Neoliberal belief was partly driven by the libidinal pleasure of crushing the working class

Evidence

The great mystery of neoliberalism is to what extent its advocates “really” believed it. Was it ever anything more than a ruse to restore ruling-class power and wealth? Of course, the answer to this partly depends on which advocates we are talking about. It’s possible that certain key proselytisers for neoliberalism never believed it, and only opportunistically fixed upon it as a way of destroying the “red bases” of working-class power. With others, it’s more likely that a belief was aided by the desire to believe. This desire was motivated by economic interest, of course, but also by certain libidinal satisfactions: the pleasures of seeing the working class defeated, of seeing the poor and vulnerable stripped of social security. For a certain English petit-bourgeois sensibility, Thatcherism was the equivalent of a riot: a jubilee of destruction, a temporary autonomous zone for a reactionary desire that feeds off suffering and misery. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1802

Categorization

• XREF: Extends and finds desire at the root of the earlier claim that the self-destructive and suicidal are inherently Nazi (ch26), and the ruling-class call for unity (ch91). — connects to: Neoliberalism succeeded by seducing workers out of class identification. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1649; Neoliberal conviction was fueled partly by sadistic class resentments — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1802; Neoliberalism’s success depended on 1980s narrative and libidinal engineering technologies — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1878
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that Thatcherism was jouissance, a reactionary autonomous zone feeding off suffering, reframes ideology from interest to libidinal satisfaction.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism succeeded by seducing workers out of class identification. #qualifies (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1649