The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era

"By contrast with the other books we’ve spoken about so far, this is a big ideas book. Gary Gerstle is an American historian based in the UK. What he’s analyzed here is what went wrong with the whole concept of free market capitalism, which he describes as neoliberalism. There’s a whole debate about the word liberal—which if you’re in the US on the right has become synonymous with a dubious social democracy—so neoliberal is the word that he applies to this, as do others. What’s interesting is that rather than confining it to Reagan, Milton Friedman, and other people you might naturally think of, he points out how neoliberalism became embedded across the political spectrum. Via Bill Clinton, it came to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the UK. It has left us with the consequences that we’re now facing—inequality, volatility and a certain kind of disdain for the rules-based order. This was all on the back of a legitimate desire to exploit free trade, free markets, and globalization. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It’s a big ideas book that’s very compelling in the way he draws together all the elements. When I was Tweeting about the shortlist, I accidentally called the book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Empire , which somebody on Twitter pointed out was actually quite an appropriate mistake to make. Gerstle is essentially saying that the neoliberal order has become the ruling principle of free market democracies, both for good and—he thinks—mainly for ill. I was listening to an interview Gerstle did recently, and he was asked about that. He believes that in some sense Trump was a consequence of the backlash against neoliberalism and the inequality it has spawned. The question, I suppose, is what comes next? Is there a way in which the good parts of neoliberalism might be redeemed in some way by successors to Trump and others? His view, at least in this interview and to some degree in the book, is that there is a proper liberal response—perhaps along the lines of FDR and the New Deal—to some of the issues that we’re facing. Clearly, that requires a lot of political consensus and certainly the US is not necessarily going to pursue that route yet. Yes, exactly. Hence the volatility. One could even say that what we’re experiencing here in the UK right now is a consequence of saying, ‘Let’s just pull the levers here and go hell for leather for whatever we can do, irrespective of the market.’"