What Is A Neo-Liberal?

FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism refers to a political-economic philosophy that has had major implications for government policies beginning in the 1970s – and increasingly prominent since 1980 – that de-emphasizes or rejects government intervention in the economy , focusing instead on structured free-market methods, and fewer restrictions on business operations and that the most important class of rights to expand are those of property enforcement, and of opening nations to entry by multinational corporations. In a broader sense it is used to describe the movement towards using the market to achieve a wide range of social ends previously filled by government.

It opposes protectionism, social democracy and socialism. It is often at odds with fair trade and other movements that argue that labor rights and social justice should have a greater priority in international relations and economics.

Many liberals consider that "neoliberalism" is just a straw man, an artificial concept created to cover several contradictory views from liberalism to conservatism, in order to form a common opposition of many socialist, nationalist and other groups that have very different ideologies. While liberalism is a philosophy defined by liberals, "neoliberalism" is an ideology defined and used by "its" antagonists, while one can hardly find people who speak of themselves as "neoliberals". Moreover, most texts on neoliberalism, including most of this article, is written by the antagonists or by people whose knowledge on "neoliberalism" is based by texts written by the antagonists. Some, not all, of the people mentioned in this article consider themselves as liberals, hardly any as "neoliberals".