What is so "neo" about "Neoliberalism"?

[Mechaman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

Seriously, I don't consider much of this stuff "new".  The idea of liberalized markets has been around for hundreds of years.

Someone please explain.

[後援会]

Well, it was originally used as a pejorative term. And the alter-globalization butthurt that led to the coining of such a pejorative term is quite a new thing.

[© tweed]

because we in the West beat this sh**t back for several decades before the most recent counter-revolution.

[opebo]

Well, it was originally used as a pejorative term. And the alter-globalization butthurt that led to the coining of such a pejorative term is quite a new thing.

No you're quite wrong.  As Tweed so astutely points out above, this damaging economic extremism was in fact not de rigueur from the 30s to the 70s.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Nothing, but for some reason neoliberals like to think their ideas are new and revolutionary despite the fact they have been the conventional wisdom throughout the 19th and early 20th.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Actually it is better to ask what isn't "neo" about it and how is it liberal. While the idea of 'free markets' of course has been around for a long time, what wasn't really what 'Classical Liberalism' was about (at least not on its own) and in many ways, neither is neoliberalism. The term is an attempt to put a historical gloss on ideas which were many ways quite new (or rather, were new ideas which fitted in quite nicely with the older objectives of Euro-American political conservatives).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We have a winner, I think.