What do liberalism and neoliberalism mean, and what is the difference between them?

[UltraWright]

What does liberalism and neoliberalism mean?

As far as I understand, political liberalism encompasses the generic stuff: equality, freedom, etc. and economic liberalism is nothing but free market capitalism, am I right?

[Tommy4ever]

I guess neo-liberalism is the way people who don't like it adress what is essentially classical liberalism.

Classical liberalism promotes the idea of full political freedom, very limited government and a free market.

Back in 'the day' the liberals would have been on the left supporting all these freedoms and stuff against the right wingers (often vestiges of feudalism) who supported less freedoms and were usually more prone to government intervention in the economy.

However, in the modern day things have changed. The neo-liberals tend to be rightwingers - they still support all the same classical liberal economic policies and the same rhetoric about freedoms etc. But they don't have that fuzzy liberationist vive anymore - indeed, rather than embracing the demands of the people modern neo-liberals fight against them. Just as back in the early 19th century those economic and political demands they had aimed to empower the many at the expense of the few those same policies now aim to keep the few in power and the many away from it.

People who call themselves liberal now try to keep that old liberal 'vive' and still support all the political liberalism of the past - freedoms and all that - but tend not to support classical liberal economic policies. Instead, in economics at least, they are more supportive of a mild form of social democracy - state intervention to correct the worst excesses of the market.

So neo-liberal is a word used for someone who support classical liberal economic policies - it is used to differentiate them from 'liberals' who like political freedoms and often natter about their 'social conscience'.

[GPDP]

"Neo-liberals" are what I like to call right-wing liberals, while "liberals" in common parlance could be construed as left-wing liberals. I am also of the opinion that "conservatives" are also liberals, but of the far-right kind, as they embrace social conservatism along with economic liberalism.

[Desperado]

"Neo-liberalism" simply means market driven, nothing less, nothing more.

Liberalism can be split into the classic liberalism of laissez faire and free trade with abstract equal political and property rights ensured by the state (equality before the law), and the slightly more progressive social liberalism which still has a sacred love of the market but with some Keynsian acceptance of its deficiencies and state involvement for certain services (welfare, education, healthcare). Modern social democracy is pretty much interchangeable with social liberalism, just a bit heavier on the state involvement.

[Aurora]

It was my understanding that neo-liberalism was the wave of privatisations and loosening of government regulation brought about particularly by Thatcher and Reagan as well as a whole host of other countries at that time and it's continued existence today can be seen by attempts of many governments to privatise other sectors like the post office, healthcare etc
This marked a shift from the previous epoch of Keynesianism where it was thought certain industries worked better when owned publicly.

[Ocean Seal]

Neoliberalism and classical liberalism can be related in the same way that Neo-Nazism and Nazism can be related. They both look to achieve the same goals but when you put the word "neo" in front it seems as if it has a new coat of paint. My only guess is that neoliberals support all freedoms like abortion etc. which classical liberals wouldn't have done 300 years ago, but they still support all those wonderful freedoms like the freedom to commit your child to child labor, to live under poor working conditions, to starve and so on.

[EmpireCrusher]

Neo-liberals are "new" liberals who promote further globalization.

[piet11111]

Neo-liberals want to do away with all legal restrictions on doing business.
While the old liberals where pro-market but also quite progressive with human rights and democracy and did not have such an issue with state intervention to ensure those human rights would not get trampled by capitalists.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

Neo-liberals want to do away with all legal restrictions on doing business.
While the old liberals where pro-market but also quite progressive with human rights and democracy and did not have such an issue with state intervention to ensure those human rights would not get trampled by capitalists.

This is not true, old Liberals were not 'social' or Modern Liberals but Classical Liberals who had no respect for human rights, based on Utilitarianism, a deeply reactionary ideology which essentially promoted a freedom of sorts, but this was merely a "freedom to starve".

Classical Liberals, as Liberalism does in general, feared 'the masses' and wanted property ownership to continue to be a condition for suffrage. They believed that if the working class was to exercise its right to vote then they could use it to their advantage.

[TheLeftStar]

Liberalism means more rights, open mind, greater acceptance, fairness. Neo-liberalism is only to a certain extent a backdoor entry for Capitalism

[Demogorgon]

Liberalism is a broad term that means quite a number of things. Neo-Liberalism is more specific and refers to right wing "free market" policies that are a throwback to nineteenth century liberalism.

[caramelpence]

Neoliberalism and classical liberalism can be related in the same way that Neo-Nazism and Nazism can be related. They both look to achieve the same goals but when you put the word "neo" in front it seems as if it has a new coat of paint. My only guess is that neoliberals support all freedoms like abortion etc. which classical liberals wouldn't have done 300 years ago, but they still support all those wonderful freedoms like the freedom to commit your child to child labor, to live under poor working conditions, to starve and so on.

Er, no. What this post and much of socialist thinking on the liberal tradition ignores is that liberalism has always been an incredibly diverse tradition and one that has undergone dramatic changes over time. There is a vast difference between neo-liberalism, which is a political rather than a primarily intellectual or philosophical project, and the current state of liberal political theory, as the latter most often takes the form of "liberal egalitarianism" and is based around themes like the norms of distributive justice and the importance of state neutrality. The most recent brand of liberal thought is itself vastly different from the liberalism of much of the 19th century which was not predominantly "classical" in the sense of being directed mainly towards free markets and property rights, as most people in this thread have assumed, but encompassed a range of theoretical and practical concerns, and was, in contradistinction to contemporary liberalism, often "comprehensive", meaning that liberals were eager to put forward ideas about the constituent elements of the good life, including the role of community, rather than being concerned with the "basic structure" alone, and, in connection with this, sought to engineer institutions in order to promote a particular kind of moral character, namely an active and sociable one, rather than believing that the state should or could be neutral between alternative modes of living. JS Mill is the paradigmatic example of the intellectual stature of 19th century comprehensive liberalism, but it's fair to say that he was by no means the only perfectionist liberal at the time, as non-perfectionist liberalism or liberal egalitarianism is very much a late-20th century and early-21st century phenomenon.

The critical and analytical edge of liberalism, its philosophical merits aside, is perhaps best exemplified by Hobson, who, as everyone knows, was one of Lenin's key starting-points for imperialism.

[Bronco]

Neoliberals tend to be what Kevin Carson calls "Vulgar Libertarians", they like to use the idea of a free market to argue for an increase in the private sector, increased inequality and corporate capitalism. Liberalism in todays sense generally refers to those who, unlike neoliberals, support increasing state investment and expenditure (while also protecting civil liberties)

[progressive_lefty]

I would agree with most of the posters. I would add this: Neo-liberalism was a program of public policy that saw large so-called 'leftwing' parties who may have gained Government ie. Labor Party of Australia, hold these sorts of thoughts -> 'we nationalised a lot of things to protect workers etc, and now we're doing alright - so let's try privatisation, maybe that's a solution to some issues we are having'. And so this kind of idea was embraced by many leftwing governments, in particular people like Tony Blair with New Labor.

Since I've been at Uni there's been a lot of discussion about neo-liberalism - usually in a negative context. A lot of people reference it in relation to the rise of disastrous treatment of the natural environment. It's also commonly used in order to describe the changes in private businesses and the market as a whole.

[Manic Impressive]

A Brief History of Neo Liberalism is a good book but if you don't want to get it here's a lecture about it by the author.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkWWMOzNNrQ&playnext=1&list=PL106CD732265F0CE4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkWWMOzNNrQ&playnext=1&list=PL106CD732265F0CE4)

[Thirsty Crow]

It was my understanding that neo-liberalism was the wave of privatisations and loosening of government regulation brought about particularly by Thatcher and Reagan as well as a whole host of other countries at that time and it's continued existence today can be seen by attempts of many governments to privatise other sectors like the post office, healthcare etc
This marked a shift from the previous epoch of Keynesianism where it was thought certain industries worked better when owned publicly.

I agree with this approach. There are more merits to it since it highlights concrete social and economic process, in its historical manifestations, in the "background" of the more generally understood process of ideological formation.

I think that the dismantling of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates and the ensuing capitalist restructuring beginning in the early to mid 70s, reaching its culmination in Reagan and Tatcher.

In that respect, neo-liberalism may collude in some aspects with social conservatism (as witnessed by the Reagan administration).