Sam Bowman (then executive director of the Adam Smith Institute) wrote a prolific article on this platform, re-defining or even re-claiming the term “neoliberal” from detractors of free markets or liberal economics generally. Building on the definition of his former colleague Ben Southwood, his definition has certainly caught on- with the explosion of the r/neoliberal subreddit that even incorporates Sam’s article on its sidebar. (I recommend everyone reading this article read Sam’s first if you haven’t already, I’m ripping off his format and fortunately his is quicker to read)

With over thirty-thousand subscribed readers and a growing self-identified neoliberal subculture growing around all corners of the internet, it is no surprise that Bloomberg, Vice and other outlets have remarked on this unabashed defence of markets and liberalism that largely makes up the Western status quo- currently strongly challenged by the success of populists both left and right.

Sam rightly pointed out that this partly grew out of the libertarian movement; he used ‘neoliberal’ as a catch-all term for those who were “libertarianish” but

are fundamentally different to the mainstream libertarian movement when it comes to important values and approaches, and frankly lots of libertarians hate them for being, in their eyes, too statist or leftist.

I won’t go into too much detail on Sam’s points (you can read the article yourself here) but I would like to add, while I almost completely subscribe to the key beliefs that Sam lists, I can’t help but identify that as neoliberalism emerged from online libertarian discourse, a whole new breed of liberalism is appearing from the nascent, self-identified neoliberal movement.

This sort of post-neoliberalism, in my opinion, is barely organised, and I am merely recording some observations I’ve witnessed from quite different groups of people with plenty of internal diversity. That is not to say that Sam’s neoliberalism (of what could be considered the parent ideology) isn’t diverse in and of itself, and has doesn’t have tensions within its left and right factions over issues such as the gender pay gap and job guarantee programmes.

What fascinates me (and convinced me to write up this article) is a trend of (left)neoliberalism becoming eerily close to social democracy. Welfarism was always held in common, but with figures such as economist and Bloomberg contributor Noah Smith and Vox founder Matthew Yglesias being embraced as neoliberal darlings, one has to wonder if both sides have finally met in the middle.

Ben Southwood’s post pointed this out rather plainly, concluding with the similarities of the two approaches in their comfort in redistribution of wealth (re-worded by Sam pretty succinctly). Where neoliberalism and orthodox social democracy differ, I believe, comes in two forms:

Neoliberals prefer state-driven welfare targeted at the poorest, whereas social democrats prefer universally accessible and holistic benefits. (This is why neoliberals could be very comfortable with high levels of state expenditure on healthcare but abhor the waste and statism of the National Health Service). Neoliberals are perfectly happy to support cash-based welfare such as tax credits, Negative Income Tax or Universal Basic Income whereas social democrats would value the psychological benefit and dignity of earning your own money (That is why social democrats favour policies such as full employment and a high minimum wage as opposed to cash-based alternatives).

In contrast, the new ideology emerging out of neoliberalism has a different opinion from both neoliberalism and social democracy.