Liberal and corporate pluralism differ over minority legal standing.

Evidence

The MPS construction of neoliberalism was anchored by a variety of mainly European and American roots; encompassed a variety of economic, political, and social schools of thought; and maintained a floating transnational agora for debating solutions to perceived problems and a flexible canopy tailored with an eye to accommodating existing relations of power in academia, politics, and society at large. The unusual structure of the thought collective helps explain why neoliberalism cannot be easily defined on a set of 3 by 5 cards and needs to be understood as a pluralist organism striving to distinguish itself from its three primary foes: laissez-faire classical liberalism, social welfare liberalism, and socialism. Contrary to some parochial interests of some corporate captains (including some present in the Mont Pèlerin Society), neoliberal intellectuals understood this general goal to imply a comprehensive long-term reform effort at retatting the entire fabric of society, not excluding the corporate world. The relationship between the neoliberals and capitalists was not merely that of passive apologists or corporate shills. Neoliberals aimed to develop a thoroughgoing reeducation effort for all parties to alter the tenor and meaning of political life: nothing more, nothing less. Neoliberal intellectuals identified their targets, which, in Fabian tradition, had been described as elite civil society. Their efforts were aimed primarily at winning over intellectuals and opinion leaders of future generations, and their primary tool was redefining the place of knowledge in society, which also became the central theme in their theoretical tradition. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2115 (#complicates, via linked claim)

“Minority rights” are not derivable from general theories of citizenship: status is connected to membership in a specific historical group, not in the abstract class of citizens. In that sense minorities are no different from majorities, also a historically constituted group. The fact that they are usually smaller in number is an accidental feature. Minorities may be numerically much larger than the body of equal citizens from whom they are excluded. In the British empire vast numbers of colonial subjects were ruled by a democratic state of citizens far smaller in number through a variety of constitutional devices—which rendered them legally and ideologically minorities. Because minorities are defined as minorities only in hierarchical structures of power. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 853 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Will Kymlicka suggests a mutually transformative relationship between neoliberalism and the multicultural contexts in which it operates, what he calls “a dense field of social relationships” that condition neoliberalism’s impact. He records how multiculturalism began with the increasing incorporation of minority rights by liberal states in the West, enshrining recognition of difference within a system where state regulation and intervention were recognized tools used to curb the effects of markets’ cyclical flux. With the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s, multiculturalism was initially seen as “unjustified interference in the market in response to ‘special interests,’ ” a sort of extension of the welfare system neoliberals opposed and a misuse of government funds. Yet the survival of multiculturalism in the teeth of this attack has to do less with its own politically compromised nature than with a new attitude among neoliberals, who gradually came to see the market potential of multiculturalism. If interventionist social liberalism could use multiculturalism as a way to better integrate minorities into nations, surely it was possible to use the same identitarian impulses to integrate them into global markets. Thus, according to Kymlicka, the aim became to draw on the unique, saleable characteristics of minorities to create commodities for markets and to extend the reach of such markets using the cultural knowledge minorities could bring to the table. In short, the idea was to create “not a tolerant national citizen who is concerned for the disadvantaged in her own society, but a cosmopolitan market actor who can compete effectively across state boundaries.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 185 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Corporations are reframed as a disenfranchised minority deserving rights — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 336; Pluralism should shift to a state of multiple contending minorities; Liberal pluralism restricts ethnic identity to the private domain. (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism was a pluralist movement opposing three rival liberal traditions, not a corporate tool #complicates (0.79) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2115
• Minority status depends on hierarchy, not on numerical size. #complicates (0.78) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 853
• Neoliberalism survived by commodifying minority difference rather than opposing it #complicates (0.76) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 185
• Majority members contrast with in-groups while minorities assimilate with them #complicates (0.73) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1392