Is neoliberalism destroying social democracy?
Autumn Series Event 1
Neoliberalism is all about the market above all else. It promotes winners and losers, rugged individualism, self-interest, the idea that the market is magically self righting, and that 'creative destruction' is a good thing. This has led to an unequal, unhappy, precarious and restless society where trust in government is short and even democracy itself is questioned.
How well do you understand the roots of neoliberalism? Are the tensions between market liberalism and social democracy too great to be sustained? What should we reject, and what should we keep to reshape new forms of social democracy? On the other hand, are neoliberalism and social democracy fundamentally incompatible?
Professor Anna Yeatman is the inaugural Whitlam Institute Professorial Research Fellow. She is a political and social theorist who has published on many issues of social democracy, human rights and public policy. Her recent analysis of neoliberalism The Question for Our Times: Institutional Design for a Free Society, can be found here.
Tim Lyons, Research Fellow at Per Capita, and former Assistant Secretary of the ACTU, knows what happens when neoliberalism affects people’s working lives. He is examining ways to rebuild and maintain the power of organised labour. He has a strong interest in the underpinnings of neoliberalism as it affects policy making.
