#CamFest Speaker Spotlight

Gary Gerstle, Paul Mellon Director of Research in American History at the University of Cambridge, will be speaking to FT journalist Rana Foroohar about his latest book, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, which was shortlisted for the 2022 FT Business Book of the Year Award and named A Best Book of the Year by the FT.

He will be in conversation with Financial Times journalist Rana Faroohar in an online event on 22 March at 6pm.

Why does your research matter?

The world has been convulsed these past 15 years by a series of shocks: the Great Financial Crash of 2008, Brexit, the election of Trump, the widening appeal of authoritarianism, rising ethnonationalist hatred in a world not long ago committed to open borders and cosmopolitanism, and the return of war to the European continent. We live with a palpable sense that the existing political and world order of the last 30 years is disintegrating. My book offers a history of how that order came to be and why, now, it is coming apart.

How did the book come about and how does it differ from other works on recent US history?

I am an American who has lived and worked in Britain for 10 years. Thus, I experienced Brexit and the election of Trump with equal intensity. Across the 1990s and 2000s, Britain leaving the EU and the US choosing a charlatan for president had seemed unimaginable outside the ranks of fringe political groups. How, then, did Brexit and Trump become not just imaginable but the dominant political forces in their respective societies? My book seeks to provide an answer to that key question.

My answer focused less on cultural polarisation—a thesis favoured by many historians and pundits in the US - than on neoliberalism, a flawed programme of political economy promising growth and prosperity to every nation freeing capitalism from its regulatory ‘shackles’. The ideology of neoliberalism was so popular that it structured the entire political landscape across the 1990s and 2000s - Democratic districts as well as Republican ones in the US, the Labour Party under Blair as well as the Tories in the UK. It became the cornerstone of a political order that suffocated the voices of those for whom neoliberal economics had brought much more hardship than gain, allowing grievances to fester and ultimately to explode.

It's a huge undertaking. How long did it take to write it?

Five years - 2017 to 2022. That may sound like a long time, but it is the fastest I have ever written a book. I was motivated by the urgency of the political moment. The eruptions of 2016 had put the very future of Britain and the United States at risk. I had to figure out what was going on - for myself and others. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, I was assisted in this endeavour by the teaching I was doing in Paper 24 - a Cambridge History course that covers the United States from 1865 to the present. My students shared my sense of urgency regarding the political moment through which we were living. Again and again they raised challenging questions that, in the moment, I could not always answer. But those questions illuminated my path and propelled me on my way. I salute the many students who challenged and inspired me.

What has the feedback been so far? Has anything surprised you about it?

I have been surprised by the large amount of interest the book has generated. It is currently being translated into five languages - Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. I’ve done interviews with journalists, either in print or on podcasts, in at least double that number of countries. Russell Brand read a long excerpt from the book on his weekly Youtube broadcast that received two million hits. The book has also drawn considerable interest from members of the business and finance communities throughout the world - a readership I had not had before. I have also been surprised by the divergence in reactions between old and young readers. Older readers often tell me that the book left them feeling sad, as it compelled them to revisit the many hopes for political transformation that fuelled their youth but that then went awry. Younger readers tell me that they find hope in the book, especially in the message that a progressive political order may yet emerge from this moment of crisis.

What were the main ways neoliberalism was sold to the electorate? 

Some scholars of neoliberalism regard it as the work of elites and their allies aspiring to economic and political power. I pay careful attention to the harsh elements of neoliberalism, but I also stress its popular character. Ronald Reagan convinced many Americans that joining his political crusade would unshackle the economy from stultifying regulation and make them free. He framed that freedom as every American’s birthright; it was the reason, he claimed, the American Revolution had been fought, the reason the American nation had come into being. Neoliberalism carried within it, in other words, the dream of personal emancipation. It was a seductive message.

This message circulated not just among circles of Reagan supporters on the right but also, I argue, among districts of the New Left, a constellation of radical liberation movements that emerged in the 1960s. Many in the ranks of the New Left wanted to free the individual and his or her consciousness from the grip of deadening institutions; privilege disruption over order; and celebrate cosmopolitanism and the unexpected sorts of mixing and hybridities it encouraged. Though these New Leftists did not see themselves as promoting a pro-capitalist ideology, their beliefs, unwittingly, broadened the base of support for the neoliberal order. Neoliberalism never would have won the day without the powerful message of personal freedom that resonated with so many.

What do you think its main legacy will be? Can you sum that up in five words?

That we must rethink the proper relationship of markets to states; that capitalism untethered from a regulatory apparatus operating in the public interest generates more inequality and discord than democracies can tolerate.

Do you have any plans for future works?

I am writing a short book on how a new and progressive political order might emerge from the current crisis. My longer-term project is a history of scoundrels in American history (from Aaron Burr to Donald Trump), and the ways in which they have shaped the American economy and politics across the last 200 years.