Opening Remarks

Co-organizers Noam Maggor (Queen Mary University of London) and Gary Gerstle (University of Cambridge) introduce the Beyond Neoliberalism Conference. 

https://beyond-neoliberalism.org/

Transcript

Rebekah Maggor 0:04

Welcome to Beyond Neoliberalism, the conference playlist. The following are the organizer's opening remarks.

Noam Maggor 0:14

Great pleasure, for me and for Gary to welcome everyone, to Cambridge, for beyond Neoliberalism Pathways to a new economy and politics. I'm very honored and honestly, it's, it's kind of magical to finally be here. so many, people that I admire whose work I admire, uh, and respect. so many old and new friends. Twitter friends, social media friends. so it's a real, thrill. Gary and I started to plan this event almost two years ago. Uh, Gary approached me. We had done a panel, as part of a history conference on neoliberalism in Paris, uh, with uh, Felicia Wong, who's should be here somewhere. Yes. And uh, uh, and we started to talk about the concept of discipline and capital. And Gary said that he would like to organize a conference on a large scale, to invite, uh, the smartest and most, uh, interesting minds around to weigh in. And he asked me, how would you like to, to join me in this endeavor? Uh, and I said, are you kidding me? and here, we are, uh, the path was not always smooth. Uh, last fall after we started planning, I had coffee with, uh, Todd Tucker, who's here. Um, and I told him, we're planning a major conference, major event on post neoliberalism. What should we, what should we do? What, how we should we frame the conversation? And he said, oh, May, 2025, we're gonna be a few months after the election. We're gonna be a few months into the second term. Uh, he didn't say which, whose second term this would be. Uh, but in any case, I actually came out of that. Uh, he said, okay, this will be the opportunity to really consolidate and cohere the accomplishments of the first term. Um, and obviously I wanted to be very optimistic about the election. Uh, but in terms of this particular gathering, uh, I was left a little bit demoralized, because I thought, okay, so would this gathering even be necessary if we are, you know, well on our way to consolidate the post neoliberal. Uh, order at that point. wouldn't we already know everything that we need to know? Uh, wouldn't this just be a waste of everyone's, time? So well, uh, unfortunately for the world, uh, but fortunately for me and Gary, and for all of us, uh, we find ourselves at a moment when this gathering, I would say, could not be more urgent and relevant. We are here not as, campaign strategists. Uh, of course, uh, our job is different. We're here to dig deeper. Uh, get at the fundamentals and unti ultimately bring the best thinking, to what, we hope will be, uh, self-critical, but nevertheless, forward looking conversation over the next couple of days, uh, we're looking to outline a strategic path, or to use Gary's terms, to a new, political and economic, order or to use, Rona Ru's terms. Uh, we are here to figure out what progressives want to be when we grow up. one of the most damaging effects I would say of neoliberalism, uh, has been the impoverishment of our economic thinking. when I think about where the conversation about economic policy was not too many years ago. are markets best left alone or does government need to step in occasionally? sure the Chinese can imitate and steal technology, but can they innovate a lot of that, that kind of thinking? Uh, I think we've really come a very long way. the speakers at this conference have really been at the forefront of reversing. This flattening. There's been, I would say, a real renaissance, uh, in the study of political economy. thanks to many, of you. Ideas about trade central banking regulation, antitrust, welfare labor, the environment. A lot of those ideas that just a few years ago resided on the margins, are again informed, uh, are now part of the mainstream conversation. economic thinking is, again, informed by history, sociology, law, politics, and geopolitics. and so we come together as a community. we deliberately avoided, uh, anointing one person as duck keynote for this conference. Uh, we really wanted the panels to facilitate exchange. in discussion of the big ideas, we did our best to include a range of perspectives. Speakers working on many regions in the world economy, bringing different disciplinary approaches, engaging with a broad range of subjects and coming from different parts of the world as well. Although, of course, uh, not hardly enough. Across panels, we've identified three main questions to frame our discussions. First, as mentioned, we've decided to call a spade a spade and identify what we think is basically the core political economic challenge of our age, namely disciplining capital, the creation of state capacity, the discipline, capital, and shape markets for publicly desirable outcomes, development, equality, innovation. Sustainability, how could this capacity be generated, designed and sustained? Second, we envision this to be not merely an ideological or technocratic challenge, how to win the war of ideas, how to calibrate the details of policy. Of course, those are very important, but this is first and foremost a political challenge. What programs, strategies, or coalitions are necessary to build a resilient democratic foundation for a progressive post neoliberal world? I. And finally, how could this take off internationally and in an, in a highly unequal world? Uh, we wanted to elevate our conversations above the national boxes, bring them up to a global and comparative perspective to extend beyond, the North Atlantic, to include East Asia and the global south. More than ever. It looks like the us, the uk, the eu, have a lot to learn from other regions in the world. what, could some of these lessons be, the global economy will also remain with us? Could it be restructured in ways that are egalitarian across and within, society? That's it for me. I'm gonna turn it over, to my co-conspirator.

Gary Gerstle 7:28

Uh, thank you Noam. Um, Gary Gerstel. I spent the last 10 years as a Mellon professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. That has now ended and I've returned to the other Cambridge, new Cambridge and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Uh, but we're thrilled to welcome you to the University of Cambridge. We believe we have assembled. The dream team of experts to discuss some of the most important issues and themes that confront the economy and politics today and going forward all over the world. Almost everyone who we invited said yes. Uh, the delegate slots got snapped up very quickly. We've had a long waiting list. Uh, it's a sign of the interest in and the urgency. Regarding the issues we are here to discuss, we're still living in an interregnum between political orders if you accept that framework, which you don't have to do. Uh, but if when we're in an in interregnum, it's characterized by uncertainty, volatility, uh, different initiatives, uh, coming and going. Uh, there are powerful forces at work in the global economy in domestic nations. We can see the outline of different political orders emerging. We can see the outlines of a progressive political order of the sort that the Biden administration was putting, trying to put forward. And we can see clearly a MAGA political order taking shape day by day before our eyes, but nothing yet is given. Nothing yet is certain, and that makes this gathering all the more important. I wanna recognize those who have made this conference possible. First, I wanna celebrate our big conference team of three, Noah Mag Gore, myself, and Hannah Jackson as Noah noted. We've been working on this for two years, and anyone who's organized the conference. Knows it's a hell of a lot of work. And every time I do one, I swear I'll never do one again. And people have been hearing me say that I'll never do one again, but that's probably not true. Uh, h uh, Hannah came on in December and she's been a godsend. She's been in touch with many of you delegates. Uh, we have brought people from all over the world. This has been a very complex. Matter to bring off logistically. So thank you. Thank you, Hannah. And, um, we're still all talking to each other and we still all like each other. Even after the million zoom calls between Paris, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Cambridge uk none of this would've happened. But for the Hewlett Foundation, and I first want to give a shout out to Larry Kramer, the former head of the Hewlett Foundation. Who issued a manifesto calling for a paradigm shift, a post neoliberal order approximately 10 years ago, and he and the Hela Foundation have poured a lot of funds into creating a brains trust that at some point would be able to design. This post neoliberal political order. Quite a number of people in the room have been beneficiaries of the Hewlett investment, uh, and we would not be here today, but for their support, I want to thank Brian Kettering, the interim Director of the Economy and Society Initiative, with whom Nolan and I began discussions with about doing a conference, uh, and he was the interim director because the permanent director. Jennifer Harris went to work for Jake Sullivan at the National Security Council. Jen Harris has now returned to the Economy and Society Initiative, and uh, Jen was the one who shepherded our grant in this project through its final approvals, Jen is here today. She will chair the first session, and you'll hear her directly address us at lunchtime tomorrow about the Hewlett ambitions for a different world. I want to thank the Mueller Center where we are today. Uh, Michelle Thomas, Kelly Laurenson, and the rest of their team. It's a marvelous, wonderful facility. Cambridge has many wonders to it, but trying to arrange this through the 31 colleges of Cambridge and coordinating among them, uh, would, um, cause me endless toss, spare air. We have about 10 partners who have been supporting us, who are listed at the end of the website. Uh, it's too long to mention them all now, but take a look at the website. Uh, we ex we wanna express our gratitude to them, uh, for participating in this venture and recognizing that as we do that we are part of a growing and important ecosystem and we're learning from each other. There are all kinds of events of this sort going on, and it's very important that we share our insights. And build one to another. A few logistical matters. All events will occur here except for the public facing plenary at 6:00 PM today, which will occur in the Palmerston room of St. John's College in central Cambridge. And we are gonna fer you by two coaches over there, um, later this afternoon. Except for those of you who might want to enjoy a beautiful walk on this beautiful spring day. In Cambridge, everyone here now, uh, participants and delegates is welcome to join us not only for that public facing reception, but for the wine reception and Cannae dinner at the Varsity Hotel, which is gonna happen afterwards, which has extraordinary views of Cambridge and is being funded by the John w Cluey Center of the Library of Congress. More on, on that at the Public facing event later today. A few final thoughts. Uh. The future is not yet set. The course is not entirely clear. We are here to learn to push each other, to disagree, to argue, to advance our thinking on a variety of fronts. Noam and I have already been arguing across a pessimism, optimism spectrum, which has emerged already in the last 24 or 36 hours. There are different strategies, there are different dispositions. Uh, this is a place to air them, to discuss them, to take advantage of all the expertise and talent in the world, uh, to really advance our abilities and our thinking and our programs as much as we possibly can. With that in mind, we're asking the chairs of every session to enforce limits of 12 to 15 minutes on initial presentations by speakers. They have our authority to cut people off sharply at the 15. Minute mark. And the reason for doing that is so we can have a really robust opportunity for conversations first among the panel members themselves and then between the panel members. And the audience. We are filming the entire conference. We will take clips and post them on the website, probably starting today so that we expand the territorial boundaries of this conference beyond this specific location. But we are also intent on posting this material over a month or two. Or three after the conference ends so that we can solve a dilemma that faces every conference, no matter how successful, which is that no matter how extraordinary it might be, poof, after three or five days it's gone. What do you do next? And we're hoping experimentally to use our website into which we've invested a lot of resources to carry on the conversation, uh, with groups who are here and groups who are not here. Uh, so that we can enrich the ecosphere of which we are part. Uh, as much, uh, much as possible. Some of you may be na by our, a videographer or two for some impromptu comments. And our larger goal is to get as many voices into this media experiment as we possibly can. If you don't wanna be interviewed, um, and if you're worried about getting back into the United States, for example, and something being broadcast. Just let the videographer know. We will respect your wishes Along those lines, finally, there are quite a number of journalists here. We're delighted you are here. Of course, we would be thrilled if you wrote about the conference, but more importantly, that's up to you and your editors. More importantly, we hope that you will pick up on some of the ideas discussed here. Run with them, broadcast them, explore them, develop them, bring them to a larger audience, which is an essential part of the project of in which we are engaged and do your own nabbing. The amount of expertise and talent and knowledge in this room among the people we have assembled and among the delegates who who are here is just extraordinary. And it is our fondest wish for this conference that we. Draw every ounce of intelligence thinking possible out of you in the next two and a half days. We really are thrilled that you are here and are really excited for these discussions to begin. And with that, let me turn things over to Jen Harris, who's got chair, the first panel, and let me ask the people on the first panel to come up and take your seats.