So taking a leaf from Blomgren’s continuum thesis and putting a fully statist/communist economic model to the hard left (as opposed to classical liberalism) and anarcho-capitalism at the hard right (as opposed to economic liberalism), then yes, I think the rightward driven by Castro, Deng and Lenin could be constituted as a move towards neo-liberalsim – though of course neo-liberalism in hypothesis is not even close to the most extreme rightward position given that it accepts some form of government is desirable.

It comes down to whether you think these Commie grandees were philosophically committed to free trade, open markets, privatisation and deregulation as part of an overarching programme.

In Lenin’s case, probably not as while the NEP was primarily about freeing up markets relating to agricultural goods (and bolstering industry to support that objective) it didn’t really touch on privatisation of formerly public assets or concerted deregulation. Also, it’s hard to apply the neo-liberal concept to a programme or individual before the concept existed.

Castro, again probably not, as the rightward drift is piecemeal and seems un-coordinated.

Deng on balance I would say yes – from ’92 onwards anyway.

As to your giant cut and paste from a Mbeki speech, as I noted before the proof of ideology is in actions, not words.

Did someone steal Shearer’s sense of decency recently. I was half expected to agree that the Nats were being high-handed but by putting forward such an unpleasant person it’s clear Labour were just playing petty games. or maybe Shearer really is a big fan of Mallard.

It’s not a great look either way.

I guess you could look at contemporary China or 1960s South Korea as exemplars.

I’m not opposed to this second approach – wouldn’t it be great if we were a country with loads of great, high-paying export focused jobs! But most of National’s corporate welfare measures look like white elephants: roads to nowhere that won’t return the cost of the investment, stadium and convention center boondoggles, etc.

A lot of corporate welfare, or industrial policy if you are in Labour, in China were white elephants too. Take for example the famous ghost city of Chengong in China.

1960s South Korea was and contemporary China is a developing nation. To look at the development success of what was in the terminology of the day a third world nation in South Korea and the still developing nation of China as exemplars for a developed nation like the one we live in is naive. The other problem is if we can really put their economic development success down to industrial policy. What we are to believe is that those governments succeded where so many others failed in state development planning. That if a nation tried the same it could somehow avoid the failures and ending up in a morass of rent seeking. However, examining the empirical link between industrial planning and economic growth shows it is tenuous. For instance, private enterprises are more productive than SOEs in China. The highest living standards and fastest growth in China are in those regions dominated by private business, rather than SOEs. The slowest growth and lowest living standards are in those regions dominated by the state. See: The environment of productive entrepreneurship: evidence from Asia and the pacific rim.

Some regions of China have opened up to private enterprise more than others. Starting in the mid-1980s, more economic freedom and foreign trade were allowed in special economic zones created in selected coastal cities. Most of the more economically free regions in China still tend to be coastal, as shown by the “Marketization Index” for the various regions of China created by Fan, Wang, and Zhang (2001). They rank regions according to how big the government is, what the firm ownership structure is like, how many trade barriers and price controls there are, the development of factor markets, and how secure the legal framework is. Dorn (2005: 16) finds that regions with higher scores on the marketization index are those that have grown the fastest. For example, from 1990-95 Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Fujian grew at an annual rate of more than 20 percent. In these regions, state-owned enterprises account for only a small fraction of output. In contrast, in Heilongjiang, the Nignxia Autonomous Region and Qinghai, where state-owned enterprises are more prevalent, growth was only 7-8 percent per year and this figure is likely overstated because the managers in state owned enterprises are likely to overstate production. Using the overall marketization index, Dorn finds that the GDP per capita in the six coastal provinces that score in the highest quintile on the marketization index is almost three times higher than the provinces in the lowest quintile and is even 70 percent higher than the provinces in the second highest scoring quintile (2005:16).

The evidence from China is overwhelmingly consistent with the notion that improvements in the entrepreneurial environment lead to economic growth. Despite the fact that it is still nominally communist, China has been the biggest pro economic freedom reformer in the region. Most of the growth has occurred in the private sector and those regions that have made greater pro-market reforms.

So by your reckoning, Raul Castro is a neo-liberal, Deng Xiaoping was a neo-liberal and Vladimir Lenin when he enacted the NEP was a neoliberal, Or are they just on the “neo-lib continuum”?

Let me end by quoting from a man you think of as a neo-liberal, Thabo Mbeki, on the subject of neo-liberalism:

In recent times, the values of efficiency and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been thrust upon us. Never mind that the value of thrift, frugality, efficiency and profit were the stuff of Max Weber’s work on the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. We must recognize these values in the context of neo-liberalism which mobilises efficiency in service of maximising profits and CSR as a palliative that temporarily minimises the pain without telling you that the pain is caused in the first instance by neo-liberalism. CSR does not heal the sickness.

We must therefore rescue leadership from neo-liberal afflictions in Africa. We also need to reconceptualise leadership training in Africa and differentiate it from a technocratic notion of management. Leadership must be understood as an all-encompassing act that includes but is not restricted to management.
Management denotes the act of controlling things or people. It is often used in a technocratic sense that refers to particular skills that specific people learn and can use to manage institutions, businesses, etc. Trainings with such a technocratic vision of leadership of course end up minimising leadership to management. In a neo-liberal context in which the market looms large and the profit motive is religiously celebrated, a management heavy notion of leadership can be celebrated. But the consequence of this context is that the ideals of corporate management predominate and skills in management training are geared towards achieving efficiency; but it is efficiency in service of the elite seeking to maximise profit.

Your also baiting somewhat of a red herring; you asserted that my sources who categorise Mbeki as neolib are “paranoid” and “crackpots”. Whether one of them also categorises Mbeki as “intellectual” is not pertinent (unless of course that view is crackpot as well?).

Simply because one is an intellectual (or holds a position at a university) does not mean that they cannot hold mistaken views.

The counterpoint being that simply because you are a blog commenter, your views – as opposed to people who specialise in this field – are accurate?
Forgive me, but I’ll go with the academics on this one.

Lastly, if as you say the pre-apartheid economy (government corporations, closed markets et. al.) was dismantled – and control effectively removed from whites – and replaced with broadly more open markets and privatization, then I take that as a pretty clear indicator of a process of ‘economic liberalization’.

Simply, if an economic programme moves an existing structure rightward – with clear political intent – toward freer trade, more open markets, privatisation and de-regulation then it is by default on the neo-lib continuum.

To infer otherwise – from what I can tell, you seem to think that anything less than total liberalisation is an ‘economic liberalisation fail’ – I think is flawed.

Simply because one is an intellectual (or holds a position at a university) does not mean that they cannot hold mistaken views. Mbeki’s once held views on HIV and the views he still holds on capitalism (views clearly not of a neoliberal) were and are grossly mistaken.

When the ANC came to power in 1994 they inherited from the apartheid regime an indebted state, after years of deficit financed economic stimulus and foreign sanctions. The highly interventionist apartheid government through a highly regulated labour market, protectionist policies, and a network of parastatals, state-owned corporations, controlled much of the economy. So it should come as no surprise that after liberation in many areas the economy of South Africa became much freer as the apartheid economic system was dismantled. But does that make Mbeki or Mandela neoliberals? No. Enacting some economically liberal policies no more makes them neoliberals than does it make Raul Castro or Deng Xiaoping neoliberals.

That you think BBBEE initiatives, including the raft of new regulations in the “Financial Sector Charter”, like the BEE measures before them, which regulate the economy along racial lines, mandating hiring, ownership, procurement, and training based on race, where the public utility Eskom advertises “‘No white male appointments for the rest of the financial year” and where coal has to be procured through “Black Women-owned Suppliers,” first then “Small Black Suppliers,” then “Large Black Suppliers,” then “Black Empowering Suppliers.” (low stockpiles of coal eventually caused blackouts), are part of economic liberalization demonstrates your confusion.

Let me see if I get this straight, QtR.

You, an anonymous blog commenter, posit that all who disagree with your hypothesis are “paranoid”.
I offer up a couple of published academics – one of whom specialises in the field of South African politico-economic analysis – who have a contrary position.
You dismiss their analysis as the work of “crackpots”.

Further, in defence of Mbeki’s record you cast him as an “intellectual” – a guy who as President of the Republic, publicly went against his own Health Department’s initiatives to combat AIDS by holding a position that HIV did not cause AIDS and further, quashed initiatives to supply cheap retroviral drugs – estimated by a report in the NYT to have lead to more than 300,000 preventable deaths.

To me, rather than rhetoric, the measure is pretty straightforward in assessing the degree of Mbeki’s neo-lib bent:
Note – not suggesting the results has been beneficial or otherwise, just attempting to establish where he sits on the continuum philosophically.

Free Trade? – Yes. (i) TDCA signed with the EU in1999 with the final schedules enacted last year (ii) African Free Trade Zone enacted 2008

Open markets? – Yes. Analysis the food markets across Africa, Coulter and Poulton (2001) suggest that reforms been “unambiguously proliberalization”.

Economic liberalisation? – Yes. The South African Financial Sector Charter established in 2004 in order to support BBBEE initiatives.

Privatization? – Sort of. Privatisation actually slowed under Mbeki, but it has been suggested that was as a result of him being somewhat of a control freak as opposed to specific ideological reasons.

Deregulation? Yes. Tons of it under his watch, spanning agriculture to electricity and telco.