Margaret Thatcher on tv, 1990. Flickr/ R Barraez D'Lucca. Some rights reserved.In a leader published in December, the Blairite pressure group Progress took aim at a particular word: ‘neoliberalism’. It argued that “lazy use of language covers up intellectual laziness. ‘Neoliberal’ has become a catch-all for anyone with whom you disagree”. The charge was bolstered with the usual nod to George Orwell and the fear that “ugly writing leads to ugly thoughts” (a principle that would scarcely reflect well on the author of A Journey).
This is not a new critique. ‘Neoliberalism’ is a term that has attracted a remarkable degree of frustration and fury, in politics, the media and within academia. Journalists such as Independent columnist John Rentoul and Newsnight policy editor Christopher Cook have expended some energy on twitter and in print dismissing the term as vacuous. Orthodox economists, who do not encounter the term in their microeconomics training, dismiss it as useless. In academia, ‘neoliberalism’ has been criticised by historians and some social scientists as over-determined. Since Jeremy Bentham, the English tradition of positivism has rested on the notion that only acutely defined terms are politically valid – a premise that can quickly flip into the idea that if I don’t know exactly what you mean, then you are talking nonsense.
Some of this can be put down to political alignment, intellectual insecurity or a combination of the two. Since Jeremy Bentham, the English tradition of positivism has rested on the notion that only acutely defined terms are politically valid – a premise that can quickly flip into the idea that if I don’t know exactly what you mean, then you are talking nonsense. Benthamite utilitarianism has been slowly subsumed by welfare economics since the end of the 19th century, to the point where policy wonks can argue that esoteric terms such as ‘price elasticity’ or ‘market failure’ mean something, but ‘neoliberalism’ doesn’t. This implies that terminology is something to be overseen by HM Treasury (for example in its Green Book), which would be a surprising position for any devotee of George Orwell to find him or herself in.
