RIP, neoliberalism. Its ghosts live on

Neoliberalism is over.

Around the world, the populist left and right are rejecting it.

As a political term, it’s a dead man walking, even as its market-based policies still shape major economies.

This isn’t a eulogy for free enterprise, which Americans strongly support.

It’s a eulogy for a word that has lost its meaning and stands in the way of a real debate about markets and the role of government.

In the Wall Street Journal , James Lloyd Dusenbury recently argued that our political vocabulary, including communism and capitalism, is obsolete.

Neoliberalism belongs on the list, too.

Start with the obvious: no one agrees what it means.

Even Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy doesn’t offer a single definition.

To its defenders, it’s the belief that markets work better than governments, which have a limited role in regulating capital and distributing wealth.

To its detractors, it’s shorthand for whatever they dislike about global capitalism: billionaires, technocrats, Silicon Valley, immigration, even Pete Buttigieg.

In short, it’s a zombie word.

Second, no one identifies with it.

There are socialists, libertarians, progressives, and conservatives.