Wendy Brown: Neoliberalism, Pandemic, and the Crisis of Democratic Freedom

This podcast episode features Wendy Brown, a distinguished political theorist, who dissects the multifaceted crises exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that the pandemic did not create new problems but rather amplified and laid bare the systemic failures already deeply embedded in neoliberal societies, particularly in the United States. She meticulously outlines the breakdown of the U.S. healthcare system, political corruption, the erosion of the social contract, extreme economic inequality, the defunding of public education, and a politicized media landscape. Brown contrasts the U.S. response with that of New Zealand, highlighting the critical role of social care, public health, trust, and equality in navigating a global crisis effectively.

The discussion delves into the philosophical underpinnings of these societal breakdowns, particularly the concept of 'freedom.' Brown critiques the prevailing libertarian notion of freedom as an individual right to do whatever one wants, detached from social responsibility and the common good. Drawing on thinkers like Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche, she explores the 'disenchantment' and 'desacralization' of the world by science and reason, leading to a nihilistic vacuum that hyper-capitalism exploits. This, she argues, fuels a 'barbaric freedom' that actively works against democratic principles and the very idea of society, as famously articulated by Margaret Thatcher.

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the origins of nihilism, resentment, and disenchantment, linking them to the long-term effects of scientific rationalization and the more recent impact of neoliberal globalization. Brown explains how the erosion of traditional socioeconomic security for working and middle-class white men has contributed to a 'white male rage,' forming a base for right-wing and authoritarian populist movements. She also critiques the 'scientism' prevalent in social sciences, where complex human phenomena are reductively treated like natural science subjects, leading to a lack of humility and preparedness for societal eruptions.

Finally, the episode explores the societal yearning for order amidst radical uncertainty, which can be cynically exploited by demagogues. However, Brown also identifies a powerful counter-current: a younger, millennial generation that rejects the nostalgia for an imagined past and instead yearns for a humane, sustainable, non-racist, and equitable 'another world is possible.' The recent Black Lives Matter protests, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, are presented as a hopeful eruption of political energy and broad-based participation, signaling a collective awakening to the unsustainability and contradictions of the current order.

the challenges are of course ramified when everything that organizes and provisions of society is already weakened or broken.

the cares act represented this great moment where everybody got fifteen hundred dollar checks to tide us over during a time of crisis but what we really need to pay attention to in the cares act is that it was a huge bailout for giant industries and a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy while throwing these little one-time checks that's many finally

instead of freedom being that which we share in order to govern ourselves... we have fallen into the most extreme version of freedom as a right essentially to social assault to do what you want and to attack or tear at society

it's a form of you could call it barbaric freedom you could call it market freedom you could call it libertarian freedom but it's a form of freedom that has been so radically detached from the social and the political task of living life together and deciding together how we shall live what we shall value that it that it it essentially becomes freedom against democracy it becomes freedom against the public good and that's where we are

there is no such thing as society as margaret thatcher famously said

what science does is disenchant the world it explains everything rather than just experiencing the world as an enchanted mystery

you take that long process of disenchantment desacralization and the nihilism that goes with it the sense of there's no meaning there's no rules there's there's no authority and you mix it with an economic form that uh unleashes all of our libidinal desires without regulation just says go for it have it take it do it — and you get a pretty disintegrated society

science which is a humble investigation and scientism which is a ritual of pretending to know it's a form of what you might call sophisticated form of demagoguery

it's hard to bear the fact that we do not have scientific truths to live by in society politics and economics that instead we have to craft forms of organization and forms of of and institutions and arrangements um that we're always experimenting with

we also see a millennial generation that finds this world not only unbearable but unsustainable knows that it has no place in the future and that that ridiculous nostalgia for the past is just that a ridiculous nostalgia for a past that was never bright and beautiful for most and um also that had nothing to do with a sustainable economy society or planet

watching that poor man on the video with a knee in his neck for nine minutes it was it was horrid but it was it was our society