Austrian School neoliberals grounded civilization itself in submission to the market

Evidence

Faced with the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the wake of World War I, and the rise of social democracy and then fascism, the Austrian School neoliberals were preoccupied with what another resident of Vienna, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, identified in the title of his Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Freud saw his contemporaries’ hostility to civilisation as originating in the revolt of ‘the primitive roots of the personality still unfettered by civilizing influences’ against the discipline and constraint of civilisation. For Mises and his fellow Austrian School members, the restraint most essential to civilisation was submission to the demands of the market. They believed that, in creating a web of mutually beneficial relations, commerce was civilising, and that the most civilised peoples were therefore those with the most extensive division of labour. For Mises, the ‘destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science’. Although Mises criticised the metaphysical ideas of constant progress, he identified a form of compulsion at work in the division of labour. It was always in the interests of the most ‘advanced’ societies to draw others into the web of social cooperation, both in the interests of greater productivity and because such cooperation fostered peace, he argued. … The outbreak of World War I brutally shattered ‘the dream of an ecumenical society’ that Mises had believed was heralded by the ‘opening up of the backward regions of the Near and Far East, of Africa and America’ and the extension of the world market. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 110

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier engagement with civilization-as-market framing; also parallels colonial civilizing-mission material (A Mission to Civilize, A Different Shade of Colonialism) where commerce and civilization rhetoric fused. — connects to: Austrian School neoliberals equated civilisation with submission to market demands. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 110; Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 297; Early neoliberals depicted civilization as indistinguishably moral, racial and economic — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 63 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The explicit racialized line about ‘white peoples’ and ‘backward regions’ invites tracing how far this thinking survived into later neoliberal doctrine.

Broader Connections

• Austrian School neoliberals equated civilisation with submission to market demands. #corroborates (1.00) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 110
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297
• Neoliberal freedom amounts to submission to market sovereignty enforced by price fluctuations #corroborates (0.85)
• Early neoliberals depicted civilization as indistinguishably moral, racial and economic #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 63