Stephen Metcalf (writer)

Stephen Metcalf (born 1964) is a critic-at-large and columnist at Slate magazine. He is also the host of the magazine's weekly cultural podcast the Culture Gabfest.

• In short, "neoliberalism" is not simply a name for pro-market policies, or for the compromises with finance capitalism made by failing social democratic parties. It is a name for a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity.
  • "Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world", The Guardian (18 August 2017).

• 1984 is Orwell saying goodbye to himself, and an improbably convincing portrait of the erasure of the autonomous individual.
  • "What Orwell Really Feared", The Atlantic (April 5, 2024)

• Metcalf's Slate archive
• Metcalf in New York magazine
• Metcalf's writing for The Nation
• Metcalf in The New Yorker