]

If the ideal of free trade wasn't under threat of constant sanctions we would just call it "trade"

[@mns8732]

​@@ParcelOfRogue How different it looks now with globalism creating a world wide epidemic! And Eurozone with zero growth with 4 percent inflation. Globalism is bullcrap. But it was a nice try.