"This is a fine book about about its topic. However, I would have strongly preferred it if it were about my preferred topic instead, and in fact, the author's failure to do so indicates deep moral rot and intellectual unseriousness on his part."
I enjoy the bellicose posts; after quitting Twitter, it’s nice that I still have a source of beefs. It seems like Beck’s article was pretty weird, very meandering and personal for a “book review”. Something about “socialist gets upset about left-liberals/liberalism” brings out dumb analyses & insufferable tones.
"Lichtenstein and Stein’s recent book A Fabulous Failure makes a convincing argument that the Clinton administration was split between neoliberalism and a more social democratic approach, but because of a number of political and economic conditions, neoliberalism won out."
Brad DeLong, who worked in the Clinton administration, talks about this. As he describes it, the goal was to get to a sustainable full-employment economy and then redistribute. They accomplished the first one by the end of the second term, but they "lost" the 2000 election so weren't able to get around to the second. Is that what they would have done? idk, but it’s interesting texture, and I believe that Brad was being sincere.
I personally think the book was better for not getting too bogged down talking about “neoliberalism”. After it has gotten so much use/misuse online, one needs to spend so much time clarifying the term that it’s not all that illuminating. And to the extent that your book aims at understanding Trump, the relationship to neoliberalism is something of a disanalogy. 1992 and 2016 could both be fairly understood as part of a “neoliberal era” but unlike 1992, you need to squint to see society becoming more neoliberal in the lead-up to 2016 (maybe China shock, but that was early 2000s; maybe TPP, but how much interest did people have in that?). IMO there’s more insight in seeing both 1992 and 2016 as fallout from crises brought on by “establishment” conservatives.
I’d agree that n+1’s editorial standards are going downhill—they have not been immune to the goofy Brooklynification that has contributed to the American left’s persistent weakness.
It's pretty disheartening and has just gotten continually worse over the past 8-10 years. I think though that a lot of dishonesty and dimwittedness by leftist/progressive writers was tolerated by peers because it was mostly directed at the center left. Very prominent commentators, whose own writing is good and honest, have been happy to cheer/re-tweet the slime-jobs because of small differences in politics or petty dislike. Hopefully the dishonesty getting directed in-group will promote both culture change and house-cleaning.
Funny to note that Ganz has dodged the Brooklynification; i recall him angrily telling someone on Twitter that actually he lives in Manhattan. More seriously, I appreciate his ability to say "fuck you" and move on with his day, I think it's ultimately what keeps him honest.
"Ganz's book is about subjects that were MSNBC-coded in 2016, when politics ceased to evolve. In lieu of addressing the book's content. I will now sneer at a row of flag emoji that I'm picturing next to his name."
John, have you perhaps pissed off someone working at N+1? :-)
I also want to second the multiple comments from others who also seem perplexed at what the hell "neoliberalism" means, if it's actually anything other than a way for a Lefty to insult a liberal with a term not often used by the right-wingers. For me it fits in there with "Late-Stage Capitalism" as a new way to sound like you have a keener insight than some dolt who says "Capitalism". I'm probably just too thick-headed to appreciate all the subtleties involved. I dropped my subscription to N+1 a while back. I'm feeling ratified in that decision. This review reads to me like a guy with jealousy issues who thinks he can advance a little by crapping on someone else who's getting more attention than him.
It's not like it's a totally meaningless or useless term, it's just been used so much online & as a term of abuse that you really need to specify how you're using it. E.g. in the article above, Beck associates it with “passage of the extraordinarily punitive 1994 crime bill”—but there’s no nexus to Friedmanite econ policy or international trade or a diminished public sector. He’s just being angry and it's a cussword. And ya the crime bill was bad but one hopes "neoliberalism" would have more content than that.
imo it’s a useful term historically (the “neoliberal turn” in the 80s or very broadly defined “neoliberal era” of international trade), but mostly unhelpful when talking about policy. There, people use it in not-great-faith to lump together stuff they don’t like with quite different stuff that was bad for other reasons.
Like, are carbon taxes "neoliberal"? Under some uses yes, they’re an indirect government intervention via the market, and Milton Friedman liked them. But under other uses no, it's raising taxes & intervenes in the market, and was decidedly not e.g. an element of Reganite policy. If you want to use a neutral definition of “neoliberalism”, and think CTax meets it, no skin off my back. But if you’re doing that, then your analysis is going to be really shallow & equivocating if you assume anything falling under “neoliberalism” is bad per se. If there are issues with CTax as a policy (there aren’t, it’s great), they are very different from e.g. “gutting the welfare state” or firing air traffic controllers.
I think that the most useful contemporary sense of the term, where we don’t have another good word for it, is something like “fettering/undermining the state’s ability to act in the economy”, e.g., maintaining a weak public service & relying on consultants; making public projects really vulnerable to lawsuits.
Great points. Neoliberal loses its juice if it ends up meaning little more than “liberals doing things previously associated with conservatives.” Personally my main problem with its current one-size-fits-all usage is that it fails to draw a hard enough line between the army of MBA business school marketeers unleashed on the world in the ‘80s/90s and the truly revolutionary and boastfully criminal nature of much of the contemporary right. Never been able to figure out if Berlusconi - the grandaddy of them all, or at least prefiguring them - is supposed to be neoliberal.
I just want to say that I thought it was a great strength of the book that it being a pre-history of the political phenomenon of Trumpism was not at the center of the narrative but remained just as a rhyming echo throughout. Just explicitly saying "Buchanan = Trump" had already been done ad infinitum (for good reason of course) and would have made a boring book, it was the way that it brought that early 90's period to life in its own weird specificity that made it such a great read and different from the endless words spilled on How We Got Here.
Describing concern about Trumpism in 2025 as “anxious fantasies” is pretty hard to process. Really hard.
I just can’t anymore with anybody who blathers on about neoliberalism but doesn’t know, or isn’t willing to acknowledge, that most western societies - let alone Russia - contain far more neo-Nazis both walking the streets, wearing uniforms, and in elected positions that Ukraine does. It’s just so willfully, even proudly ignorant. He needs them to be wearing funky black uniforms?
As for neoliberalism in the book - let’s say, sure, it’s a truism that Nazism was inconceivable without the collapse of capitalism in 1929 but…it’s also a much bigger, deeper, and more alarming story than just that. In any case, you establish the political economy context at the outset, and it’s a book for people trying to understand the transformation of the American right, not the corporatization of the American centre. That process has dynamics and internal developments all on its own, and they’re worth learning about.
“the American political system, and liberalism has had a much more destructive legacy over the past thirty years than Trump, Ross Perot, Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan, and the rest of the alt-right combined”
Good for you for fisking Beck on his selective omissions. They do seem to be in service of a...grievance? Or what? A public dialogue between the two of you would be interesting. I'll bet there's common ground there.
This is deeply disappointing, as I found his book HOMELAND to be a real triumph. It was on par with your book as the highlights of nonfiction in 2024 and I'm stunned to see how bad his take on your work is. https://newrepublic.com/article/185283/world-september-11-made
Sigh. My response to tankies is, start a revolution and I'll stand right there beside you, but until then, your "the enemy of my frenemy is my BFF" stance just makes you sound like all the other morons.
"This is a fine book about about its topic. However, I would have strongly preferred it if it were about my preferred topic instead, and in fact, the author's failure to do so indicates deep moral rot and intellectual unseriousness on his part."
Personally, I love the shit-talking. It's era-appropriate, and sometimes people just need to have their clocks cleaned.
I enjoy the bellicose posts; after quitting Twitter, it’s nice that I still have a source of beefs. It seems like Beck’s article was pretty weird, very meandering and personal for a “book review”. Something about “socialist gets upset about left-liberals/liberalism” brings out dumb analyses & insufferable tones.
"Lichtenstein and Stein’s recent book A Fabulous Failure makes a convincing argument that the Clinton administration was split between neoliberalism and a more social democratic approach, but because of a number of political and economic conditions, neoliberalism won out."
Brad DeLong, who worked in the Clinton administration, talks about this. As he describes it, the goal was to get to a sustainable full-employment economy and then redistribute. They accomplished the first one by the end of the second term, but they "lost" the 2000 election so weren't able to get around to the second. Is that what they would have done? idk, but it’s interesting texture, and I believe that Brad was being sincere.
I personally think the book was better for not getting too bogged down talking about “neoliberalism”. After it has gotten so much use/misuse online, one needs to spend so much time clarifying the term that it’s not all that illuminating. And to the extent that your book aims at understanding Trump, the relationship to neoliberalism is something of a disanalogy. 1992 and 2016 could both be fairly understood as part of a “neoliberal era” but unlike 1992, you need to squint to see society becoming more neoliberal in the lead-up to 2016 (maybe China shock, but that was early 2000s; maybe TPP, but how much interest did people have in that?). IMO there’s more insight in seeing both 1992 and 2016 as fallout from crises brought on by “establishment” conservatives.
I, for one, LOVE an extended Ganz response to shoddy criticism! Give ‘em hell.
Also if someone says “neoliberal”to me I shrivel up like a salted snail.
I’d agree that n+1’s editorial standards are going downhill—they have not been immune to the goofy Brooklynification that has contributed to the American left’s persistent weakness.
It's pretty disheartening and has just gotten continually worse over the past 8-10 years. I think though that a lot of dishonesty and dimwittedness by leftist/progressive writers was tolerated by peers because it was mostly directed at the center left. Very prominent commentators, whose own writing is good and honest, have been happy to cheer/re-tweet the slime-jobs because of small differences in politics or petty dislike. Hopefully the dishonesty getting directed in-group will promote both culture change and house-cleaning.
Funny to note that Ganz has dodged the Brooklynification; i recall him angrily telling someone on Twitter that actually he lives in Manhattan. More seriously, I appreciate his ability to say "fuck you" and move on with his day, I think it's ultimately what keeps him honest.
"Ganz's book is about subjects that were MSNBC-coded in 2016, when politics ceased to evolve. In lieu of addressing the book's content. I will now sneer at a row of flag emoji that I'm picturing next to his name."
John, have you perhaps pissed off someone working at N+1? :-)
I also want to second the multiple comments from others who also seem perplexed at what the hell "neoliberalism" means, if it's actually anything other than a way for a Lefty to insult a liberal with a term not often used by the right-wingers. For me it fits in there with "Late-Stage Capitalism" as a new way to sound like you have a keener insight than some dolt who says "Capitalism". I'm probably just too thick-headed to appreciate all the subtleties involved. I dropped my subscription to N+1 a while back. I'm feeling ratified in that decision. This review reads to me like a guy with jealousy issues who thinks he can advance a little by crapping on someone else who's getting more attention than him.
It's not like it's a totally meaningless or useless term, it's just been used so much online & as a term of abuse that you really need to specify how you're using it. E.g. in the article above, Beck associates it with “passage of the extraordinarily punitive 1994 crime bill”—but there’s no nexus to Friedmanite econ policy or international trade or a diminished public sector. He’s just being angry and it's a cussword. And ya the crime bill was bad but one hopes "neoliberalism" would have more content than that.
imo it’s a useful term historically (the “neoliberal turn” in the 80s or very broadly defined “neoliberal era” of international trade), but mostly unhelpful when talking about policy. There, people use it in not-great-faith to lump together stuff they don’t like with quite different stuff that was bad for other reasons.
Like, are carbon taxes "neoliberal"? Under some uses yes, they’re an indirect government intervention via the market, and Milton Friedman liked them. But under other uses no, it's raising taxes & intervenes in the market, and was decidedly not e.g. an element of Reganite policy. If you want to use a neutral definition of “neoliberalism”, and think CTax meets it, no skin off my back. But if you’re doing that, then your analysis is going to be really shallow & equivocating if you assume anything falling under “neoliberalism” is bad per se. If there are issues with CTax as a policy (there aren’t, it’s great), they are very different from e.g. “gutting the welfare state” or firing air traffic controllers.
I think that the most useful contemporary sense of the term, where we don’t have another good word for it, is something like “fettering/undermining the state’s ability to act in the economy”, e.g., maintaining a weak public service & relying on consultants; making public projects really vulnerable to lawsuits.
Great points. Neoliberal loses its juice if it ends up meaning little more than “liberals doing things previously associated with conservatives.” Personally my main problem with its current one-size-fits-all usage is that it fails to draw a hard enough line between the army of MBA business school marketeers unleashed on the world in the ‘80s/90s and the truly revolutionary and boastfully criminal nature of much of the contemporary right. Never been able to figure out if Berlusconi - the grandaddy of them all, or at least prefiguring them - is supposed to be neoliberal.
I just want to say that I thought it was a great strength of the book that it being a pre-history of the political phenomenon of Trumpism was not at the center of the narrative but remained just as a rhyming echo throughout. Just explicitly saying "Buchanan = Trump" had already been done ad infinitum (for good reason of course) and would have made a boring book, it was the way that it brought that early 90's period to life in its own weird specificity that made it such a great read and different from the endless words spilled on How We Got Here.
Describing concern about Trumpism in 2025 as “anxious fantasies” is pretty hard to process. Really hard.
I just can’t anymore with anybody who blathers on about neoliberalism but doesn’t know, or isn’t willing to acknowledge, that most western societies - let alone Russia - contain far more neo-Nazis both walking the streets, wearing uniforms, and in elected positions that Ukraine does. It’s just so willfully, even proudly ignorant. He needs them to be wearing funky black uniforms?
As for neoliberalism in the book - let’s say, sure, it’s a truism that Nazism was inconceivable without the collapse of capitalism in 1929 but…it’s also a much bigger, deeper, and more alarming story than just that. In any case, you establish the political economy context at the outset, and it’s a book for people trying to understand the transformation of the American right, not the corporatization of the American centre. That process has dynamics and internal developments all on its own, and they’re worth learning about.
“Dire straits,” not “staights,” I presume?
“the American political system, and liberalism has had a much more destructive legacy over the past thirty years than Trump, Ross Perot, Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan, and the rest of the alt-right combined”
This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
Good for you for fisking Beck on his selective omissions. They do seem to be in service of a...grievance? Or what? A public dialogue between the two of you would be interesting. I'll bet there's common ground there.
This is deeply disappointing, as I found his book HOMELAND to be a real triumph. It was on par with your book as the highlights of nonfiction in 2024 and I'm stunned to see how bad his take on your work is. https://newrepublic.com/article/185283/world-september-11-made
If you kids don't stop fighting I'm going to stop this car!!!
Sigh. My response to tankies is, start a revolution and I'll stand right there beside you, but until then, your "the enemy of my frenemy is my BFF" stance just makes you sound like all the other morons.
You are right. He is wrong. It's sad there's such pettiness on the Left.