Liberalism was born from market governmentality rather than capital’s dominance

Evidence

Foucault is not saying that in the mid-eighteenth century, capital came to dominate government or that the state became an apparatus of capital. Rather, his point is that the market (tellingly, he never says “capitalism” here) become a new limit on the state even as it began to saturate and construe the state with its distinctive form of reason and that this limit and this form of reason are at the heart of what we call “liberalism.” — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 99

Categorization

• XREF: This is Foucault’s implicit quarrel with Marx — contrasts with David Harvey’s Marxist account of neoliberalism as capitalist response to accumulation crises. — connects to: The liberal individual was destroyed by capital, not by dictators — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 659; Interwar British liberalism re-founded itself on economics rather than politics — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 395; Economic liberalism defines the political, collapsing the distinction between them — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 100 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Worth pursuing: does the market-as-veridiction reading actually hold up, or does it underplay class power in shaping the liberal state?

Broader Connections

• Economic liberalism defines the political, collapsing the distinction between them #expands (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 100
• Neoliberalism is a reprogramming of liberal governmentality, not a reaction to capitalist crisis #exemplifies (0.82) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 83
• Neoliberalism inverted classical liberalism by defending monopoly and corporate power #qualifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 175