Major left-wing intellectuals have often misdefined or conflated neoliberalism

Evidence

Neoliberalism turns out to be anything but an easily and clearly defined contemporary political philosophy once we venture beyond popular representations, such as market radicalism, neoclassical economics, monetarism, or the journalistic mania for attributing coherent thought systems to politicians: Thatcherism, Reaganism, and Howardism, to name but a few. When the Zapatista movement called for global resistance against the NAFTA project in 1994 and sparked resistance to corporate globalization in general, neoliberalism was widely identified with U.S. superpower, unilateralism, and sometimes a forbidding borderless “global empire” (Hardt and Negri 2000). The puckish Slavoj Zizek has glossed neoliberalism as the doctrine, “You are free to do anything as long as it involves shopping.” Leading intellectuals of the left thus have frequently, if unwittingly, contributed to the great confusion surrounding neoliberalism. More recently, David Harvey (2005) has simply conflated neoliberalism with neoclassical economics. Earlier, Pierre Bourdieu (1998) and his followers popularized the notion of “pensée unique” or “strong discourse,” where neoliberalism amounts to nothing more than a bland version of economism. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2097

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing library on critical theory and Marxism (Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique) and to David Harvey’s conflation charge. — connects to: Both the Mont Pèlerin Society and its leftist critics obscured what neoliberalism is — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 77; Prominent French intellectuals rejected the MPS’s specific brand of liberalism — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 292; Neoliberalism lacks a stable meaning or historically specific constituency — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 17 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Catalogues the contested definitions of neoliberalism circulating on the left, useful for parsing the term’s usage.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism lacks a stable meaning or historically specific constituency #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 17
• Neoliberalism is internally plural yet not formless #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 10