The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era

by Gary Gerstle

The most sweeping account of how neoliberalism came to dominate American politics for nearly a half century before crashing against the forces of Trumpism on the right and a new progressivism on the left.

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. He is also the first to chart the story of the neoliberal order's fall, originating in the failed reconstruction of
Iraq and Great Recession of the Bush years and culminating in the rise of Trump and a reinvigorated Bernie Sanders-led American left in the 2010s.

An indispensable and sweeping re-interpretation of the last fifty years, this book illuminates how the ideology of neoliberalism became so infused in the daily life of an era, while probing what remains of that ideology and its political programs as America enters an uncertain future.

Genres: Politics, History, Economics, Nonfiction, American History, Business, American

432 pages, Hardcover

Published April 5, 2022

Reviews

[Saman · Rating 4 out of 5]

از اسم کتاب مشخصه که میخواد در مورد تاریخچه نئولیبرالیسم حرف بزنه. اینکه از کی متولد شد و چه دوران اوجی داشت و در نهایت چه شد که به افول رسید. اما نویسنده به خوبی و به درستی روایت خودش رو از زمان تولد نئولیبرالیسم آغاز نکرده، بلکه دست مخاطب رو گرفته و به چند دهه پیش از اون می‌بره و اساسا به این پرسش پاسخ میده که قبل از برپایی این نظم، جهان چه ویژگی‌هایی رو داشت و چه شد که مسیری که دولت‌های آمریکایی در حال طی کردن اون بودند، به این منتج شد که نظم جدیدی تحت عنوان نئولیبرالیسم بنا بشه. مطالعه این بخش، درک مناسبی به مخاطب میده که شرایط رو بشناسه و اصطلاحا یک دفعه وارد بحث نشه. این بازه تاریخی حدودا پنجاه ساله از دهه سی میلادی تا دهه هفتاد_هشتاد میلادی که نویسنده به بررسی اون در حجمی حدودا صد و بیست صفحه پرداخته، برای من یکی بسیار لازم و مفید بود تا بفهمم که چه مسیری طی شد که نئولیبرالیسم متولد شد و چرا نظم جدید که از دهه سی میلادی طراحی و اجرا شد دیگه کارآیی نداشت. در واقع ما در این کتاب ظهور و افول دو نظم جهانی رو می‌خونیم.

حالا و بعد از نشان دادن عدم کارآیی نظم جدید، ما وارد دوران آغاز نئولیبرالیسم می‌شیم. به باور نویسنده، معمار ایدئولوژیک برپایی این نظم ریگان و کسی که اون رو به اوج رسوند بیل کلینتون بود و در نهایت در دولت بوش پسر و به خاطر عواقب جنگ عراق و بحران‌های اقتصادی به ویژه بحران اقتصادی سال 2008 این نظم اعتبار خودش رو از دست داد. در این هرج و مرج،نویسنده دو نفر رو خروجی این مساله میدونه. ترامپ و برنی سندرز که معتقده هر دو به خاطر ناهنجاری ها و عدم کامیابی این نظم بودند که بعد از این سال ها و به ویژه بعد از سال 2010 کم کم حضورشون در محافل و رسانه ها پر رنگ شد و حتی ترامپ سال 2016 برنده انتخابات ریاست جمهوری ایالات متحده شد.

نویسنده کتاب که در حال حاضر استاد تاریخ دانشگاه کمبریج انگلستانه و در گذشته رئیس مرکز مطالعات تاریخی دانشگاه مریلند در آمریکا و رئیس دانشکده تاریخ این دانشگاه بوده در طول فصول مربوط به ظهور و افول لیبرالیسم توضیح کامل میده که دولتهای گوناگون آمریکا چه سیاست هایی رو اتخاذ کردند و اساسا اشخاص تاثیرگذار این سیاست ها چه کسانی بودند.توضیحات او خسته کننده نیست و به مخاطب اطلاعات خوبی رو میده. بارها تاکید می‌کنه هر دو جناح جمهوری خواه و دموکرات در برپایی این نظم سهیم بودند و جهان به مسیری رفت که به این نتیجه رسیدند که نظم جدید با ویژگهای نئولیبرالیسم باید آینده جهان رو در بربگیره. یکی از نقدها به کتاب اینه که تمرکزش روی آمریکاست.بله تمرکزش روی امریکا هست ولی به نظرم این قضیه بدیهی است چون که طراح و مجری اصلی این نظم خود آمریکا بوده و بقیه کشورها این سیاست ها رو اجرا کردند و در طراحی و پیشبرد نقشی نداشتند پس طبیعی است که نویسنده تمرکزش رو بذاره رو مرکز مهمی که این مسائل ازش برآمده.

چند نکته برام در طول کتاب جالب بود.یکی دوران جنگ سرد و تقابل دو ابرقدرت وقت دنیا که نویسنده معتقده مقابله با کمونیسم بود که باعث شد جمهوری خواهانی که بعد از بیست سال به قدرت رسیدند همون نظم طراحی شده 1933 به بعد رو ادامه بدند و تغییری در این قضیه به وجود نیاد. مساله بعدی پیشرفت های حوزه آی تی در دهه نود میلادی است که معتقد بود کلینتون و دولتش نقش بسیار مهمی در اون داشتند و اتفاقا بسیار هم به وجهه دولت و پیشرفت اون کمک شایانی کردند و به طور کلی دولت کلینتون رو اوج نظم نئولیبرال میدونه. از انتخابات بحث برانگیز و بسیار پرحاشیه ال گور و بوش پسر در سال 2000 هم حرف میزنه و یه جورایی نتیجه اون انتخابات رو زیر سوال میبره و مثل عده ای که کماکان معتقدند ال گور برنده واقعی انتخابات بود،در لفافه این قضیه رو بیان میکنه. نویسنده با اینکه بارها تاکید میکنه هر دو حزب جمهوری خواه و دموکرات در ظهور و اوج و فرود این نظم نقش داشتند اما جاهایی به نفع دموکرات ها به نفع دموکرات ها لایی میکشه .مثلا معتقده اگر ال گور برنده انتخابات میشد احتمالا امریکا وارد جنگی چنین پرهزینه و بی ثمر با عراق نمیشد. ادعاهای این چنینی که بیشتر بر مبنای حدس و گمان هست ارزش کار تحلیلی رو به نظرم میاره پایین. جنگ آمریکا با عراق طبق توضیحات نویسنده مثل باتلاقی است که آمریکا در اون گیر کرد. هر زمان به جنگ عراق در کتابی برمیخورم باید اشاره کنم که رامسفلد پفیوز وزیر دفاع وقت امریکا سالها گفت عراق سلاح کشتار جمعی داره و ما به این بهانه حمله کردیم و از آخرم نتونست مدرکی دال بر این قضیه به جهانیان ارائه بده. سرنوشت عراق سرنوشت غم انگیزی است که نشون میده ناکارآمدی داخلی به علاوه بی رحمی دشمن خارجی چه بلایی میتونه سر یک ملت بیاره. باید از سرنوشت عراق عبرت و درس گرفت. فراموش نکنیم سخن آن بزرگوار که فرمود : چه بسیار است عبرت‌ها و چه اندک است عبرت گرفتن!

در نهایت نویسنده معتقد بود که نظم نئولیبرال از هم شکسته اما بقایای آن هم‌چنان باقی خواهد ماند. نتیجه گیری ها و بسیاری از مسائل کتاب چیزی نیست که در حال حاضر در موردشون نظری داشته باشم.در بعضی مواردش نیاز به فکر کردن دارم و در برخی موارد دانش کمی دارم و صلاحیت نظر دادن ندارم.اما در کل از کتاب راضی ام و اطلاعات خوب و مفیدی بهم داد و از خوندنش رضایت زیادی دارم.

نکته آخر باید به چاپ بی دقت نشر نگاه معاصر اشاره کنم.بارها و بارها و در طول کتاب حروفی از کلمات افتاده بود یا جاهایی حروفی اضافه تایپ شده بود،گاهی نقطه ای از حرفی در کلمه ای افتاده بود و گاهی نقطه اضافه گذاشته شده بود.در جاهایی نیم فاصله رعایت نشده بود و گاهی کلمات به هم چسبیده بودند.امیدوارم در چاپ های بعدی نسبت به اصلاح این موارد که کم هم نبودند اهتمام لازم ورزیده شود.

[Jason Furman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had meant to read this since it came out in 2022, and am glad I finally did. It advances a clear and bold thesis that retells the history of economic policymaking over the last century as the rise and fall of two orders: the New Deal order and the Neoliberal Order. It packs a lot into one interpretation, but does it by being flexible about just what constitutes an order.

But I mostly disagree with Gary Gerstle’s implicit argument that neoliberalism was an unfortunate betrayal of the New Deal Order that was foisted on us by elites. I’m also not sure that the word “neoliberal” is helpful if it refers to everything from Ronald Reagan’s Medicaid cuts to Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Moreover, to the degree there was a neoliberal order, it seems premature to say that it has ended—as opposed to possibly just being interrupted—until we see if a sustainable and widely supported new “order” comes to replace it (neither the Biden or Trump approaches have been particularly popular and my bet is they won’t establish a new paradigm). I also think Gerstle does not sufficiently appreciate the importance of redistribution, a factor that can be much larger than the predistribution issues he stresses, and one that steadily increased for most of the “neoliberal” period (with the notable exception of 1981) and then partly reversed after the order either collapsed or was interrupted. Finally, at times, Gerstle was sloppy in accepting any advocacy narrative about misery in America under neoliberalism and then doing the opposite when we were saved from it in 2021.

First, a quick recap of Gerstle’s argument. The New Deal order was based on the premise that unfettered capitalism was a destructive force and the government needed to play a significant role in taming and channeling it, an idea that helped “shape the core ideas of political life”. Gerstle argues against the thesis that liberals were pushed to the right for fear of being branded Communists and instead claims the opposite—fear of Communism led all sides, including Republicans and business, to be more pragmatic in making alliances with labor to ward off instability in the United States. What made it an “Order” was that the basic tenets were widely accepted (e.g., Eisenhower) and supported in various ways by different civil society groups, political groups, etc.

The New Deal order collapsed for a variety of reasons. Creatively, he argues, part of them were the new left and Naderites who stressed a skepticism of authority and primacy of the consumer that went against both corporations and the government, with the latter being central to the New Deal order. Partly, the failure of Communism has reduced the need for pragmatism, as seen in the shocks of the 1970s. But the most critical factor, I would argue and Gerstle does not stress enough, is that a lot of the New Deal order was not working economically while causing problems for people and businesses. So it failed on its terms rather than giving way to various shifty elites.

Gerstle chronicles the rise of neoliberalism from Hayek and the Mont Pèlerin society through to Ronald Reagan becoming the standard bearer, and ultimately it cements itself as an order, Gerstle argues, when Clinton becomes thoroughly neoliberal, just like the New Deal order was solidified by Eisenhower. He defines neoliberalism somewhat elastically as: (1) “encase free markets in rules governing property,” (2) apply market principles broadly, including to realms like family and morality, and (3) “recuperate the utopian promise of personal freedom embedded in classical liberalism.” This eventually comes to include everything from Clinton’s telecommunications reform to Reagan’s military buildup and expansion of incarceration.

Gerstle argues that a combination of the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street and BLM undid the neoliberal order. All of these rose because of its failures, including the financial crisis, inequality, deindustrialization, etc.

The book ends uncertainly: “Political disorder and dysfunction reign. What comes next is the most important question the United States and the world now face.” That was published in 2022, but it does not need to be updated.

Now for some criticisms:

1. Gerstle is not just a historian but someone with a powerful perspective that he imposes on much of his writing, which sometimes sounds as much like advocacy as it does analysis. He likes the New Deal and mostly does not like the Neoliberal Order. In some cases I would agree but for many I wouldn’t (defined benefit pensions went away because they are actually quite risky and undesirable for workers shifting between jobs, 1970s deregulation was a good thing, the repeal of Glass Steagall is not nearly as bad or as crucial as he would argue, expanded trade brought a lot of benefits both for consumers and for workers engaged in exporting, the Fed is not just about the financial industry, etc.)

2. To his credit, Gerstle is upfront that neoliberal is a very elastic term, and he resists being like Naomi Klein in applying it as an epithet for everything he does not like (e.g., he argues the Iraq reconstruction debacle wasn’t neoliberalism but incompetence). But it does make one wonder: When there are massive differences between Reagan and Clinton, why would one apply the same term to both?

3. It is too soon to proclaim the “fall” of the neoliberal order (if there ever was such a thing) because we have no idea what is next. Will Trump usher in a new paradigm? Or will there be a reaction against him? Will we have a prolonged period of instability? Or return to the old stability? Plus, so much of what was in the “neoliberal” order carries over, notwithstanding Biden having more enormous industrial subsidies (and much more industrial policy rhetoric). Trump has much, much, much larger tariffs, that I’m not even wholly convinced one can say it ended, except on the specific topic of trade as opposed to everything else.

4. Gerstle gives short shrift to redistribution. It is entirely absent from his discussion of Clinton and is treated briefly and dismissively in the context of Obama. But it is a huge deal. And it steadily increased from 1982 through 2016, with that last year being far and away the most progressive fiscal system the United States had ever seen. Redistribution from the top 1 percent through the tax system was more significant under Obama than any President on record. This is fundamental in understanding the government’s role in the economy.

5. Finally, Gerstle uncritically advances every misery narrative about the economy during the neoliberal period (e.g., the “risk shift” shows up despite being long ago largely debunked, as do lots of statistics on job insecurity and the like). But then it goes the opposite way when he writes, “By the end of 2021, wages for low-income earners had begun to rise more rapidly than those for high-income earners. That had not happened in forty years.” The source for that last claim was the Boston Globe—but simply checking the data (e.g., on the EPI website) would show that, actually, wages for low-income earners had risen faster than high-income earners in 16 of the 40 years before 2021, significantly, including 5 of the last 7 years. (By 2024, the 90-10 wage ratio was back to where it was in the year 2000.)

But I liked it a lot. It was creative and engaging, so I highly recommend it.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Post Jan, 25 Inauguration Update: we are now over one month into this new administration and are starting to see the answers. Writ large, it appears to be a return to global imperialism where three large states, Russia, China and America, divide up the border states among them in a series of “deals”. This will be the largest American foreign relations blunder since Roosevelt ceeded Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta. I cannot imagine what is going through the rational minds of the men and women who support the Trump administration in this position. The only rationale I can come up with is not pretty, Viz., When most of European industrial capacity is destroyed in the ensuing conflicts, America will once again rise to its immediate post-war position of global industrial powerhouse. I am unable to fathom the boundless cynicism of the men and women, and I do not believe that any American voter would have supported this approach had it been properly presented to them last November.

Post ’24 Election Update: Well, we are about to find out the answer to the question posed at the end of this book, what happens to American democracy after neoliberalism, because the Dems did not get radical enough. Let’s hope some of the bells and whistles on this thing can at least keep it on the farking road. Godspeed, everyone.

***********

WHOA! I bought this book half expecting the usual regurgitating of liberal angst about how Republican voters are dumb as nuts or some such twaddle (see, for example, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right), but jeepers-creepers, HOW WRONG I WAS!! Even though it deals with what is to me a painful topic, I actually enjoyed reading it.

First of all, Gerstle takes no sides. This is not your popular polemic. It is not even a polemic. This is an artful, well written, highly readable exposition (a study, if you will) of what happened and why—the motivations, and the impacts. Gerstle gives credit where credit is due, and some of it is very surprising.

The author does not start this history with the 1960s. Or the 1950s. The 1930s? Nope. He starts with Taft! Teddy Roosevelt and Taft. He even reaches as far back as the Robber Barons of the post-Civil War technology craze.

Yes, he goes there, and he ties it all together with a burning tungsten ribbon of historical background that will melt the strongest beltway journalism like a paraffin candle.

It turns out that all the shouting and recent violence is not really, and has never been about seatbelt laws, low-flow toilets, artisanal cheese, gender wars, energy-saving bulbs, bakers’ rights, avocado toast or any other such small time cow-droppings.

No. It is about (mostly, and not unexpectedly) fear and greed. And, because its politics, the desire to wield power.

And/but, ultimately, it is about whether America will continue to be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

(Thoughtful pause)

I learned a lot in this book. Perhaps I had already heard some of this somewhere, but forgotten, or perhaps I never knew. For example, which American president starting dismantling the administrative government? Reagan? Good guess, but no.

But I don’t want to ruin it for you. Suffice to say, it brings new perspective to the New Deal, and the long arc of American political history over the past 100 years.

How do I know the analysis is accurate?

First, I have been a big fan of America since my elementary school days growing up in Space Race/Anti-Commie Middle America. But, I watched with chagrin and confusion through high school and college as the bean counters and their bosses closed the factories where the fathers and mothers of my friends worked, for … reasons.

Second, I eventually ended up working for and with those bean counters and their bosses (commonly lumped together as “Wall Street”), and have for my entire 30+ year career. I know what they are.

Third, a more specific example: I am currently in receipt of yet another invitation to a gathering of in-house legal persons in Hong Kong (that I have never joined and have no intention of joining), who formed a few years ago a working group to discuss with the Hong Kong administration how to make Hong Kong more friendly to investment capital.

Yes, you heard right; Hong Kong. Where China cracked down on democracy with an iron fist a few years back and continues to arrest, jail and suppress activists and newspapers and any hint of popular democratic movement in the territory.

Who do the members of this group work for? Oh, you know, just some of the top US and European private equity funds.

What do they care about democracy?

Nothing, apparently.

And that should give us all reason for a very, very long, thoughtful pause.

Because it shows that capital has no inherent moral compass.

The book is eye-opening.

[Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

We are sorting through seeming political disarray in America and the world, as the old political order is fading away and what takes its place is subject to struggle and contestation. In this context, this is a pretty important book. The execution is okay but definitely not perfect. In essence, Gerstle argues that different eras are marked by dominant political orders that dictate the range of political, policy, social, and economic choices - even from the would-be opposing political party.

The New Deal order, following the now classic argument, started with the Great Depression, the repudiation of laissez-faire, and the war and post-war boom starting with the Roosevelt administration. Marked by the use of government to guide and regulate the market, so Gerstle continues, the New Deal order peaked with the Eisenhower administration when a Republican administration largely accepted and worked within the order. The order came to its decline and fall under the Ford and Carter administrations with stagnation, the oil crisis, and the economic crisis of the 1970s. For the main argument, this much is prologue and first-act history setting.

The neoliberal order, as the story now goes, succeeded and replaced the New Deal order, and came of age under the Reagan administration. Marked by allowing markets to operate unconstrained by government, Gerstle argues that the neoliberal order peaked in the Clinton administration when a Democrat administration largely accepted and worked within the order. Although it should have been its apotheosis, the neoliberal order began its decline and fall under the George W Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. And though the claim is not universally accepted, as we are still too near the events to view them objectively, the order came apart with the failed reconstruction of Iraq, the Great Recession that followed from the housing bubble and the financial crisis, and the rise of populism and ethnonationalism across the US and the world.

While the argument is important, the book did have second-act problems. The history was pretty fast-paced and the argument was pretty tight until the year 2000. At that point, the argument started to take a back seat to a more-plodding history of the 2000 election, the failed reconstruction of Iraq, and the housing bubble, financial crisis, and Great Recession. Instead of the more conventional history into which he shifted to recount those years, I would have liked Gerstle to have woven his political argument about the decline and fall of the neoliberal order tighter throughout his account of the post-2000 history-making events. For these years, Gerstle could have also devoted more space to the related events in the rest of the world including the Eurozone crisis, the Latin American lost decade, and the parallel events that help to give rise to populism and ethnonationalism in those regions.

We shouldn't let the second-act problems distract us from this important argument. In the last analysis, Gerstle finds his footing again in the last two chapters, and the book closes with political actors in America and the world shaping and contesting the political space in order to define the next order in the years ahead.

[Marcel Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

ENGLISH

After reading a string of books on Liberalism and Neoliberalism, I finally found one that approaches the subject from a US perspective. “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order”, by Gary Gestle, does this in a well detailed way.

Rosenblatt’s “The Lost History of Liberalism,” which I read prior, claims that the birth of Liberalism, as a systematized ideology, occurred in France (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). “Globalists”, by Slobodian, points the birth of Neoliberalism to Europe in general (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). “A Brief History of Neoliberalism”, by Harvey, does not study the origin of the movement, but synthetically focuses on its main aspects (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

These good books, however, especially those by Slobodian and Harvey, more dedicated to Neoliberalism, say practically nothing about the geopolitical context at the time of the birth and development of the movement, nor do they provide further details about the US political environment when such ideas gained prominence. “The Rise and Fall…”, by Gary Gestle, fills this important gap with a detailed account of the antecedents of the neoliberal order in the US, its development, peak, decline, and then its end, according to the author.

Gestle tells 20th century political and economic history of the US with clarity. He shows how Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which proved effective in combating the damage of the Great Depression following the stock market crash of 1929, ushered in a new order in American capitalism, influencing the administration of either Republican and Democratic presidents thereafter.

With the success of the New Deal's highly interventionist measures in the economy, which promoted public investment and encouraged the activity of unions, no president dared to effectively contradict them until the end of the 1970s — Republican Dwight Eisenhower's mandate is a very illustrative example of that, with considerable State spending, especially on defense.

The situation changed in the US after Ronald Reagan’s election. As the order based on the New Deal showed signs of wear and tear in the mid-1970s, with speeches from a Democrat president (Jimmy Carter) opposing the excessive State meddling in the economy, but especially after the economic crisis caused by the oil shock, the neoliberal wave clashes head-on with the old order, at least in political discourse. Reagan began to openly defend liberal principles and values, such as deregulation and the downsizing of the State.

Nothing in politics, however, is pure or radical, at least when managing a government. Although Reagan spoke very harshly against State excesses in private life, which would restrict individual freedom, he adopted a considerable defense spending policy, which proved to be a successful strategy at a geopolitical level. By greatly increasing military spending (aka the “Star Wars Project”), Reagan raised arch-rival USSR’s technological catch up costs, which contributed to its economic collapse and consequent disintegration, Gestle argues.

That important geopolitical context of the Cold War, in fact, was not addressed by the authors of the books I mentioned above, which is surprising. This is a fundamental context, since the US positioned itself in the external ideological and political debate as the land of freedom, protector of aligned Western or Eastern nations (such as Japan), against the dangers of the ideology defended by the “evil nation”, as Reagan called the USSR.

With the new Neoliberal order established, Gestle shows how Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and supposedly less inclined to neoliberal ideology, adjusted his speech to neoliberal values to win elections and, in practice, conceived and adopted measures fully in tune with the neoliberal agenda. Gestle even identifies the seeding of the 2008 crisis in the deregulation of financial and insurance markets largely promoted by Clinton and deepened by George W. Bush.

Gestle's analysis of Bush's administration is interesting. Neoliberal ideology would be present on the external plane, with the discourse to justify not only the invasion of Iraq — the existence of an axis of evil led by Saddam Hussein, putting at risk the values ​​of freedom defended by the US —, but also the total negligence in conducting a reconstruction plan for the country.

Since the best order to develop a country would be the neoliberal order, why intervene in the Iraqi economy? Bush would disguise his total disregard for the invaded country under an ideological veneer of non-intervention. At the same time, the attribution of large although poorly planned reconstruction works to a few companies, which goes against neoliberal principles, actually shows the Bush administration's complete lack of interest in the matter.

On the domestic front, Gestle identifies an indigestible mixture that created the conditions for the great 2008 crisis: intervention in the economy based on good intentions but also on electoral interests, and the application of neoliberal principles.

Believing that the main factor in individuals' economic independence was the power to own a home and intending to reduce inequality between whites and blacks, Bush adopted measures to make it easier for black families to purchase property. He used Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac for that, institutions created by Congress to facilitate financing for the acquisition of real estate.

At the same time, he continued with the policy of deregulating the financial system, which had already been occurring since the Clinton administration. This financial system, from the 1980s onwards, but mainly in the 1990s, became increasingly stronger, international and independent. If previously the industries that had the greatest political power were the industries of physical, material goods, such as steel and automobiles, in these decades the financial services industry began to dominate the world economic scene and influence politics.

The conditions were in place for the 2008 financial crisis, which required the rescue of institutions and the injection of billions of dollars into the economy to avoid the spread and prolongation of harmful effects such as the ones seen after the 1929 crash.

Gestle sees the exhaustion of neoliberal arguments as factors for the emergence of Donald Trump's populism, which buries the neoliberal order once and for all. Such factors are essentially the 2008 crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, which required the injection of billions of dollars into the economy by the State, as well as the loss of jobs in the US due to companies moving to Asia, generating consequent social crisis. Gestle does not venture to predict what this new order will be like, but he points to a risk of growth in authoritarianism arising from populism. Trump exalts not only conservatism, but also protectionism to get work positions back to the US (to employ North-Americans, as he is against immigration especially from Latin America), and deliberately opposes multi-lateral trade, which is key to Neoliberal thought; in his view, bilateral trade is the way to deal with the issue in the international arena.

It is worth highlighting what, in my view, is the central argument of this historical work. A political-ideological order is characterized by the predominance of a more or less harmonious set of ideas, which predominates in the American public debate regardless of the political side of the president of the moment. Even though Republican and Democratic candidates clash in debates in the electoral dispute, the policies practiced end up being largely the same within the coherence of the current political and economic order. In short, order overrides political personalities and party sides, determining the direction of the practical measures adopted. Even if the order ends, some of its ideas may survive in the next order, often serving as a counterpoint to this new order, or being incorporated into it.

“The Rise and Fall…” is a very well written and instructive book, which deals well with the major problem of the topic, which is precisely the lack of clarity regarding the content and limits of ideological concepts, especially when taken to political debate. Gestle gets right to the point by showing that, in fact, political party sides in the US ended up submitting and shaping themselves to hegemonic political orders, which, however, changed their profile throughout the 20th century.


PORTUGUÊS

Depois de ler uma sequência de livros sobre Liberalismo e Neoliberalismo, finalmente encontrei um que aborda o assunto a partir de uma perspectiva norte-americana. “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order”, de Gary Gestle, faz isso de maneira bem detalhada.

“A História Perdida do Liberalismo”, de Rosenblatt, que eu li anteriormente, reivindica o nascimento do Liberalismo, como uma ideologia sistematizada, para a França (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). “Globalists”, de Slobodan, aponta o nascimento do Neoliberalismo para a Europa em geral (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). “A Brief History of Neoliberalism”, de Harvey, não estuda a origem do movimento, mas centra-se sinteticamente nos seus principais aspectos (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...).

Esses bons livros, porém, especialmente os de Slobodian e Harvey, mais dedicados ao Neoliberalismo, não dizem praticamente nada sobre o contexto geopolítico da época do nascimento e desenvolvimento do movimento, nem traz mais detalhes sobre o ambiente político do EUA quando tais ideias ganharam destaque. “The Rise and Fall…”, de Gary Gestle, vem preencher essa lacuna tão importante com um relato detalhado sobre os antecedentes da ordem neoliberal nos EUA, seu desenvolvimento, auge, declínio e, então, seu fim, segundo o autor.

Gestle conta a história americana do século XX com clareza, mostrando como o New Deal de Franklin Roosevelt, que se mostrou eficaz em combater os danos da Grande Depressão americana após o crash da bolsa de valores de 1929, inaugurou uma nova ordem no capitalismo norte-americano, influenciando a gestão de presidentes Republicanos e Democratas a partir dali.

Com o sucesso das medidas do New Deal altamente interventivas na economia, que promovia investimentos públicos e estimulava a atuação de sindicatos, nenhum presidente ousou efetivamente contrariá-las até o final da década de 1970 — sendo o mandato do republicano Dwight Eisenhower um exemplo bastante ilustrativo desse ponto, com gastos estatais consideráveis, especialmente em defesa.

A situação muda nos EUA a partir da eleição de Ronald Reagan. Tendo a ordem baseada no New Deal mostrado sinais de desgaste em meados dos anos 1970, já com falas contrárias ao excesso de intromissão estatal na economia por um presidente democrata (Jimmy Carter), mas especialmente após a crise econômica causada pelo choque do petróleo, a onda neoliberal, ao menos no discurso político, bate de frente com a antiga ordem. Reagan passa a declaradamente defender princípios e valores liberais, como a desregulação e a redução do Estado.

Nada em política, no entanto, é puro ou radical, ao menos na gestão de um governo. Embora com falas muito duras contrárias aos excessos estatais na vida privada, o que cercearia a liberdade individual, Reagan adotou uma política considerável de gastos na área de defesa, o que se revelou como uma estratégia bem sucedida no plano geopolítico. Ao elevar grandemente os gastos militares (também conhecido como “Projeto Guerra nas Estrelas”), Reagan elevou também os custos para que a arqui-rival URSS acompanhasse a corrida tecnológica, o que teria contribuído para sua quebra econômica e consequente esfacelamento, segundo Gestle.

Esse importante contexto geopolítico de Guerra Fria, aliás, não foi abordado pelos autores das obras que comentei acima, o que é surpreendente. Trata-se de contexto fundamental, já que os EUA se posicionavam no debate ideológico e político externo como a terra da liberdade, protetora das nações ocidentais ou orientais alinhadas (como o Japão), contra os perigos da ideologia defendida pela “nação do mal”, como a URSS foi chamada por Reagan.

Com a nova ordem Neoliberal estabelecida, Gestle mostra como Bill Clinton, um Democrata e supostamente menos inclinado à ideologia neoliberal, ajustou seu discurso aos valores neoliberais visando a vencer eleições e, na prática, concebeu e adotou medidas totalmente afinadas com a agenda neoliberal. Gestle, inclusive, identifica a semeadura da crise de 2008 na desregulação dos mercados financeiros e de seguros promovida em grande parte por Clinton e aprofundada por George W. Bush.

É interessante a análise de Gestle sobre a gestão de Bush. A ideologia neoliberal estaria presente no plano externo, com o discurso para justificar não só a invasão do Iraque — a existência de um eixo do mal liderado por Saddam Hussein pondo em risco os valores de liberdade defendidos pelos EUA —, como a total displicência na condução de um plano de reconstrução do país.

Como a melhor ordem para desenvolver um país seria a ordem neoliberal, para que intervir na economia iraquiana? Bush disfarçaria sua total displicência e desconsideração com o país invadido sob um verniz ideológico de não intervenção para preservação da liberdade dos indivíduos. Ao mesmo tempo, a atribuição de grandes embora mal planejadas obras de reconstrução a poucas empresas, o que contraria princípios neoliberais, mostra na verdade o completo desinteresse da gestão Bush sobre o assunto.

No plano interno, Gestle identifica uma mistura indigesta que teria criado as condições para a grande crise de 2008: intervenção na economia embasada em boas intenções mas também em interesses eleitorais, e a aplicação de princípios neoliberais.

Acreditando que o principal fator de independência econômica dos indivíduos era o poder de adquirir uma casa e pretendendo diminuir a desigualdade entre brancos e negros, Bush adotou medidas para facilitar a compra de imóveis por famílias negras. Usou para tanto Fannie Mae e Freddy Mac, instituições criadas pelo Congresso para facilitar o financiamento para a aquisição de imóveis.

Ao mesmo tempo, prosseguiu com a política de desregulação do sistema financeiro, que já vinha ocorrendo desde o governo Clinton. Sistema financeiro este que, a partir da década de 1980, mas principalmente na década de 1990, se torna cada vez mais forte, internacional e independente. Se antes as indústrias que possuíam maior poder político eram as indústrias de bens físicos, materiais, como aço e automóveis, nas referidas décadas a indústria de serviços financeiros passa a dominar a cena econômica mundial e influenciar a política.

Estavam postas as condições para a crise financeira de 2008, que passou a exigir o resgate de instituições e aporte de bilhões de dólares na economia para evitar o alastramento e o prolongamento de efeitos maléficos como vistos após o crash de 1929.

Gestle vê no esgotamento dos argumentos neoliberais os fatores para o surgimento do populismo de Donald Trump, o que enterra de vez a ordem neoliberal. Tais fatores são essencialmente a crise de 2008 e a pandemia de COVID-19, que exigiram a injeção de bilhões de dólares na economia pelo Estado norte-americano, bem como a perda de empregos nos EUA com a mudança de empresas para a Ásia, gerando consequente crise social. Gestle não arrisca prever como será essa nova ordem, mas aponta um risco de crescimento do autoritarismo proveniente do populismo. Trump exalta não só o conservadorismo, mas também o proteccionismo para devolver postos de trabalho aos EUA (para empregar norte-americanos, já que ele é contra a imigração, especialmente de latino-americanos), e opõe-se deliberadamente ao comércio multilateral, que é ponto chave no pensamento neoliberal; na sua opinião, o comércio bilateral é a forma de lidar com o tema na arena internacional.

Vale ressaltar o que, na minha visão, é o argumento central desta obra histórica. Uma ordem político-ideológica é caracterizada pela predominância de um conjunto mais ou menos harmônico de ideias, que predomina no debate público americano independentemente do lado político do presidente do momento. Ainda que os candidatos republicanos e democratas se engalfinhem em debates na disputa eleitoral, as políticas praticadas acabam sendo em grande medida as mesmas dentro da coerência da ordem política e econômica vigente. Em suma, a ordem se sobrepõe às personalidades políticas e os lados partidários, determinando os rumos das medidas práticas adotadas. Ainda que a ordem acabe, algumas de suas ideias podem sobreviver na ordem seguinte, servindo muitas vezes como contraponto nessa nova ordem, ou sendo incorporadas a ela.

“The Rise and Fall…” é um livro muito bem escrito e muito instrutivo, que lida bem com o grande problema do tema, que é justamente a falta de clareza sobre o conteúdo e os limites de conceitos ideológicos, especialmente quando levados aos debate político. Gestle vai no ponto ao mostrar que, na verdade, lados político-partidários nos EUA acabaram se submetendo e se moldando a ordens políticas hegemônicas, que no entanto mudaram de perfil ao longo do século XX.

[Dominic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gerstle defines a political order as a “constellation of ideologies, policies, and constituencies” that are durable beyond any one election or party. I began to understand the term more as the predominant political logic: so deeply rooted in politics, policy, people, and the infrastructure of a polity (e.g. think tanks, the media) that it crowds out all other ideological space. One of the big take-aways is that planning, organisation and coordination, and signalling is extremely important if you want to change a political order.

Neoliberalism is also important to define. It’s often used as a vaguely derogatory epithet, and I’m pleased to report that this book puts some meat on the bones of that. In short — it’s a belief in free markets, albeit fenced in by “order” (more on this later), and supported by two moral conceptions. The first, “neo-Victorianism” is essentially a family values position (and so inner moral strength prepares one for the free market), and the second, a multicultural cosmopolitanism. Every political order has internal contradictions, Gerstle argues, and this one caused the culture wars.

This book and the history it presents is too large for me to summarise in a review. My general thought: the idea of a political order makes sense, and the history presented is quite good. Unfortunately I have more than a few criticisms of the book.

First and foremost, the narrative is a little more totalising than it has any right to be. Frequently we’re presented with some assertion (e.g. global trade has not recovered to pre-2008 levels) and we’re given a sentence or two about how this is due to neoliberalism. There are typically several other compelling hypotheses, so we do well reading the text critically.

Second, Gerstle has a poor grasp of economics. We are treated to three pillars of neoliberalism in the first third or so of the book, one of which argues that the methods of economics (one assumes, neoclassical) were applied to all aspects of human life. Gerstle is vague on this, spends perhaps a paragraph regurgitating standard criticisms of “homo economicus” and then drops the point for the rest of the book. So one comes to believe that this is just a pro forma “economics is bad” point. Par for the course in a book with “Neoliberalism” in the title! Unfortunately, Gerstle backs this up with an incredible and partisan misunderstanding of central banking (that their “traditional role [is] buttressing the rule of financial elites”).

Third, Gerstle dwells on a contradiction within neoliberalism that markets require “order”. This is first cast as the government needing to “nurture” the existence of markets (it is not, as I first thought, the fact that market failures exist, merely that the government should unleash free markets, but curiously not in a laissez-faire manner). Then we start using “order” to explain the historical racism inherent in neoliberalism (and classical liberalism): the logic goes that minorities do not have the mental or moral capability to fully participate in free markets, disrupting "order", so we should throw them all in prison. That view is disgusting, to be clear, and Gerstle agrees that this certainly doesn't deliver freedom. This is a compelling explanation from Gerstle but “order” does a lot of heavy lifting here and it seems far more appropriate to call a lot of neoliberal figures “extremely racist conservatives” instead (we even talk about Republican neoliberals wanting to “re-establish the traditional social hierarchies”). Gerstle even goes to some length to talk about how the term “Neoliberal” shouldn’t be confused with conservative, so I’m left confused on this point.

Fourth, I think more time should have been devoted to the Federalist Society and the conservative packing of the courts. This doesn’t, at first blush, seem very neoliberal. We’re again asking “order” and “neo-Victorian” morals to do a lot of heavy lifting. And, with the benefit of hindsight of the latest judgements from the US Supreme Court, this seems far more important to political strategy than the book affords it.

Fifth, clowning on tech bros is funny, but the techno-utopian story seems mostly disconnected. We’re treated to a few paragraphs about the information superhighway, but it never coalesces into anything for me. The best I can come up with: tech bros are all about the free flowing marketplace of ideas. Their star rose and fell with the Neoliberal order because that’s similar to the marketplace and free flow of goods and people. They also had a lot of money. But this is my own sketch of an argument and nothing is really expounded on in the book.

Sixth, the book does get repetitive at times. But I did enjoy the excoriation of Trump so it’s a minor criticism. It’s otherwise easy to read.

Summing up: this book is worth reading for the interesting and useful framework (that of political orders — and how they rise and fall) it describes. I’ve criticised it a lot here but it’s a worthy (and short) read.

[Eren Buğlalılar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. If anything, this book taught me the importance of pausing before committing to aggressively promoted titles like Gerstle's book on neoliberalism. This was from a Financial Times review: "An Instant Classic". No, it is not. Misleading title: The book is heavily focused on United States but has "America and the World" in its title. It's superficial and more a chronological account than a historical analysis.

The author seems to think he is making a great, brand new point when he writes "The fear of communism made possible the class compromise between capital and labor that underwrote the New Deal order... After 1991, the pressure on capitalist elites and their supporters to compromise with the working class vanished. The room for political manoeuvre by class-based progressive forces narrowed dramatically.” But Marxists have been saying this since ages. Marxist wisdom looks even more reasonable when it is announced by a liberal American scholar and published by Oxford University Press.

There are much better books if you want to make sense of Neoliberalism. Green's book Silent Revolution: The Rise and Crisis of Market Economics in Latin America offers a great analysis and has a global perspective involving the US. Brown's Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution analyses neoliberalism as an ideology. Dardot and Laval's The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society is a very detailed historical and philosophical analysis on the origins of neoliberal thought. And a less known compilation titled Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order is very useful to understand the imperialist and political implications of neoliberalism all around the world.

[Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

UPDATE 09/25/2023:

This book is aging incredibly well. Right now, Biden has adopted labor union language mimicking the lines from the UAW union and even going as far literally joining them in the picket lines. Something apparently no American president has ever done while Trump is skipping a debate to speak to them. Set aside for a moment that Trump was literally asked if he supported the strike responded with a non answer and continuing his fake populist brand. He is and has always been savvy when it comes to angling himself as "pro worker" despite a tax giveaway to the rich, broken worker promises like holding Carrier accountable and losing manufacturing jobs during his presidency. Both presidents are trying to win the support of blue collar workers by bringing attention to the union. This is a direct pushback to the neoliberal order and proves the authors point. Union support for all of these workers striking is at its highest in decades. the entire political establishment from news channels, politicians and journalists have routinely lambasted against workers organizing and going on strikes. Wages have stagnated for decades that it his created a populace backlash that enjoys the support of the country. Its a stunning moment to fathom whats going on. I have to bump this review to from 3-4 stars. I agreed with him initially but had a few nit picks. In this current moment, the author deserves praise and I am happy to give it to him.

An interesting perspective on the history of American politics over the past 100 years and how this has shaped global politics. Gerstle (The author) takes the reader on a tour of how prevailing political ideologies come into fruition and how their fractures or dissolution occurs. He states that a political order is established if both parties inherent the core philosophies of that particular order. In this case, it is focused on how neoliberalism came into power and how it has unraveled. Let's jump in.

The book begins around the 1920's and the implosion of the U.S economy followed by the FDR era which establishes a new political order. In the midst of the great depression, FDR enacts sweeping legislation such as the Glass Stegall act which separates investment banking from commercial banking to curtail the reckless speculation or you could say casino gambling which resulted in the calamitous stock market crash of 1929. He also brought FDIC insurance which ensures the federal government will ensure your savings of up to 250K, this way the next economic collapse that occurs will not cause a bank run. Next FDR, created social security, one of the most popular programs in American history, which has numerous politicians scheming to defund it ever since its inception despite its overwhelming popularity. Then FDR increased the power of workers to negotiate with employers, giving them power and effectively realigning class imbalances.FDR who is often referred to as a socialist from the right, won the presidency three times until they enforced term limits because he was so popular. His actions were so popular that republicans were forced to adopt his policies for decades until the oil crisis in the 1970's increased oil prices to levels the current political order could not afford, this creates the leg room for neoliberalism to take center stage.

It's important to describe what neoliberalism is, I will state this below not endorsing any of these policies or arguing for them, just stating what they are. It is the consensus that government is the issue, they should move out of the way and let capitalism do its thing. Unregulated, unfettered and unbothered.

Strip workers of their ability to negotiate salary, benefits and working conditions? Check
Deregulate financial institutions of oversight and guard rails? Check
Champion global free trade, ship our manufacturing centers across America to cheaper areas? Check
Cut government safety nets, cut Government spending? Check.
Lower taxes for the richest Americans? Check
Open borders? Check

This is essentially neoliberalism, not only that. There is a culture element, the democratic form adores multiculturalism. Where diversity and different cultures or genders are celebrated.

As opposed to the republican form of neoliberalism where multiculturalism is not celebrated. This varies though, Bush (junior) advocated for multiculturalism even though he pursued aggressive policies towards muslims with torture facilities. He did shepherd in migrations from latin America and pushed for minorities to become home owners. There are variations for the republican form of this cultural facet and democratic form. There is no easy description to adjust how one fits into a mold. It is simply not "red vs blue".

Savvy business minded individuals like the Koch brothers, begin massive influence campaigns starting in the 70's, funding think tanks, universities and political candidates that shared the same ideology as them. Government is the problem, once we "unleash" capitalism, the market will take hold and take the country to prosperity. You may think I am being hyperbolic with this description but this is actually a spot on description of exactly how people with this view would speak. This view starts taking hold and you begin to see a fracture of the FDR political era, some call it the Keynesian era. Jimmy Carter, the democratic president at the time deregulates trucking, airline and rail line industries. This is novel mainly because it was republicans who have wanted to deregulate every industry going all the way back to FDR and even back further in many cases. This sets the stage for Regan to take office and go on a deregulating spree and then Bill Clinton who maintains the same political ideology with deregulations of the telecommunications industry. Consolidating the entire industry and then weakening Glass Stegall which sets the stage for 2008 global meltdown.

This goes on and on until the 2016 election where the ripple effects from the 2008 meltdown begin to surface in a shocking manner to the political class. To you and me, its not so shocking when you consider the fact that we also held an illegal war in Iraq under false pretenses, occupied Afghanistan for over 20 years with no real mission. Dumping trillions into a black hole that went into the coffers of defense contractors who overcharged and built poor quality infrastructure and products. I think I could go on for a while, I skipped the Obama and Bush years. If I were to sum it up, Obama and Bush maintained neoliberal order and ideologies which created the tinderbox for Donny boy to sweep in and cause chaos. A chaos that repulsed elites and many voters along with it. To the republican base and many independents, it was like throwing meat into a den of lions.

Trump welcomed hate from elite media while also being deeply jealous and resentful of not being idealized the way an Obama or Clinton was. Such is the paradoxical nature of Trump. Trump a showman of the highest form, can walk up to a podium with no notes and essentially wing it for two hours and captivate an entire crowd like its nothing. Taking notes of what worked and what did not and then moving to the next rally, his campaigning thirst was insatiable, a reality tv star that could never say no to being in front of a camera. Trump campaigned like an entertainer, thinking of catchy lines like "Crooked Hillary", "Lock Her Up", "Build The Wall" and perhaps the best one "Drain The Swamp". Trump particularly gifted at guessing what a crowd wanted to hear and then riffing on it, repaying him in the currency he slavishly desires more than money itself. Attention and cheers. Trump never cared about repeating party economic orthodoxy. In republican debates when he was not bragging about the size of his dick, or indirectly calling Rand Paul ugly, routinely vowed to never cut social security or entitlements. There was a debate in 2015, maybe 2016, where every republican nominee vowed to cut entitlements, the only one who opposed? Trump. You could tell it was over in the republican presidential race at that moment. The political class, with zero understanding of the shifts that were occurring ignored these revelations completely. Preferring to laugh at Trump but independent media, sounded the alarms. Trump would go on to question the Iraq war, global free trade and every significant neoliberal policy until he won the presidency and governed the exact opposite way, not even really governed. That might be giving him too much credit, Trump is use to saying things and not following through on any promise mainly because as an entertainer, that is primarily what you do. Talk a lot of shit, say a lot of things and pretty much look at the ratings. One of the reasons why Trump looked over polls daily like it was a life insurance policy.

We talked about Trump for too long, forgive me but its important to understand. Trump was to the left of Hillary on a lot of issues. He ran economically like a democrat and a republican. Saying he's going to cut taxes and deregulate and then talk about installing universal healthcare. He would talk about American cities being hallowed out making global elites rich and making you poor, filling your town with drugs and opioids. This type of rhetoric, goes against the core basis of neoliberalism and it is actually popular on the left and the right. Economically, the left and the right are not far away from each other but culturally they are on different universes. It's this cultural difference where Trump imposters like a DeSantis or Gaetz try to imitate. Both are neoliberals to their core but culturally they represent the base not economically. Trump was similar but would give them economical + cultural grievance with his rhetoric and then doing the bidding of the donor class.

Whats interesting though is Biden also going against neoliberal order by creating massive spending bills, keeping the tariffs Trump has input on China in some variation. Removing U.S troops from Afghanistan in which he was bludgeoned by the political class with non negative stop coverage.

It's important to note that Afghanistan was a failed state being propped up through decades of lies from every level of command. The treaty that was signed with the Taliban was for a specific date, if you backed out, the peace treaty would end and war would commence again. All this talk about Biden leaving incorrectly, this would have happened under any circumstance. When a country collapses because it is being propped up by an entity that is pretending to be a government when it is not. Nevertheless, Trump who advocated to leave Afghanistan criticized Biden for leaving. Signaling his vapidness of any ideology or conviction other than the currency I mentioned earlier, praise and attention.

The book is interesting, I enjoyed the read but why three stars? The author gets some things wrong, for instance he claims Hillary was more open to the gay demographic than Sanders was. Incorrect, Clinton was for gay marriage in 2013. Bernie was for gay and trans rights since the 80's. Not to mention he states that Stacey Abrams was instrumental in ensuring the two senate victories in Georgia. I don't know how you can make this claim, she lost both of her election bids. Despite being fawned over from the media, has no real political substance to her ideology. Democrats won that state over three factors, the republican senators both were embroiled with insider trading, Trump foraging the Jan 6th riots and Biden also promising 2k checks (falsely, it would be 1500). He also fails to mention that one of the reasons Biden won the election was because every candidate dropped out of the race and endorsed him on the same day. These types of mistakes, I just cant look past but it was still an interesting read.

3 Stars.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very readable overview of the neoliberal economic system. The book does a great job of defining economic systems and the primary thought leaders of each. From there he moves chronologically through US history and the describes the forces that swayed economic decision making in different historical era's. You will learn a lot about American history that isn't typically described through the economic lens.

[Vicente Orjales Galdo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro que se llama Auge y caída del orden neoliberal, transmite la idea de estar muy centrado en la economía. Si es verdad que el grueso del libro gira en torno a este tema, me ha sorprendido muy gratamente, ya que es mucho más ambicioso y complementa toda esta información con un gran componente histórico.
El libro está muy bien escrito. El tema es complejo y árido, sin embargo los conceptos, los acontecimientos, las causas, consecuencias y en general el desarrollo económico del S.XX y XXI están expuestos de forma magistral, logrando que la lectura resulte sencilla a pesar de toda la información que recoge en sus páginas. Este logro sin duda es el fruto de un amplio y basto conocimiento de Gary Gerstle sobre el tema. Explicar de manera tan directa y sencilla todo este entramado sólo se consigue cuando se domina el tema de manera profunda y exhaustiva.
Respecto al título, si bien entiendo que es adecuado "el auge del orden neoliberal", no está tan claro que la caída sea un hecho evidente a estas alturas. Queda muy bien, y seguro que vende, pero al final del libro solo da unos cuantos argumentos de que hay un desgaste obvio del neoliberalismo, pero en ningún caso una caída como tal. Es un título cargado de buenas intenciones, pero no necesariamente fiel a la realidad.
La lectura del libro me ha resultado muy interesante, a pesar de estar centrada en la historia económica de EEUU. Indiscutiblemente nuestra economía se rige por su patrón, y por lo tanto todo lo que se transmite en él se aplica a nuestra propia economía. Me ha ayudado a afianzar un montón de hechos que tenía confusos (crisis del 2008, guerra de Irak, motivaciones del ascenso de Trump, etc...) y todos estos aprendizajes han resultado especialmente amenos. Así que puedo recomendar con plena convicción la lectura de este libro. Sí, definitivamente merece la pena.

[Mark Lievisse Adriaanse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beste politiek-economische (en bij vlagen culturele) geschiedenis van neoliberalisme die ik heb gelezen (ja, beter dan die van David Harvey).

[Michel Van Roozendaal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable and insightful read about American politics; the book overlays longer term trends over the shorter presidential cycles. The author co-authored an earlier book about the New Deal, and Neoliberalism is clearly the next phase; these two again are a longer lasting political reality than either a democratic or a republican presidency.

Learnt a lot as the author made many connections which were less visible to me but which made an impact on how politics and policy evolved.

As the title says “the rise and fall of the neoliberal order”, and writing this on 2 November 2024, one can be really curious what will come next…

[Gregory · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gerstle proposes that there are political systems built around a consensus on some core issues. For example, while Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration ushered in the New Deal, it did not achieve consensus until these programs were “accepted” by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower twenty years later. Prior to Eisenhower, Republican presidential candidates campaigned on repealing the New Deal, not affirming it. Thus, the New Deal became an order, as there was broad consensus across the political spectrum on economic matters, class relationships (i.e. place of workers), the social contract, etc. Contention over the Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, and stagflation of the 1970s undermined the New Deal order. It is really Jimmy Carter, not Ronald Reagan, Gerstle contends, who first instituted Neo-Liberal policies with de-regulation of businesses, such as the airlines. Reagan, though, not only extended this through tax cuts, more de-regulation, firing of air traffic controllers, and with thousands of appointments of like-minded individuals to various levels and positions in the federal bureaucracy, he was a much more eloquent speaker and advocate for Neo-Liberalism. Reprising the role of Eisenhower in accepting the New Deal Order, Bill Clinton did the same for the Neo-Liberal order. His acceptance of free trade, low taxes, de-regulation, and welfare reform, as well as his declaration that “the era of big government” was over, showed that the Democratic Party was just as loyal to Neo-Liberalism as the Republican Party. Both George W. Bush and Barak Obama, likewise, adhered the Neo-Liberal ordered. Like the preceding system, war, race relations, and economic collapse undermined Neo-Liberalism. The rise of Donald Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left, both fueled by resentment towards Neo-Liberal policies, demonstrate to Gerstle that the consensus necessary to maintain the system has been shattered. What will emerge next?

For those of us who have lived through the last four decades in this country might be a bit baffled by the idea that there was a consensus at all. But as the political scientist E.E. Schattschneider observed, unity leads to division. In this case, if there was almost unquestioned consensus over economic policies, there was great division over social or cultural policies, but Gerstle connects this back to Neo-Liberalism itself. He refers to the conservative side as neo-Victorian for emphasis on the importance of morality and individual responsibility to the market system. He refers to progressives as cosmopolitans for their extension of neo-liberalism to traditional cultural and identity issues. Culture wars, however, are not unique to the Neo-Liberal Order. Sadly, they are a very common, and repetitive, theme in American history, extending back to the colonial period before the American Revolution.

One observation that I really found insightful is that Gerstle speaks of a paradox at the heart of neo-liberalism, which is that while it rhetorically denigrates the role of centralized or national governmental power, it relies on it with equal force. This can be through deficit spending, treaties, free trade agreements, legal codes, military action, etc.

He also emphasizes the role of the Cold War to both the New Deal and Neo-Liberal orders.

I do agree with some of the reviewers who feel that Gerstle might push his thesis too hard at some points as he connects every event and policy back to Neo-Liberalism. Overall, however, he provides a convincing argument to explain the last forty years of American political history. I am eager to see how other historians interpret this period and where Gerstle’s work will fit into the historiography of the topic.

[Sam McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gary Gerstle might not be as dynamic a writer as someone like Kurt Andersen, but the former's even-keeled and neutral tone lend this book a much-needed sense of authority and objectivity. It is largely for this reason that The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era is my favorite book on this topic so far.

Gerstle deftly makes a number of sophisticated and overlapping arguments throughout the book. I was most intrigued by his analysis of neoliberalism’s two competing social creeds: the Democrats’ cosmopolitanism, which hails free trade and open borders as agents of integration and diversity, and the Republicans’ “neo-Victorianism,” which aims to instill citizens with conservative social values that protect then against the fluctuations and excesses of global capitalism.

The book’s weaknesses only emerge during the final third, in which Gerstle argues that fallout from the turbulent 2000s and 2010s—culminating, of course, in the presidency of Donald Trump—indicate an ongoing disintegration of the neoliberal order. I agree with Gerstle that cracks are beginning to show in the neoliberal facade, but I’m not totally convinced that the end is upon us. Trump’s signature policy achievements were, after all, cutting taxes for the rich and stacking the judiciary with neo-Victorians.

To evidence Trump’s contempt for the neoliberal status quo, perhaps Gerstle should have pointed to our former president’s flagrant disregard for Western-style electoral democracy. To my mind, Trump’s bonafide authoritarian streak constitutes a bigger threat to the neoliberal order than his attacks on NAFTA or immigration laws. As Gerstle demonstrates, the peaceful transfer of power was such a bedrock of the Western neoliberal order that Al Gore gracefully conceded the 2000 presidential race despite the fraught circumstances. It is impossible to imagine a presidential candidate of either party doing so today—especially a member of the GOP, whose explicit objective is the replacement of American democracy with Eastern European- or Latin American-style anocracy.

All of this is to say: I wouldn’t be surprised if the end of American neoliberalism coincides with the general decline of American democracy.

Either way, the contemporaneous nature of Gerstle’s account will one day make for a fascinating primary source, regardless of whether his predictions about the end of American neoliberalism come true.

[Reid Flynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

essential reading to understand the broad shape of the political moment. but, he does kind of lose the thread toward the end when he gets to Biden's presidency and tries to jam his administration into some sort of New Deal-revivalism narrative instead of... whatever more complex last gasp of neoliberalism it really was. to be fair, Gerstle wrote this before Biden's term was up and lacked the foresight that his final moments would have provided the clarity of—but probably shouldn't have tried to guess on that one given how blatantly disappointing Biden's "vision" ended up being. regardless, his overall thesis is really convincing and well-written.

[Jdtaylor22 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was maybe one of the most compelling explanations I've read for the political moment America is in right now. Gerstle ably draws a liberalist through-line from the Hoover era all the way to the more modern neoliberal administrations of Reagan, Clinton, Bush's, and even Obama. Moreover, his argument for the role of the rise and fall of communist Russia in sustaining then toppling the New Deal Order is very interesting and likewise persuasive. In the end, this book did not leave me particularly hopeful that America can wrest the levers of political power from the likes of the Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, Silicon Valley, or Wall Street, but it did convince me that there is a place in this country for a strong federal government that ensures a more proper balance between labor and the extractor class.

[Jose Salazar-Xirinachs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary. Highly recommended. The concepts of “New Deal order” and of "neoliberal order” are extremely useful in understanding the dominant ideas in the economic and social realms in specific periods of time, not only in the United States but in the world, and the way these ideas interact with, and transform and are themselves transformed by, real economic and social trends. The book summarizes the story of the rise and fall of the “New Deal Order” as an introduction to the very comprehensive story of the rise and fall of the "neoliberal order”. The New Deal order sold the proposition that a strong central state could manage the capitalist economy for the common good, the neoliberal order sold the idea that free markets would unleash capitalism from unnecessary state controls and spread prosperity and personal freedom. As the author concludes “Neither of these propositions today commands the support or authority that they once possessed. Political disorder and dysfunction reign. What comes next is the most important question the United States, and the world, now face."

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

An emotional discourse devoid of reason or logic. Hence, one of the most regulated industries (finance), somehow is free. Gerstle reminds me of Room 101: you know the ball is red, but the mind will tell the eye the ball is green.

[GJF · Rating 5 out of 5]

Strong, compelling narrative

The facts are familiar, but Gerstle knits them together in a way that makes sense of the last half century. His treatment of the Clintons and Donald Trump is especially compelling.

[Ryan Thorpe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I attended college during Neoliberalism’s period of dominance. I came from poverty and was an outsider. Neoliberal ideas grated on me before I even recognized they were all related. The unifying ethos was simple: if you want to do anything in the world, you needed to be really productive and do so within a market (or, if you must, a profession that had rearranged itself on principles of meritocratic competition. Certainly not a bureaucracy or government). And this was not considered an unusual feature of our particular economy, but rather the best way for people to be organized and we were all quite fortunate to be living in it. The university straddled and unified an advanced meritocracy to the global neoliberal order and if there were any contradictions in that union to the underlying purpose of a university, no one was talking about them.

I wondered why the most popular course on campus was a year long introduction to economics and why it was taught so narrowly (e.g., lot of equations about utility) and dogmatically (e.g., I think it literally had a commandment where free trade made everyone better off?) People seldom talked about income inequality or various forms of justice, which seems to have become a feature of college life in the past fifteen years. There was the occasionally protestor, but they were generally simply ignored. As if they were up to something that couldn't possibly have an impact on anything. Summers was running the place and the popular professors (e.g., Steve Pinker) seemed to easily riff between Darwinian evolution, cognitive psychology, and incentives-based markets in a way that made the whole pack of ideas seem inevitable. There was an ethicist teaching a popular class that made the case for communitarianism, but everyone I know that took it came out a utilitarian anyhow. Virtually everyone I knew thought being an investment banker was a reasonable thing to do with your life (which it may be, but unanimity of that belief on a college campus is unique to that moment in time, I think).

It was an odd moment to be at a university - as if, while no one was looking, it had been hollowed out and remade into a vocational school for whatever market you happened to be interested in, including academia itself. I spent the whole time I was there trying to figure out what the hell was going on and why everyone seemed so OK with it.

I wonder how it has changed.

So what is this neoliberal order, anyhow?

The author suggests political orders occur when one set of ideas becomes so dominant that all relevant political actors accept them. He suggests this occurred with the rise of the New Deal in the 30s and then again with the rise of Neoliberalism in the 80s.

So what did the neoliberal order think?

The author claims (a) free markets improve outcomes for all participants; (b) government should be deployed to ensure that markets function, not to impede their function and (c) decisions should be informed by calculations of marginal utility - or put differently, markets work for everything. Somewhat more colorfully, neoliberalism rediscovered classical liberalisms emancipatory language and it shows up in as varied a format as Steve Jobs insistence that the personal computer would engender personal freedom and the port huron statements call for a new form of social organization. A multicultural, free thinking, elite was going to help us become fully actualized people.

Why did neoliberalism attain the power that it did?

Well, the New Deal order fell apart and cold war antipathy toward socialism set the backdrop for a sharply pro-market, anti-government view of the world to take over. The movement had its triumph when it jumped from America to Europe. It was far from clear that a shift to neoliberalism would take hold. But it did and during that interval opened all markets worldwide to capitalism. Ta-da.

Then it falls apart. Why?

Well the hubris that comes with any order’s ascendence. Author hums a few bars about an unjustified war in Iraq, which feels out of place and could probably be removed. The Great Financial Crisis feels a little closer to home, but not where I would focus. Sure, we shouldn’t have deregulated banks and sure the GFC was bad. But you’re focusing on one big crisis and missing the permanent sea-change that has absolutely decimated social stability and and made a mockery of notions of fairness that were important to how people viewed the value of work and individual dignity. What about the fate of the middle class left to the fortunes of free trade agreements? What about the monopolization of hundreds of small industries by avaricious acquirers and an FTC that has been out to lunch since it broke up Bell? What about the normalization of unrepentant greed and inequality that has become the unspoken backdrop of virtually every powerful institution in our culture?

The author understates the structural change that neoliberalism has wrought. We have voluntarily turned the management of all factors of material production over to the most avaricious entity ever known on earth: the modern corporation. And then we let the leaders of these institutions wield indiscriminate power politically, culturally, economically, and socially. That – not a misguided war in Iraq – is the triumph and tragedy of neoliberalism. I am less convinced than the author that this will be so easily undone.

Why am I skeptical that the author has drawn an appropriate analogy between the decline of the New Deal order and the Neoliberal order?

Well, the Neoliberal order is different than the New Deal order in several important ways.

First, the neoliberal order sought to remake not just domestic political systems, as was the case with the New Deal order, but also global economic ones, domestic social ones, and even cultural ones (e.g., education). Moreover, the neoliberal order hoodwinked the world into believing that financial success and efficiency were the appropriate ways to measure every sphere of activity. On the other hand, the New Deal order brought about dramatic change primarily to the narrower areas of social welfare and state action. The New Deal order left spheres of influence protected from its reach, particularly private economic ones and educational ones. The Neoliberal order did not. As an example, a review in the LA Review of Books charted the neoliberal orders' transformation of religion through the rise of the prosperity gospel and the subsequent transformation of religious institutions. There was no escape from the neoliberal order.

Second, the Neoliberal order aligned itself with and sprung from the concerns of people who were already powerful, even if their ideas were out of favor. They ran our corporations, chaired our boards, endowed our foundations, donated to our politicians. The New Deal order aligned itself with and sprung from the concerns of people who lacked power. They were in bread lines or working at manufacturing plants. That's a big difference.

I speculate that the legacy of the New Deal is that the powerful will do everything possible to ensure society does not reach a point of desperation where the powerless can seize power. Because absent desperation, inertia reigns. We can have Great Financial Crises, so long as it does not become a Great Depression. And surely it was the latticework of neoliberal institutions that both caused the GFC and then ensured the GFC did not become the Great Depression. The New Deal order required starvation and the spectre of world-wide socialism to take control. Neoliberalism required only expensive gas and elite frustration with the bureaucracy. It was already there ready to sweep into power the moment its enemy faltered.

I am an amateur observer on these topics and am unaware of the location of current scholarly debate. But I would have liked to see the author reflect on our present moment through the lenses of class and institutional power. Those views seem too relevant to leave out of this narrative.


Three stars. A good first draft, but written by someone still too close to the action.



And now something I haven't thought through as much:

My concern with this book is that it seems to start from the cable news show premise that politics is two sides bickering at each other. For Gestler the exciting part is in who obtains power and what ideas animate their exercise of it.

But by focusing on that story, he spends surprisingly little time on:
a) the economic foundations of what he calls orders;
b) the cultural institutions that support such an order;
c) the historical foundations of various views of government.

a) I’d have liked the author to talk about imperialism and the original foundations of global trade and how they influenced the rise of neoliberalism. It seems odd to me not to address that topic. Both the New Deal Coalition and the Neoliberal order that replaced it can be understood as continuous with both American and world history. The author treats them as discrete phenomenon.

b) Institutions don’t exist in this book. Where are the carriers of culture and how did they participate in the neoliberal order. What about the university? What about the large corporation? What about religion and the church?

c) The biggest question I have for this guy is why focus on intellectual history (e.g., Friedman and Hayek) rather than actual history. Americans founded their country by throwing off a well-ordered bureaucracy. Fifty years later, Jackson dissolved the central bank leading to a panic and recession. Few years after that, rich southerners did not want to submit to central planning that was required to move to an industrial economy and they convinced poor southerners this was in their interest thru racism. What followed was the Civil War. The neoliberal turn seems more like an echo of this tension than something wholly new. To try to suggest Hayek and Friedman single handedly incubated these ideas as historically unique strikes me as giving too much credit to the power of ideas, too little to the power of culture.


For those reasons, I think it’s a shame that many dyed in the wool neoliberals will have this book be the first to challenge their worldview.

The author ignores an important question: the new deal order did so much for so many. Why did it collapse so quickly? And the neoliberal order did so little for so many and so much for so few? How on earth did we wind up supporting it for so long?

I suspect the answer lies in culture. It lies in institutions. In a longer-term historical approach to where power lies in the American democracy.

The author disappears the most fundamentally important insight in the book: we replaced a system that was not broken with one that was. His play-by-play makes it seem that the shift to Neoliberalism followed from historical events. I suspect it did not. I suspect it must have resulted from subtle shifts in political, cultural, and economic power. These shifts became evident when they had an opening to emerge, but they resulted neither from the diligent work of academics nor from the the events themselves. They were the inevitable result of America's powerful entities reasserting their power. The system may not have appeared broken to a historian, but to the rich it was a denial of their proper place in society. One that they badly wanted to reverse. And when they had the chance, that is precisely what they did. What comes next? Whatever it is, I would not expect the rich to cede the power they have so jealously won. And I do not see a crisis of sufficient proportion to force them to.

[Jonathan Hunter · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Read for Class

[E · Rating 4 out of 5]

*the crowd speaks in unison* Thank you, Ezra Klein

[Evan Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me understand the last 40 years of American history, politics, and economics better than anything else I’ve encountered. Ever heard the term “neoliberal” (or “neolib”) or “liberal democracy” and not really known what it meant? Ever been confused by someone saying that Democrats and Republicans offer the same politics but only with different presentation? Want to understand how we got to where we are today and where we might be going with regard to politics and the economy? Read this book!

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every so often I read a book that manages to put together a lot of threads I've been thinking about across several areas. Even more rarely, a book takes that synthesis and adds long-term insight and acts as a keystone to all the things I've learned in an area. Gerstle's approachable work is one such book. He manages to systematize the concept of a political order in an elegant way (that it forces the other side of the aisle to accept your orthodoxy because it is so popular) that makes it possible to discuss the New Deal and the Neoliberal eras clearly.

Gerstle explains how the New Deal order rose and fell, and how the threat of the Cold War and Communism led CEOs and business elites to choose to acquiesce to labor's demands for a greater share of profits (although not representation on the board, etc.) to keep them happy under liberal capitalism. He then explains the confluence of events that led to the fall of this order, the abortive attempts in the 1970s to move past it, and then the rise of the neoliberal vision under Reagan and its ultimate triumph as a political order under Clinton, who carried Reagan's ideas forward as a Democrat (as did Blair for New Labor, and Mitterand as a Socialist in Europe at the same time).

The failure of the Iraq War and its private reconstruction (and the failure of market based liberalism to emerge naturally, as was expected if markets truly were a natural phenomena), as well as the Great Financial Crisis under Bush brought about the fall of the neoliberal order. A world order defined by lowered borders and market freedoms also tore at the social fabric - as Democrats embraced cosmopolitanism, feminism, the rights of sexual minorities and multiracial democracy while Republicans fell back on a conservative, hierarchical views of morality to act almost as a personal border against the influence of Others and the opportunity to engage in everything free markets could make available.

Obama's campaign (if not his actual presidency) showed the opportunity for a new political organization to emerge in the Democrats, a trend continued by Biden's embrace of Build Back Better and supply-side liberalism. The rise of a wing of the GOP organized around ethnonationalist and protectionist principles (distressing as that is) demonstrates that the Right is also moving beyond Reagan's neoliberalism after its failures have come into view. We've seen the Culture Wars break down along the same cosmopolitan/conservative views that defined each party's approach to navigating the interdependent world, confirming the importance of trends Gerstle idenfies.

The last hundred pages or so of the book track the 2010s in greater detail than any of the historical narrative in the rest of the book. Throughout this decade, Gerstle identifies the trends that signify both parties moving beyond the neoliberal order, although, as he is keen to point out, a new bipartisan orthodoxy and political order has not yet arisen, which means we are in for a wild ride.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

67 pages in and I find a factual error. I recognized it immediately, yet somehow one of our eminent historians and the proofreaders, fact checkers, and editors at Oxford University Press all blew it. And this was an obvious one. How many other factual errors are lurking in this book? Maybe some I won't recognize as errors, and will assume an eminent historian and a respected press got right. I might as well just read the article in Wikipedia, since at least then I can assume half the story is fiction. Weak.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

My childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood suddenly makes a lot more sense.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gerstle an historian of American history has provided an important book that traces the rise and fall of neoliberalism as an ideology and a political movement. Ranging from the 20th-century to the 21st-century Gerstle's book shows in intricate detail how an economic ideology came to be the dominant political discourse and later political order in the United States. The book offers a balanced and nuanced analysis of all of the different political changes in American history and how each movement was developed, deployed and becoming the dominant discourse.

"In this dizzying array of political developments, I discern the fall-or at least the fracturing-of a political order that took shape in the 1970s and 1980s and archived dominance in the 1990s and first decade of the twenty-first century. I call this political formation a neoliberal order. Ronald Reagan was its ideological architect; Bill Clinton was its key facilitator. This book is a history of this political order's rise and fall." 1

"The phrase "political order" is meant to connote a constellation of ideologies, policies, and constituencies that shape American politic in way that endure beyond the two-four-, and six-year election cycles. In the last hundred years, America has had two political orders: the New Deal order that arose in the 1930s and 1940s, crested in the 1950s and 1960s and fell in the 1970s; and the neoliberal order that arose in the 1970s and 1980s, crested in the 1990s and 2000s, and fell in the 2010s.
At the heat of each of these two political orders stood a distinctive program of political economy. The New Deal order was founded on the conviction that capitalism left to its own devices spelled economic disaster. It had to be managed by a strong central state able to govern the economic system in the public interest. The neoliberal order, by contrast, was grounded in the belief that market forces had to be liberated from government regulatory controls that were stymieing growth, innovation, and freedom. The architects of the neoliberal order set out the 1980s and 1990s to dismantle everything that the New Deal order had built across its forty-year span. Now it, is being dismantled." 2

"Neoliberalism is a creed that calls explicitly for unleashing capitalism power...Neoliberalism is a creed that prizes free trade and the free movement of capital, goods, and people. It celebrates deregulation as an economic good that results when governments can no longer interfere with the operation of markets. It vaporizes cosmopolitanism as a cultural achievement, a the product of open borders and the consequent voluntary mixing of large numbers of diverse peoples." 5

"If Reagan was a popular figure, he was also a divine one. He deliberately stoked racial tensions as a way of securing his political base. As his presidency became associated with market freedom on the one hand, it encouraged a revolt against civil rights advances on the other. A disturbing discourse arose in the 1980s depicting poor blacks as part of an "underclass" that was neither capable nor deserving of participation in the market economy that Reagan was so intent on creating. These were the years in which a program of mass incarceration took shape, one intent on removing hundreds of thousands and then millions of individuals, disproportionately minority, from ordinary economic activity and regular market processes of market exchange. Successful experiments in freedom, the apostles of Reaganism seemed to be suggesting, depended on the denial of liberty to the unable (allegedly) to handle its privileges and responsibilities." 8

"The fear of communism made possible the class compromise between capital and labor that underwrote the New Deal order. It made possible similar class compromises in many social democracies in Europe after the Second World War." 11

"But the threat of communism, I argue, actually worked in a quite a different direction: it inclined capitalist elites to compromise so as to avert the worst. American labor was strongest when the threat of communism was the greatest. The apogee of America's welfare state, with all of its limitations, was coterminous with the height of the Cold War." 12

"Since neoliberalism frowned upon government regulation of private behaviour, some other institution had to provide it. Neo-Victorianism found that institution in the traditional-family-heterosexual, governed by male patriarchs, with women subordinate but in charge of homemaking and childrearing. Such families, guided by faith in God, would inculcate moral virtue in its members and especially in the young, and prepare the next generation for the rigours of free market life....The other moral perspective encouraged by the neoliberal order, which I label cosmopolitan, was a world apart from neo-Victorianism. It saw in market freedom an opportunity to fashion a self or identity that was free of tradition, inheritance, and prescribed social roles." 13

"The decade of the neoliberal order's triumph-the 1990s-was also one in which cosmopolitans and neo-Victorians fought each other in a series of battles that became known as the "culture ware." 14

"In 1933, Congress passed the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial from investment banking and establishing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to assure depositors that the federal government would guarantee their savings."22

"Both communism and liberalism traced their origins back to a common moment of eighteenth-century revolution, with the former tying itself to the French Revolution and the latter to the American. Both camps saw themselves as freeing humanity from old, encrusted social orders marked by privilege, inequality, and widespread misery." 30

"The decline of America's competitive advantage also became apparent through a second major change in international economic relations occurring in the 1960s and 1970s: the rising political economic power of commodity-producing nations. Petroleum producers were the paradigmatic case. Cheap energy had underwritten the New Deal order's economic robustness from the start. The flow of cheap oil had also fueled the West's and Japan's economic recovery from the Great Depression and Second World War." 59

"The postwar American economy and way of life were both built on the belief that cheap oil would last forever."61

"Consumers were at the centre of Nader's vision of popular democracy; they, not workers, were the ones whom he wanted to empower." 66

"Neoliberals, however, began to argue that economic man could not be comprehended in such narrow terms. Rather, economic man was himself a repository of capital. He was the producer of his own wants and needs; he was what Foucault would later call "an entrepreneur of himself,""being...his own capital." 90

"Reagan's greatest political achievement was to reconcile a politics focused on restoring white supremacy and godliness with his own neoliberal market orientation, with its emphasis on personal freedom and antagonism to the New Deal state." 119

"Many in their ranks turned to employment opportunities in the country's metastasizing underground drug economy. This subterranean economy was itself built on entrepreneurial, market principles, but its goods facilitated the expansion of drug use and exacted a severe toll on users..." 130

"The neo-Victorian moral perspective of the Reagan years was fundamental to the emerging neoliberal order. It provided the architects of Reagan's neoliberal America assurance that America could handle the rigours of a free market economy. It bound together the white poor with white Republican Party elites, articulating an ideal of strenuous self-improvement that flowed powerfully on the racist undercurrents coursing their way through American life. This was not the only moral code that the neoliberal order made possible." 134-135

"Ralph Nader and his supporters had embraced the "capture thesis" developed by political scientist, the phrase referring to corporate interests "capturing" the very government agencies meant to regulate their behaviour." 159

"Deregulatory finance reformers achieved their first big success in the pension industry. This industry itself was a by-product of the New Deal order, a consequence of labor unions compelling employees to set aside funds that would be doled out to employees after their retirement. Hugh pools of investable capital sprang up as a successful unions spread these pension plans to more and more sectors of the economy, and as non-union employers sought to forestall unionization by voluntarily giving workers union-grade pension plans of their own.
More and more banks, commercial and investment, wanted to get their hands on these funds, upping the pressure for deregulating finance in the process. Then in the 1970s another critical change occurred: Employers won legislation in Congress allowing them to replace "defined benefit" plans with "defined contribution" ones. The former had promised every employee a set monthly payment upon retirement, continuing until death. The later promised every employee something else: a monthly supplement to his or her pay check, paid into an individual retirement account (IRA). Upon retirement, these supplements would serve as a the employee's pension, with the retiree obligated to withdraw a minimum amount annually for living expenses, to continue until the fund was exhausted or the pensioner died." 174-175

"All these forces converged to produce what many scholars have labeled the "financialization" of the economy, manifest in the size, wealth, and power of investment houses and brokerage firms, now seen as the principal drivers of capital generation, innovation, and profit...Telecom reform and financial modernization tied the West Coast to the East Coast, Silicon Valley to Wall Street, San Francisco to New York." 176

"Liberty, as we have seen, had been long been closely associated with order in the imagination of both classical liberals of the nineteenth century and neoliberals of the twentieth century. This association stemmed from the conviction that one could not enjoy one's liberty without order." 185

"Bush's central domestic ambition as president was to make America into an "ownership society," by which he meant a nation in which Americans would control their own retirement accounts, their own health savings accounts (to pay for medical care), and their own homes. Ownership, in Bush's view, was the "path to greater opportunity, more freedom, and more control over...life" for all Americans." 210-211

"In the years following the Great Crash of 2008-2009, very different groups of Americans began to transmute their economic distress into political anger and protest." 230

"The United States had long been exceptional among nations in terms of the levels of mortal violence in its people inflicted on each other. But rising rates of self-harm and death among working-class white men were something new." 233

"Neoliberalism had provided the conceptual underpinning for the gig economy by theorizing how individuals could transform themselves into entrepreneurs able to monetize material and personal assets in new ways." 238

"This attack on Obama...treat it as a complex form of racism, manifesting itself as a revolt against Obama not just because he was black but also because he represented the full flowering of cosmopolitanism as an American creed. Obama had experienced the diversity of the world-and moved easily through its many cultures-more than any previous occupant of the Oval Office." 242

"Trump had quietly shifted from real estate development to branding-selling the Trump name to others who would then be allowed to affix it to hotels, golf courses, universities, wine and vodka bottles, and even steaks. His branding career was going reasonably well. But his most successful new vocation turned out to be that of entertainer." 244

"In each of Trump's three beliefs-that free trade and open borders were harming America, that America should privilege its people of European descent, and that America's true strength lay in its professional wrestling heartland far more than in the aspirations of America's coastal elites-we can see an incipient attack on America's neoliberal order...Those who caricatured and dismissed Trump and his politics were slow to grasp his strengths. He had a preternatural feel for how to seize the public's attention in the media age. He became a master of Twitter..." 248

"Trump's speeches were always a potpourri of ideas, charges, and attacks. To critics, Trump appeared disorganized, meandering, and often verging on incoherence. But the critique misses the "call and response" character of his oratorical technique. Some of his boasts and tangents fell flat. But others hit home." 249

"The triumph of Trump on November 8, 2016, was a stunning moment in the history of American politics. One had to reach all the way back to Andrew Jackson's victory in 1828 to find a precedent for a candidate so far removed from the country's reigning political elite winning the presidency." 265

"Indifferent to governing, Trump remained a master at commanding the political stage and thus the attention of the nation." 268

"As was the case with his protectionism, Trump's ethnonationalism was part of a global trend. Victor Orban in Hungary, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Narendra Modi in India, and Xi Jinping in China wanted their nations to privilege certain ethnocultural groups defined by race or religion or both..." 276

[Stephen Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well-written survey of the fifty years of American political history. It doesn't offer a huge amount of new information, but presents it in a coherent way through the frame of what society believes and accepts as political orthodoxy. Gerstle demonstrates that orthodoxies are accepted by both parties (for the most part) until they break down and are replaced by another. We have seen the most recent one fall, but what replaces it is still unknown. I recommend this for those interested in modern US history, especially anyone trying to make sense of the political turmoil of the last few election cycles.

Gerstle defines an "order" as a set of political beliefs/practices/policies that are so entrenched that the opposition party accepts them as well (to an extent). The "New Deal Order" was built around government intervention to manage the economy and solve social problems. Eisenhower was a Republican who basically accepted its main tenets rather than trying to tear down the system. The New Deal Order was undermined by a few things: the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, counterculture in the 1960s among others. The allowed the voices in the wilderness to step in and preach for limited government. Reagan cemented the idea of limited regulation, promoting free trade and celebrating multiculturalism to establish the "Neo-Liberal Order". Bill Clinton accepted this new order and even called himself the "Democratic Eisenhower". He negotiated NAFTA, the WTO and even pushed to allow China to join. He deregulated banks and other sectors of the economy. George W. Bush pushed Neo-liberalism with further deregulation, but undermined it with ill-conceived wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq, as well as the poor response to Hurricane Katrina. The financial crisis of 2007-8 also delivered a major blow to Neo-liberalisms credibility. Although Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were both Neo-liberalism, the tide was turning against them, which undermined Obama's presidency and undercut Clinton's campaign in 2016. Donald Trump picked up on the growing frustration with free-trade and multiculturalism to win the White House and do his best to dismantle the Neo-liberal infrastructure. He had only limited success, at least partly because he was lazy and not competent at running a government, but did dismantle some cultural/political norms that allowed more things to be said and more things to be done that would have been taboo earlier.

Gerstle finishes by saying that some elements of the Neo-liberal order remain, but that should be confused with the order itself remaining. The popularity of Trump, Bernie Sanders and AOC demonstrate that populism has taken hold. Biden's presidency, which is more populist and protectionist than any since WW2 except for Trump's, is further evidence. Gerstle hasn't claimed that a new order is in place, which makes this a dangerous and volatile time.

[Mario Hinksman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that is both very readable and highly researched covering the rise and fall of the neoliberal order as well as quite a bit that came before it. In essence this is a political and economic history of America and the wider world from the Presidency of Herbert Hoover in 1928 to the Biden regime in 2021.

In setting the scene for the established 'New Deal' order that came before, Gerstle covers the Great Depression and the Roosevelt regime, before moving into post-war growth before things eventually started to unravel in the 1970s. The neoliberals took over at that point with Carter acting in neoliberal ways before Reagan took things up a gear and Clinton largely fell in with the same agenda.

Gerstle manages a great breadth of scholarship from economic, political, cultural and technological. This book is a highly efficient and interesting way to learn about nearly a century of American history. The technological side was very informative which included the deregulation of radio and TV in the 1980s and 1990s which led to the rise of 'shock jocks' and Fox News before the internet took the plurality of views to a whole different level.

It is very much a chronological account which might strike the overly critical as a little pedestrian. While this didn't bother me, I was on occasion looking at footnotes only to find that these provided only very general support for a particular fact. That is not to doubt the accuracy of the footnote but they might have been more specific in places.

These minor gripes aside, I would highly recommend this book.

[Peter Amerkhanian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rise and Fall is a clear-eyed recounting and high quality analysis of the last half century of American political economy. In terms of “history of neoliberalism” book, I had to read a lot of D. Harvey in school and I read some N. Klein for recreation, but this book is, in my opinion, better at basically every turn. Rather than try to blame 50 years of American economic policy exclusively on Milton Friedman (I’m being slightly facetious but this is kind of Klein’s thesis), this book makes compelling arguments about the broad array of people and happenstance that propped up neoliberalism. Instead of dealing with America as a hegemon in a geopolitical vacuum (Harvey..), this book also tries to seriously analyze how the real power and threat of the USSR did and didn’t influence neoliberal policy up and into the 90s. One could go on but to suffice to say: There’s a reason GG gets love from public intellectuals across the left -> center political spectrum. This is the best “history of the present” that I’ve read in the past few years. The ending made me feel extremely depressed!