Core neoliberal intellectuals actively opposed universal suffrage in Southern Africa.

Evidence

Hutt’s opposition to universal suffrage in Southern Africa was shared by some ­others in the neoliberal camp. In 1970 Shenfield invoked “the hideous dangers of totalitarian democracy” as he argued that “the limitation of the franchise in South African circumstances is not only not wrong; it is positively desirable in the interests of all races.” “In South Africa,” he wrote, “ ‘one man one vote’ would mean disaster for all. Similar sentiments came from journalist John A. Davenport, formerly of Fortune and Barron’s, and Milton Friedman. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 578

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on the racial politics of the Mont Pelerin Society, e.g., work by Burgin and Mirowski on neoliberalism’s authoritarian strains. — connects to: Neoliberal activists lobbied the US government against anti-apartheid sanctions. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 580
• SEED: Article angle: ‘The racial foundations of neoliberalism’ — how leading free-market thinkers defended white minority rule in Southern Africa, complicating the clean ‘freedom’ narrative.