In my previous piece on neoliberalism I began with a rough description of neoliberalism, but mostly I worked to clear up problems specific to the general American understanding of neoliberalism. The first problem with the American understanding of neoliberalism is that in the US “liberalism” usually means welfare liberalism of the New Deal type, whereas in Europe “liberalism” the word designates what we call market conservatism in the US. Neoliberal American politicians like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama were really neoliberals, but they weren not neo-New-Dealers but rather neo-freemarketers. Because they were Democrats and bright college types rather than hacks it was assumed that they were just modernizing the New Deal, but in fact they were working to limit and roll back the New Deal (and above all, LBJ’s Great Society).
The second problem is that while neoliberalism can be traced back to to old-school market liberalism of the Republican type, it is not the same thing, but something new and different — thus the “neo”. Neoliberals do hold many points in common with the anti-tax, anti-regulation, anti-union, little-government conservatism we know all too well, but their ideas about the political history and the role of government are entirely different.
Most of what I will say here comes from The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, ed. Mirowski and Plehwe (Harvard , 2009), which I think is
— source counterpunch.org | John Emerson | Dec 6, 2021