Definitions and Neoliberalism

I pretty much self-identify as a "neo-liberal." Defining "neoliberalism" though isn't quite so easy as one would hope. One tentative definition I've offered in the past is "microliberalism" - a notion that, while the broad class of goals we call "liberalism" are sound, overly broad interventions by the state are innately injurious and that the state should be strictly circumscribed in its operations. I'd guess that's the part of neoliberalism that is, technically "conservative." Significant markers, though, are the rejection of a materialist analytical perspective (communism in its leftmost version, fascism in its rightmost version, with community-values conservatives on the "materialist-right" and material-egalitarians and cultural relativists on the "materialist-left").

So, what exactly is it? Not quite a conservative, not quite a "liberal" in the current imprecision of the term. The libertarians have been sqautting on the term "classical liberal" (disgracefully, too, I might add), despite already having a perfectly serviceable label of their own. I know it aligns me with people like Mickey Kaus, who could be considered the "Let them eat shoe leather" wing of the Democratic party... but I'd like to think I'm substantively more soft-hearted... so the alignment would be one of methodology more than compassion. So, if "neoliberalism" is a way of seeing the world, then what exactly is it that a neoliberal sees when he looks out at the world?

Neoliberalism is like language.

As users of language, we have a vested interest in the commonality of definition. If we are to make ourselves understood, we must be able to trust that our words convey our meaning. At the same time, language is in many ways organic. When we use a word, we not only want to convey a definition, we often wish to convey a "structure of senses." When we use the adjective "hot" in place of "sexy" we are aware that in addition to our definitional use of the term, we're conveying a host of related images which are part of our meaning even though they're not strictly part of our intended definition. We know this interpretation will be subjective and dependent upon the associations of our listener, but our word-choice delivers not just a literal definition, but a broadly indeterminate structure of senses which is essential to our total meaning. As the "structures of senses" we wish to convey alter over time, we readjust the sense-structures of our words to accomodate new conveyances.

If the meanings of our words grow too permissive, however, communication disappears entirely. When George W. Bush discusses "full sovereignty," by which he means something that almost no theoriest has ever described as "sovereignty" before, he obscures his meaning. Those of us who use words with caution find that he has "lied." Though he may argue that "sovereignty" now means whatever he says it means, we acknowledge that it also still has a "public meaning" and that his use of the term is starkly at odds with this commonly understood definition of the term. A word of such specialized coinage as sovereignty can be modified without stirring broad outrage... but let a President parse the meaning of "is" and see how many people will take such lying lying down!

To avert this confusion, we use dictionaries - commonly acknowledged sources of authority on the meanings and definitions of words. As an authority, however, dictionaries are heterodox. The Oxford English Dictionary is a very particular compendium of words - exhaustive in breadth but deliberately anachronistic - striving to assert the most conservative interpretation of our language's meaning possible. On the other extreme, there are slang dictionaries for regionally-defined subcultures, such as the Bay Area Hip-Hop Dictionary which try to record the dynamic flux of language in real-time. The most significant trait, which almost all dictionaries share (aside from Webster's horrendous assault on language), is an attempt to take their cues from language as it is used, rather than to describe language as it ought to be.

The "evolution" of language, then, is a bottom-up phenomenon subject to no artificial law. The dictionary does not express a vision of language which we then impose upon human speech. Rather, it tries to describe the boundaries of the variance in commonly understood meanings of words. Dictionaries do not dictate the sense of our usage, but they strive to clarify them.

This may sound suspiciously similar to Adam Smith's brand of economic liberalism. According to Smith, economic activity likewise behaves in an organic, bottom-up fashion. The economic order is "evolutionary" and law is ideally used to establish "transactional definitions" - defining the allowable terms of contract; enforcing the rights of property and alienation; and demanding adherence to normative standards of fairness. So, it has an affirmative function, which describes (not creates!) the economic relations between men; a protective function which enforces the standards of transaction, and a negative function which restricts the tendency of an economic system to lapse into monopolism. Thus, the liberal economic order is organic, descriptive, and only intervenes to maintain a dynamic equilibrium.

Neoliberalism, then, is such an outlook applied to the social system itself.*** Men in community together will structure their relations with one another in an organic, bottom-up fashion. The law is used to recognize the "relational definitions" of human roles. It describes the natures of relations (spouse to spouse, parent to child, employer to employee, etc.); defines the terms of a "fair bond" by describing the ideal obligations in a relationship and defining abuse or neglect; and it intervenes tactically to ward off any form of social "monopoly" - those political states which we might recognize as "tyranny."

Any action beyond that, the political system puts its own "health" in danger. The "activist neoliberal" could almost be seen as a part of the autonomic nervous system of the political order... his goal is to limit state interventions to the redress of manifest injustices (despite lacking a strong coherence to his definitions of justice) and to restrain the totalizing visions of society's visionaries... it's sort of a "militant moderatism"... but it's more partisan than that.

Another metaphor I'm toying with, and for which I am indebted to this discussion, the author of which is unclear from the site, is that society could be considered to operate like a gas under pressure. Unfortunately, I cannot say anything remotely meaningful about the nature of thermodynamic equilibria... but the notion that society is a self-regulating energy system in a like manner strikes me as a neoliberal view of the social order and even (if the same model could be applied to the brain as the author suggests), a neoliberal theory of mind...

I am indebted to Jean-Pierre Dupuy for explaining the link between economic liberalism and social liberalism... though the innate liberalism of language is my own observation.