About economic neo-liberalism

'Economic neo-liberalism' otherwise know as 'economic rationalism', not that long ago, rightly dismissed as an extreme ideology deservedly distantly removed from the mainstream has, since the late 1970's become elevated to become the almost unchallenged orthodoxy in the Anglophone world, most of the Third World and the former Soviet bloc.

Whilst if professes to based on solid intellectual and scientific foundations, it is, in reality, no more so than religions which were used in past epochs to gain acceptance for social arrangements to suit the economic interests of small privileged elites.

Quotes

…Self-discipline has not been seen as a great virtue by citizens of the West over the last few decades. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was popularly assumed to be a preference of the Right, and this misapprehension remains in the political debate. But nothing could be less disciplined than the New Right, with its romantic mythologizing of freedom, equality and individualism in order to obscure such practical policies as the legalization of dishonest speculation through financial deregulation. The New Right is even more undisciplined than the liberal middle classes…

From the Chapter chapter titled “Of Princes and Heroes” of John Ralston Saul’s “Voltaire’s Bastards”.
This was posted by #comment-211993">‘Smiley’ to johnquiggin.com on 25 May 2008.