Neoliberalism reframes citizens as consumers, and the state as a service provider. It promotes the idea that society should be run like a business; efficient, competitive, and responsive to market signals, not democratic deliberation.
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Don't disagree, but the presence of organised, independent social movements doesn't mean 'democracy strengthening' eg 1930s fascist movements before they were invited into govt, evangelical churches in Latin America. The issue is *progressive* working class and 60's social movements got smashed.
jul 23, 2025, 11:20 am • 0 0 • view
Indeed, I’m not arguing that any organised movement strengthens democracy. As Wendy Brown and others have shown, neoliberalism didn’t just erode collective structures in the abstract, it specifically dismantled progressive counterpower: labour, civil rights, and solidarity-based publics.
jul 23, 2025, 12:25 pm • 6 0 • view
The vacuum left behind hasn’t remained empty, it’s been filled by reactionary, exclusionary forces precisely because the democratic infrastructure that once channelled collective action toward justice was smashed.
jul 23, 2025, 12:26 pm • 38 2 • view
So yes, what was hollowed out wasn’t organisation per se, it was the civic and institutional capacity to expand democracy. Rebuilding that means recovering not just form, but direction: structures that cultivate public reasoning, solidarity, and shared democratic purpose.
jul 23, 2025, 12:26 pm • 43 3 • view
I agree but I have no idea how except the hard slog of irl organizing around material, everyday issues But you can't really do that without social media and all that entails Where I live a few MLM and knitting(!) influencers built a 100k strong movement like that. But it is antivax and rw populist
jul 23, 2025, 12:56 pm • 0 0 • view
They say 'politics follows culture' and have set up local meetups, food growing groups and a radio station They're also using their network to introduce rw ideology via a mixture of lifestyle and political content But they have $$$ and can draw on copious output of US/UK culture war influencers
jul 23, 2025, 1:12 pm • 0 0 • view
It would be great if the left could do that. Our indigenous people do have the kind of independent grassroots, social movement you describe, but they have had to, to persist. But the left seems to be mainly on line with the occasional one off, reactive protest which doesn't really go anywhere.
jul 23, 2025, 1:23 pm • 0 0 • view
On the party political level, how can there be any hope when the supposed opponents of fascism adopt its language and so much of its world view? When they plainly believe in nothing? What hope is there for civic society once Labour's calamitous failures give us a Reform government?
jul 23, 2025, 12:48 pm • 0 0 • view
Capitalism did all that in the early 20th century too
jul 23, 2025, 9:27 am • 0 0 • view
Meritocracy adds the moral dimension: if you succeed, it’s because you earned it; if you fail, it’s your fault. This creates a moral logic that equates inequality with desert, eroding solidarity and masking systemic barriers.
jul 23, 2025, 7:52 am • 159 24 • view
In fact Meritocracy in this system doesn't really exist except as a narrative. The real way to advance is through contacts, not ability alone. Often people gain positions because they say the right things in interview. Often they aren't actually qualified. The merit is illusory.
jul 23, 2025, 8:57 am • 0 0 • view
I'd really recommend Sandel's work on this, this podcast covers his work on meritocracy www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/epis...
jul 23, 2025, 9:04 am • 1 0 • view
That's not a definition of meritocracy that I recognise: for me, it's always meant that you shd be able to advance as far as you can based on yr ability, not yr social background/gender/ethnicity & c.
jul 23, 2025, 8:50 am • 1 0 • view
Michael Sandel's Tyrannt of Merit describes how that is actually corrosive for society, as predicted by Michael Young when he coined the term. I'd highly recommend the Tyrannt of Merit, this podcast covers it well too www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/epis...
jul 23, 2025, 8:53 am • 2 0 • view
I think what's corrosive is when it fails to deliver. I worked hard, got great qualifications, then struggled to get work commensurate with my abilities.
jul 23, 2025, 8:56 am • 1 0 • view
Indeed, and it also creates a permission structure to make moral judgements about those deemed unsuccessful by the standards of the meritocracy, both by the successful and the unsuccessful, and that breeds the sort of resentment being exploited by the likes of Trump and Farage.
jul 23, 2025, 9:00 am • 0 0 • view
My problem has been seeing dim-witted well-connected ppl or immoral chancers get on… The ethos I was raised in (late 1960s-1970s) told me that I shd be able to do anything if I succeeded academically. I loathe the lauding of 'prodigals' who 'made it': always thought that an immoral fable.
jul 23, 2025, 9:08 am • 0 0 • view
I'd really recommend Sandel's work as he reflects a lot of what you've experienced in his own thinking or meritocracy.
jul 23, 2025, 9:11 am • 0 0 • view
Tbh, I don't rlly have time/inclination to read outside my historical/art historical researches, these days.
jul 23, 2025, 9:51 am • 0 0 • view
I support meritocracy: I believe there's nothing wrong with élitism based on ability & achievement, but there shd be a proper safety net below. That's why I think UBI is a good idea. When I was child (late 60s-70s) there was a proper safety net: cdn't imagine how quickly that wd be dismantled.
jul 23, 2025, 9:37 am • 1 0 • view
Technocracy further narrows politics to the domain of ‘experts’. Decisions are framed as technical problems for specialists to solve, not issues requiring collective judgement. That strips the public of agency.
jul 23, 2025, 7:52 am • 134 19 • view
The result is a system that performs democracy, elections still happen, institutions remain, but the citizen’s role is reduced to passive consent or reaction. Democratic participation becomes hollow, procedural, or symbolic.
jul 23, 2025, 7:53 am • 146 18 • view
Democracy was always a bourgeoisie delusion that favored property owners over everyone else
jul 23, 2025, 9:28 am • 0 0 • view
Democracy cargo cults.
jul 23, 2025, 7:55 am • 1 0 • view
In that vacuum, people lose faith. They turn to spectacle, strongmen, or conspiracies to make sense of a system that no longer hears them. The shell of democracy remains, but the substance is gone, replaced by disillusionment and disinformation.
jul 23, 2025, 7:53 am • 140 20 • view
Now do elite kompromat, do elite kompromat, do elite kompromatttttttt
jul 23, 2025, 7:54 am • 0 0 • view
This is the hollowing out: democracy without voice, governance without participation, legitimacy without trust.
jul 23, 2025, 7:54 am • 125 13 • view
📌
jul 23, 2025, 8:08 am • 0 0 • view
Good questions; I’m not claiming the pre-neoliberal era was a democratic ideal, but neoliberal meritocratic technocracy didn’t just weaken institutions, it hollowed out the conditions for democratic participation, including the role of counterpublics. bsky.app/profile/ande...
jul 23, 2025, 8:13 am • 75 7 • view
The democratic project has always relied on more than formal elections. Counterpublics, organised groups outside dominant power, play a vital role in expanding rights, challenging elites, and reshaping what democracy even means.
jul 23, 2025, 8:13 am • 82 13 • view
No this is what happens when you allow unregulated social media run by actual Nazis, oligarchs and the Chinese state. All of whom seek to destabilise democracies by promoting racial hatred and hiding truth.
jul 23, 2025, 8:46 am • 2 0 • view
That's part of it, but if we ignore the political and social systems that takes place within then we're going to constantly fail to deal with the deeper problems.
jul 23, 2025, 8:51 am • 5 0 • view
Yes, but the lesson of Biden's presidency is social media vibes matter far more than objective truth. Fixing the system doesn't help when the vibes insist it is still broken. So if we don't fix social media we are doomed to fail whatever.
jul 23, 2025, 9:18 am • 0 0 • view
In the postwar period, despite many exclusions, unions, grassroots movements, radical media, and activist communities forced democratic expansion. They didn’t just protest, they produced knowledge, exerted pressure, and built legitimacy from below.
jul 23, 2025, 8:14 am • 75 13 • view
Neoliberalism weakened these spaces: – Unions lost power – Local organising was defunded – Radical media became unsustainable – Protest was reframed as disruption – Collective identity was replaced with consumer identity
jul 23, 2025, 8:14 am • 87 18 • view
I would really hesitate to characteristic the current period as low on identity politics and deprived of radical media (whatever that means). If anything, it's quite the opposite.
jul 23, 2025, 8:17 am • 0 0 • view
Organizing dependent on government funds was never about liberation anyway!!
jul 23, 2025, 9:37 am • 0 0 • view
Social media simulates some of the surface features of counterpublics, it gives people visibility, voice, and connection. But that’s not the same as organised contestation with strategic power and sustained pressure.
jul 23, 2025, 8:15 am • 67 9 • view
The neoliberal approach regards rules either as hindrance or as self-ruling, as if they don't need to be enforced by an outside force. It's like thinking about architecture without stairs, toilets and the way people move inside or to it. Of course these topics are not what a building is about but >
jul 23, 2025, 4:39 pm • 0 0 • view
if you willingly don't think about them funny things happen. I like the institutional approach by Douglass C. North. It adds institutions aka norms and rules (that restrain actions) and transaction costs to classic liberal economy. This approach helps to explain why some countries are rich/poor.
jul 23, 2025, 4:43 pm • 0 0 • view