Neoliberal anti-planning arguments rest on the dispersal and tacit character of social knowledge.

Evidence

Commending Polanyi as an “exceptionally gifted observer,” Walter Lippmann reflected on the same theme in the opening chapters of his book The Good Society, published in 1937. The complexity of social life appeared to him as an invisible canvas into which our daily interactions were woven. The opacity of the individual psyche veiled a wealth of knowledge which the market artfully and efficiently coordinated. Complete planning, by bringing all the economic processes to the fore, failed to acknowledge the cognitive economy brought forth spontaneously by the division of labor. Once the intrinsic limitations of thought were established, conscious control over social orders became a delusion. “No human mind has ever understood the whole scheme of society,” wrote Lippmann, “at best a mind can understand its own version of this scheme, something much thinner, which bears to reality some such relations as a silhouette to a man.” The opacity of society to our efforts of scientific probing had become so overwhelming that no science of society could form the basis of its conscious control. Consequently, the legitimacy of the market economy relied on entrenching these invisible processes within public opinion. … Taken together, these arguments against the possibility of planning revolved around the elaboration of two key ideas. First, social knowledge is irremediably divided and dispersed. Second, it is a resource that remains largely implicit and tacit. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 71

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distills the epistemological core of the neoliberal case against central planning into two load-bearing ideas.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberal critique deployed a two-pronged argument against planning — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1367; Neoliberalism’s knowledge limits are anti-positivist and extend beyond economics — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 74; Neoliberal force is deployed against local socialities coded as irrational or premodern — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1887 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Early neoliberalism built its social theory on a market-modeled epistemology of dispersed tacit knowledge #corroborates (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 82
• Neoliberal critique deployed a two-pronged argument against planning #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1367
• Neoliberals out-thought the left on how knowledge is organized politically. #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 137
• Neoliberalism’s knowledge limits are anti-positivist and extend beyond economics #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 74
• Neoliberals understood the organizational nature of knowledge better than their critics did #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2117
• Neoliberalism’s social theory is fundamentally epistemological, recoding freedom as instrumental to independent orders #expands (0.80)
• Neoliberals rejected technocratic social engineering as utopian and falsely deterministic #expands (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 84
• Neoliberal force is deployed against local socialities coded as irrational or premodern #qualifies (0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1887
• Neoliberalism’s resilience rests on deliberate epistemic inconsistency across discourse levels. #expands (0.70) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 93
• Neoliberalism’s critique of rival ideologies drew on epistemological conventionalism #expands (0.70) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 62
• Neoliberalism’s deliberate epistemic inconsistencies enabled its long-term success #expands (0.70)