Cold War security needs made the welfare state an intolerable impertinence for neoliberals

Evidence

Davenport clarified the way in which an important link between neoliberal and security concerns remained after all. Unlike Bauer’s works, Davenport’s left no doubt about which international policy the United States should develop. If there had been no communist menace requiring costly military efforts, he wrote, “it might well have been possible to be a little more indulgent toward the Welfare State and some of its experiments… . I think, however, that in the grim situation in which we stand we can go much further. We can say, ‘The Welfare State is not only wrong in principle. It is, in this setting of the need to maintain a firm military position, a complete impertinence’” (MPS Quarterly 1, 1958, 8). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1333

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the third article’s theme of ideology deployed to justify extreme positions — here the anti-welfare-state stance is hardened by claiming the Cold War imperative makes it an ‘impertinence,’ a rhetorically escalated form of ideological rejection.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s earlier montage on how the Cold War shaped and justified domestic economic policy choices, tying foreign threat to domestic welfare-state critique. — connects to: Neoliberals framed welfare states as existential threats to individual rights and civilisation; Neoliberals sought minimal welfare that avoided legitimizing the welfare state — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 206; Volker Fund pushed neoliberal reformulation to serve corporate Cold War interests — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 762 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal states redefined their mandate from welfare to securitization and control #expands (0.90)
• Neoliberalism funds repressive state functions at welfare’s expense #expands (0.88)
• Neoliberal culture recasts welfare-state dependence as a moral failure to embrace risk #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 338