Early neoliberals framed welfare dependency as a degrading threat to human dignity

Evidence

Röpke regularly cited the remark of the nineteenth-century French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville, whose 1835 text Democracy in America warned that, in a democracy, individuals would entrust their private needs to an ‘immense tutelary power’ that would reduce them to ‘a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd’. Writing a decade after World War I, Röpke argued this threat had been realised by the welfare state, which ‘takes care of the sort of comfortable stall-feeding of the domesticated masses’. Röpke sought the measure of ‘respect for human personality’ in the masses’ responsibility for their own welfare, remarking that it is hardly progress to treat increasing numbers of people as ‘economic minors’ under the ‘tutelage of the state’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 176

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to human-rights discourse debates: the ‘dignity’ framing here is the same hinge where the UDHR’s economic rights and the MPS’s welfare critique diverge — ties to Todorov and the dignity-vs-security tension in the human rights literature. — connects to: Neoliberal culture recasts welfare-state dependence as a moral failure to embrace risk — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 338; Reagan’s California welfare reform enacted neoliberal family-responsibility policies — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 242; American welfare opponents framed socialized risk as a threat to family morality (+7 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the neoliberal conception of human dignity as self-responsibility, opposed to welfare ‘tutelage’.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals gendered welfare dependency as emasculating female domestic servitude #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 177
• Neoliberals sought minimal welfare that avoided legitimizing the welfare state #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 206