The Twilight of Neoliberalism

The usage of the term, really only exploded after the Chile invasion, where neoliberalism was mentioned in a influential paper. So in that context its more about the US government doing interventions to help the US private sector.

From there the term exploded in usage, going from very little usage to being on . Like literally exploded, and 'neoliberalism' became 'the' term. The main reason it was so successful is because it literally identified 'anything that is not far left' as 'neoliberal' and therefore evil. It was 'invented' as a term to lump together the left of center and the right of center with all conservatives and libertarians. Basically it was just by the 'real' leftist to lump together the 'New Left' with 'Libertarians'. No need to have nuance because they are 'neoliberal' and therefore bad.

Of course nobody actually identified as neoliberal, the 'New Left' didn't and neither did conservatives or libertarians. Hayek or Friedman wouldn't call themselves neoliberal. It was just a term used by the left leaning intelligentsia to identify everything bad in the modern world.

The reason this was so important to have this word is because many of the reforms of social democracy in the 70-90s were actually driven by the traditionally left party. For example, in German politics its common to call the SPD traitors to the Left and call them neoliberal.

This is a pretty common and effective tactic. The libertarian version of this is 'statist'. Basically it doesn't matter if you are right-of-center social democrat or communists, its all just a bunch of 'statists'.

> Neoliberalism is a pragmatically free market with progressively minded government influence and a strong bias towards globalism.

Ironically while there basically was not actual 'neoliberal' philosophy, the last 30-40 years of writing about this philosophy essentially created its own counter-movement that is quite different then anything that actually existed in the 70s.