Conflating globalized capitalism with neoliberalism collapses distinct hegemonic constellations

Evidence

We can sympathize with an impatience for those who use the term “neoliberalism” as a blanket swearword for everything they despise, or a brainless synonym for modern capitalism. The problem of conflating globalized capitalism and neoliberalism after the era of social liberalism amounts to the overspecification problem, and refrains from considering (neoliberal) hegemonic constellations (Plehwe, Walpen, and Neunhöffer 2006). Of course there is no such thing as “pure markets” and therefore “always embedded neoliberalism” (Cahill 2014), but this could be considered a problem with Karl Polanyi’s understanding of markets and classical liberal market ideology, not ours—and as a matter of fact, not of the Mont Pèlerin Society members, either. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 25

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines precise usage: ‘neoliberalism’ should not be conflated with globalized capitalism; the category of ‘hegemonic constellations’ offers sharper analysis.
• XREF: Connects to the contested-meaning debates in later chapters of this book on how ‘neoliberalism’ got defined post-2008. — connects to: Foucault’s account of neoliberalism missed its transnational and postnational dimensions — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 144; Late-20th-century globalization was Americanization plus the fallout of Third World state collapse — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 112; Neoliberalism has ended as a hegemonic project despite institutional persistence — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1840