Goodbye, Neoliberalism

 

By Frank Filocomo

It's time we jettison neoliberalism, and all its atomizing features. 

And, while we're at it, so long, homo economicus.

In her latest book, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life, Sophia Rosenfeld writes that, unless we move on from the rational-choice model of human behavior, wherein man is nothing more that an autonomous, choice-making machine, we will eventually "fail to recognize the larger ramifications resulting from our many private choices, and we will continue to underproduce public goods and services."

American sociologist Alan Wolfe, a critic of the economically liberal Chicago school of economics, made much the same argument in Whose Keeper?, a book that promotes a Durkheimian kind of civil society, as opposed to more market-based and state-centric solutions to domestic problems.

In 2025, both parties, and the American electorate writ large, oppose the post-Cold War neoliberal paradigm. In many ways, Donald Trump's election in 2016 typified the atrophying ideology's death knell. 

The modern day Left finds its greatest source of energy in Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed "democratic-socialist," and AOC, a young, wide-eyed egalitarian. The Right's superstars, not dissimilarly, are of a post-liberal bent. That is, they decry the bygone era of "zombie-Reaganism." Think: J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, and, increasingly, Marco Rubio. 

Both flanks of the ideological spectrum are, in their own roundabout ways, right: neoliberalism no longer serves American interests. 

What is needed moving forward is a communitarian/pro-worker-style bipartisan framework that will empower families and communities around the country.

The rugged individual is no more.