Both the Mont Pèlerin Society and its leftist critics obscured what neoliberalism is

Evidence

Indeed, at this late hour, the world is still full of people who believe that neoliberalism doesn’t really exist. I run into them every day. Mitchell Dean nicely captures this attitude: “Neoliberalism, it might be argued, is a rather overblown notion, which has been used, usually by a certain kind of critic, to characterize everything from a particular brand of free-market political philosophy to a wide variety of innovations in public management.” … Part of the blame might be laid at the door of the neoliberals themselves: as I document below, even though the members of Mont Pèlerin Society initially used the term “neoliberal” to refer to themselves in the early 1950s, by the 1960s they had backtracked, trumpeting the ambagious notion that their ideas all could be traced back to Adam Smith, if not before. … But an equal moiety of blame should be dished out to their opponents on the left, who often bandy about attributions of “neoliberalism” as a portmanteau term of abuse when discussing grand phenomena often lumped together under the terminology of “globalization” and “financialization” and “governmentality.” — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 77

Categorization

• XREF: The dual-obscuration mechanism (right erases the term, left flattens it into abuse) parallels the ‘thought collective’ theme and Mirowski’s later chapter on how the crisis strengthened rather than weakened the doctrine. — connects to: The Mont Pèlerin Society provides a stable reference for identifying neoliberalism — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 108; Neoliberalism’s invisibility was manufactured by both its architects and its critics — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 77; Disputes over the word neoliberalism signaled real disagreement over its content — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 294 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Major left-wing intellectuals have often misdefined or conflated neoliberalism #corroborates (0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2097
• Disputes over the word neoliberalism signaled real disagreement over its content #expands (0.70) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 294