"Neoliberalism" may be one of the few political labels nobody actually claims. In a Fortune commentary published October 16, writer Jason Thurlkill argues the term has become politically useless even as the market-oriented policies it once described keep shaping economies around the world. Unlike "socialist" or "libertarian," no meaningful bloc of voters or policymakers describes itself as neoliberal, and Thurlkill notes that philosophers themselves have never settled on a shared definition of what the word means.
That vacuum, the argument goes, has turned neoliberalism into a catch-all insult that different political camps use to mean entirely different things. On the left, Thurlkill writes, it gets attached to high prices, billionaire wealth, and corporate concentration. On the right, the same word gets pinned to trade deals, immigrant labor, and unelected technocrats. A seven-syllable term meant to describe a specific economic philosophy has effectively become shorthand for whatever a speaker already dislikes about the economy.
What the polling actually shows
Thurlkill points to Gallup data to argue that Americans' real views are more specific, and more internally consistent, than the neoliberalism debate suggests. Seventy-seven percent view free enterprise favorably, and 55% view capitalism favorably — a gap the piece reads as evidence that people are distinguishing between the idea of markets and the word "capitalism" itself. Sixty-five percent of Democrats, meanwhile, say they view both socialism and free enterprise positively, a combination that would look contradictory if those labels mapped cleanly onto a left-right neoliberalism fight. Approval numbers for business tell a similar story: small business draws a 95% favorable rating, while big business draws only 35%, suggesting the real public anger is aimed at concentration and scale rather than markets as such.