First of all, I don't actually think the argument is even very coherent. So lets break it down as far as I can understand.
As background I would argue leftist in the 1970s created 'neoliberalism', its not and never was a coherent framework of policy proposed or defended by anybody. What it was is simply a framework for leftists to throw literally anybody that doesn't agree with them (outside of leftist anarchists) into that bucket.
The function was to simply group all opposing view points under one umbrella to have a unified attack vector.
Somehow extreme free market people, social democrats and social conservatives are under one umbrella and somehow together have organized a global conspiracy to defend this supposed philosophy.
Swedish policy makers who wanted to reduce government share of GDP from 60% to 50% are just evil Friedman loving market fundamentalists. Neoliberals want to somehow reduce governments but also want military to globally enforce neoliberal hegemony. Of course, that makes total sense. Or it maybe just could be that we are talking about lots and lots of different groups with fundamentally different points of view.
> If the ultimate aim of neoliberal capitalism is to create a world where no one believes any other economic system could really work
This just fundamentally makes no sense, 'neoliberal capitalism' does not have any opinions. There isn't even a clear organization that represent 'neoliberalism'.
So somehow what he is saying here is that all the people who 'believe' in neolibearlism somehow have convinced themselves that their live goal should be 'creating a world where no one believes in alternatives'.
The idea that all those supposed neoliberals somehow have a coherent program of eliminating alternatives is ridiculous.
Politicians don't want to successfully solve problems and get reelected in a land-slide victory, they much rather lose but preserve neoliberal world order. Anybody that believes this is actually delusional.
The reality is solving problems is actually hard. The solution David would like (as far as I can tell) to see aren't a magical pill that will win election no matter how much he thinks they would be. And most of the problems aren't hard because of some neoliberal conspiracy against progress but because they politically hard and even if you can get politics to somewhat line up, actual execution is also very hard. See California High Speed Rail for example.
> but really any radically different technological future at all
Ok, so neoliberalism is somehow preventing technological improvements, if I understand that correctly. I guess one can make that argument, but I would like some actual facts and examples. Because I don't see it.
Countries that are very neoliberal in global comparison have gone in very different direction. The Netherlands, inventor of modern capitalism, is revolutionizing transport thanks to the humble bike.
Switzerland, has fundamentally changed its rail transportation system and massively increased rail modal share. They built the largest tunnel in the world to protect the Alps from to much trucking.
Japan has people travel even more by rail and they are even building a crazy high speed maglev.
If you look at the US, Netherlands, Switzerland and Japan, you see radically different conception of the future of transport. But these countries are all some form of neoliberal.
What amazing transport technology is 'neoliberalism' preventing from taking over? What path of technology is prevented by being 'neoliberal'.
> It cannot mean convincing us that technological change has come to an end—since that would mean capitalism is not really progressive.
And 'it' (again not a thing) wouldn't want to ...
> It means convincing us that technological progress is indeed continuing, that we do live in a world of wonders, but to ensure those wonders largely take the form of modest improvements (the latest iPhone!), rumors of inventions about to happen (“I hear they actually are going to have flying cars pretty soon”), even more complex ways of juggling information and imagery, and even more complex platforms for the filling out of forms.
Again, there is no substance to this. Its in the nature of semiconductors that it can evolve faster then say massive rail infrastructure. To simply dismiss all progress in computing as somehow irrelevant is absurd. Improvements in software, sensors and data is what makes so many other things possible, modern manufacturing, modern research and development wouldn't be the same without it. His casual divisiveness about computation as trivial is simply idiotic.
But its hard to argue with him since he provides no counter argument at any kind, just some vague assertion that (a) neoliberalism is a dominate ideology (b) technological progress is slow.
If we look at most machines, efficiency is rising continuously. New EMU trains and electric lokos are more efficient, new passenger planes are significantly more efficient, rocket technology has improved by a huge margin, electric cars have unprecedented growth, electric bikes are revolutionary. I could go on.
At the same time, as I have demonstrated above, countries are doing revolutionary things even with existing technology. The bike hasn't gotten better, but the Dutch have revolutionized transport anyway.
He needs to demonstrate that technology is failing us to actually make this argument.
> (“I hear they actually are going to have flying cars pretty soon”)
The obsession with flying cars is a US obsession that is not talked about much here in Switzerland where I live. Instead we are in process of talking about Rail 2050 project and how it should look. Rail 2035 project is ongoing.
The US has built itself into a car depended hellhole and the flying car is the only solution a car dependent nation can figure out. I guess for David this is also neoliberals fault, despite many other nations who are also 'neoliberal' according to him not having the same issues.
And of course the obsession with the car is something that actual classical liberals never would have wanted. National highway program is a gigantic ongoing infrastructure project. A massive book of regulation about road building that encodes all the worst design principles in law and makes it impossible to build modern advanced infrastructure. Governments that use state power to take over private property and put highways threw that land. I guess that neoliberalism as well?
I have not read this new book (and wont) but from what is written here it seems to me that he believes:
- Neoliberalism is a coherent philosophy --> It isn't.
- Assuming it 'was' an actual philosophy, its core tenant is the suppression of alternatives --> It wouldn't be. And even if it was, it couldn't successfully do so.
- Neoliberalism defenders accept personal failure to preserve the NWO (Neoliberal World Order) --> They don't.
- Neoliberalism prevents 'real' technological improvement --> It isn't.
- Neoliberalism prevents solving 'real' problems -> It isn't since it isn't a dominant philosophy to begin with.
To some it up, David Graeber is the 'perfect' leftist intellectual. Never clearly define your own own position and clearly state what and how things should be done instead but still strongly imply that it would be utterly amazing. Spread a bunch of vague smart sounding criticism about societies big evils ( capitalism). Throw some hand selected historical examples with health dose of historical revisionist takes. Throw in a strong dose of 'other intellectuals that don't agree with me are capitalist shills'. And there you have a great leftist table top book.
Reading people like him rather then people who actually have real knowlage about the current situation and propose actual real solutions or at least processes that could be put into place to help real solution from existing are what is actually needed to make progress.