Liberal, neoliberal . . . Say what?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

I speak excellent 20^th century English. About the 21^st century variety, I’m not so confident.  Words have changed meaning. I’m reconciled to many new, usually looser, definitions. In the last century, for instance, reticent meant “disposed to be silent.” I rarely hear the word used that way now; it’s becoming a synonym for reluctant. Eventually, I suppose, dictionaries will mark the 20^th century definition as obsolete.   “Decimate,” “unique,” and many others are meeting the same fate.

I can live with that. I don’t own the language. Communities of English speakers create it, and in using it give words their meaning. Dictionaries don’t own the language, either. They try to capture the meaning of words, as concisely as possible. Because language changes constantly, dictionaries can be a little behind the times. So can I.

At the personal level, this is sometimes frustrating, sometimes interesting, but the issue is minor.

Politically, though, shifts in meaning matter. In particular, for this post, the evolution of the word “neoliberal.”

The term originated in political theory, and was rarely used outside academia until the very late 20^th century. Ngram (a fascinating website) shows a dramatic change in its use around thirty years ago. Until then, a flat horizontal line marks its use. Around 1990, that line takes off, suddenly becoming almost vertical. “Neoliberal” moved abruptly from the narrow world of theory to the wild west of public conversation. (“Google” enters common language about the same time, but not even that word changes so dramatically.)

I learned the term in graduate school, decades ago. It meant first, the belief that almost everything should be for sale (with a few exceptions, like babies and votes); second, that markets should be largely free, not regulated. This was a revision of classical liberalism. (Beware of the word liberal. It has different meanings in different contexts. So does “conservative.”)

“Liberal” means different things in different contexts. It began as a protest against rule by kings.

Classical liberalism rejected monarchy in favor of liberty. Later, neoliberals argued that liberty requires markets, the chance to buy and sell as one chooses. Early on, they recognized that markets depend on some degree of government, for instance, to prevent monopolies from strangling competition. Those theorists also wanted some kind of safety net.

My own understanding of neoliberalism simplified — oversimplified — over the years. I came to think of it as the belief that everything should be for sale, in free (unregulated) markets. (I’m not alone in that definition.)

Over those same years, as the word moved into ordinary conversation, its meaning expanded and relaxed. I didn’t notice. When friends called Bill Clinton a neoliberal, I objected.  Under my definition, no one who fought for universal health care as he did could be called neoliberal.

Meanwhile, the stretching of the term continued. One day a friend applied “neoliberal” to a newspaper columnist who favored keeping certain restrictions on abortion (like the requirement that minors get parental consent). I understood my friend’s objection. (Some parents would beat or kill a pregnant teen; furthermore, some of those pregnancies are the result of incest). Nevertheless I was dumbfounded at the label she used. There’s no connection between abortion law and free markets. Quite the opposite: the columnist supported governmental intervention. So I pressed the issue, and found that my friend used “neoliberal” to mean “center right.”

I went searching.  I found that as the word became widely used, its meaning got looser and looser. I asked a French academic what the term means in Europe. With a grin, she responded “roughly, it just means extremely horrible.” Academic theorists are reining all this in and charting a more careful definition. But in ordinary conversation the word is becoming just a vague term of abuse.

I thought back over the times I’ve felt confused by what people were saying. Most had not reduced the word’s meaning to “center right,” but in a few years they may. In partisan conversation right now “neoliberal” generally means “wants more place for the market, and less for government.”  More than what? More than they should, or more than they once did. Take, for instance, Bill Clinton’s gradual shift toward market-based solutions. I sometimes call him the best Republican president we ever had, but I never thought of him as neoliberal. He was nowhere near that extreme.

“Neoliberal” now means “wants more place for the market than they should,” or “more than they once did.”

“Center right” is itself less than useful. We talk about politics as if all our differences could be placed on a one-dimensional line, far left at one end, far right on the other. In fact we need at least two dimensions, maybe three, to chart our disagreements. Positions on the environment, global trade, school textbooks, and immigration are only loosely connected, and usually through history and accident rather than logic. Lumping them all together, and placing that lump at a particular spot on a single line, is more confusing than helpful.

Sometime I may write more about that issue. If I do, I’ll avoid the word neoliberal. But if I must use it, I’ll be clear about what I mean.