NEOLIBERAL MAINSTREAM: WHEN AMERICA IS AGAINST

Abstract

Economic reasons and conditions of the attractiveness of neo-liberal doctrine in international relations have been analyzed. It is shown that, as a rule, the principles of free competition and self-regulating markets are advocated by countries that have obvious competitive advantages on the markets. When these advantages disappear, interest in free competition disappears. It is replaced by some types of protectionism (including strict administrative prohibitions).
In this respect, J. Faux’s Report can be considered as an example of lobbying for US economic interests, which contradicts the modern neoliberal mainstream. At the same time, it reflects real international practice, pursuing not the purity of market competition, but the specific national interests of its participants.
These features lead to the fact that the principles of free competition are used in international politics exclusively for the case of markets for commodity/services and capital, while competition in the global labor market remains beyond the brackets of the neoliberal mainstream. There can be no theoretical justification for such discrimination of the labor market, of course, especially given that it is precisely labor that makes the economy an economy, “animating” all other resources involved in its turnover.
The only explanation for this illogicality can be the fact that the neo-liberal doctrine – willingly or unwillingly – focuses only on those markets where the competitive advantages of industrial countries are strong. In the same place, where these advantages are minimal, and the risks for industrial economies are high (in the global labor market), there is no question of free competition – neither in the plane of neoliberal concepts and their practical applications (the Washington Consensus), nor at the level of national policies and charters of international organizations (IMF, World Bank, ILO)