Anti-neoliberalism has become the ideology of the nostalgia left - mostly white guys who miss the Imaginary 1970s. In the Imaginary 1970s, Che berets were cool, FDR’s New Deal had Wall Street Tamed, the White Working Class was Union Strong and Pro-Big-Government, Regulators were Not Captive, the Rule of Law was Majestic, and there were no “disappointing” black guys in the White House. Then, according to the anti-neoliberalism story, tragically, Reagan and Thatcher, acting for “elites” crushed the labor movement and the Gutless Democrats sold out the Working Class (meaning, white men) in favor of “identity politics” (meaning, not white men). Thousands of tiny violins play The Internationale while the audience clutches their autographed copies of What’s the Matter With Kansas and Glenn Greenwald’s dumb book over their “Disco Sucks” T-shirts.

The effects of the heroic struggle of the civil rights movement and the counter-attack on it? Not in this story. Same with the effects of a racist massive public investment in housing that produced real-estate escalator for a large chunk of the white working class and a dramatic wealth gap (by 1962 when Kennedy banned, in theory, redlining, 98% of a gigantic post-war Federal housing investment had gone to white Americans). The profound changes in culture and economics due to feminism and gay liberation — um, nope. The rise of Europe and then Japan and then China and India as technical and manufacturing powers is treated as a tactic of “elites” (meaning US/European corporate managers) that in particular has nothing to do with the efforts and aspirations of the people and governments of China and India. The military success of nations like Vietnam in resisting US military power — invisible. The destructive effects of 40 years of military Keynsianism on US manufacturing economy is also written out of the story. Even the movement of industry out of the unionized North to the Southern United States through the 1950s is ignored. The anti-neoliberalist version of post-1970s US history is that The Elites all of a sudden lost their appetite for organized labor’s demands and the perfidious Democratic Party then abandoned the working class (even though the Democratic Party still today is the party of the US working class as long as you consider women and people of color to be human beings). To use the standard academic terminology: the anti-neoliberalism narrative deprives African-Americans, women, Asia, Africa, and even the famous white working class of any agency — the Elites act, and everyone else lives in the world they create.

There is no such thing as neoliberalism. There are, for sure, powerful people and political parties that advocate austerity, privatization of public assets and services, punitive social welfare policies, nutty supply side or perfect market fantasies, Ayn Rand’s twisted dreams, Koch brothers “libertarianism” and other right wing economic theories, but these are not part of some well worked out “elite” plot and they certainly are not anything new. In fact, US “elites” are conspicuously divided in the current era. And there was most definitely not a golden age of labor in the USA prior to the Reagan Presidency — again, if you consider women and people of color to be human beings. To me, the most critical factor in the collapse of the New Deal Coalition was not the perfidy of the Democrats or the machinations of “neoliberal elites”, but the racist counter-Reconstruction of white people defending their economic and social privilege. The attempt to ignore this phenomenon in the middle of Trump’s campaign is remarkable.

But anti-neoliberalism does exist. It is an effort by certain parts of the old left to deal with the collapse of socialism as a movement by re-imagining the New Deal and 1950s America as leftism. You know, the good old days before the civil rights, feminist, and gay lib movements made straight white guy revolutionaries so marginal. It serves up “neoliberal” as an invective to be used against the Democratic Party and anyone who doesn’t accept the leading role of the theorists. And it’s a politically harmful theory because it justifies apathy and cynicism, a passive role as a critic of a world of puppet masters and puppets.