An essay on neoliberalism

Abstract

A comparison of liberalism and neoliberalism shows that conceptual contradictions of liberal ideas arise in the liberal hypostatization of various forms of social being. Therefore, the political liberalism will contradict the cultural one, and the legal liberalism will contradict the economic one. However, there are no fundamental differences between liberalism and neoliberalism: both are based on the same values and differ only in the sphere of their application. Liberalism, as a political practice, is intended mainly for the domestic use, while neoliberalism rather for the external use. In other words, neoliberalism, being an integral part of liberalism, presents the foreign-policy dimension of liberal concepts. Foreign policy is inherently aggressive: a number of French revolutionary governments should be recognized as the earliest forerunners of modern neoliberals. For instance, the foreign policy of the Convent clearly outgrew the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment and was aimed at enforcing liberalization on the European scale. The essence of liberalism is manifested in ousting the previous, partly traditional social, political and economic practices and in replacing them with the unified ones that should become the norm for the humankind. Neoliberals prefer to push their influence through the institutional pressure by using international non-governmental organizations, transnational companies, and the associated leaders of a number of countries of different levels of development. These organizations recruit personnel for management all around the world and constantly shuffle them, move from one country to another to create a new management culture intended for the neoliberal model of the global scale. The goal of neoliberals is almost the same as the goals of liberals (one can argue only about the means) and presents their foreign-policy version: neoliberals aim at reformatting the social space on the global scale by the abolition of the old states and introduction of a new social-political system, which is obviously manifested in the European Union, where the former states are gradually replaced by the regions, and the social policy aims at developing a new-European identity.