Definisi neoliberalisme, dari buku David Harvey

Harvey, David (2005). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 256 halaman. David Harvey (born 1935) is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). A leading social theorist of international standing, he graduated from University of Cambridge with a PhD in Geography in 1961.

Saya tidak tahu apakah buat para pengritik neoliberalisme buku ini dan definisi yang diberikan termasuk representatif. Tapi agaknya ia termasuk yang paling banyak dirujuk. Menurut Harvey, definisi neoliberalisme adalah:

... at a first instance, a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skill within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade

Peran negara dalam sistem ini adalah:

…to create and preserve and institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets.

Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary.

But beyond these tasks the state should not venture. State interventions in markets (once created) must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions (particularly in democracies) for their own benefit.

Catatan: semua kutipan di atas dalam versi aslinya ada dalam satu paragraf, di halaman 2. Ringkasan dari kritik Harvey atas neoliberalisme ada di halaman 3 (dan yang ia elaborasi di sepanjang buku:

The process of neoliberalization has, however, entailed much ‘creative destruction’, not only of prior institutional frameworks and powers (even challenging traditional forms of state sovereignty) but also divisions of labor, social relations, welfare provisions, technological mixes, ways of life and thought, reproductive activities, attachments to the land and habits of the heart.

In so far as neoliberalism values market exchange as ‘an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide to all human action, and substitution for all previously held ethical beliefs’, it emphasizes the significance of contractual relations in the marketplace.

It holds that the social good will be maximized by maximizing the reach and frequency of market transactions, and it seeks to bring all human action into the domain of the market.

Banyak yang bisa diperdebatkan dari pemaparan ini. Setidaknya, dari situ kita bisa berdebat, apakah problemnya ada di tataran filsafat, praktek, deviasi antara filsafat dan praktek, atau hasil. Pertanyaannya: seberapa banyak yang berangkat dari sebuah rujukan definisi untuk melontarkan kritik? (Pak Kwik, Sri-Edi, Dradjad Wibowo, Ichsan Noorsy, bu Mega, Prabowo, yes, I'm asking you...).