Neoliberal freedom culminates in radical solipsism that denies the economy’s existence
Evidence
What is significant about these brushes with neoliberalism on a granular scale is that one need not be affluent, nor have a college degree or be an autodidact, to become infused with a vision of the self that is besotted with the narcissism of a thoroughly unmoored personality, unhinged aspirations oblivious to layers of social determination. Indeed, the modern conception of agency bequeathed by the Neoliberal Thought Collective has become so intently self-centered that it has a tenuous grasp upon the very existence of something called “the economy,” which assumes the divine attribute of being simultaneously everywhere yet, in practice, nowhere. We are encouraged to believe we are so “free” that no one can really control our lives, and yet the terminus of this freedom is a peculiar sort of solipsism. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 431
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: Could serve as ideological framing for the sacrifice article - the neoliberal self that denies collective determination is the direct antithesis of sacrificial systems that bind individuals to communities.
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that freedom’s endpoint is solipsism - a denial of the economy’s very reality - is a genuinely dense, paradigm-shifting observation about neoliberal agency.
- XREF: connects to: The unknowability of the world economy drove neoliberal federalist reform — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 77; Neoliberals restrict freedom to negative freedom to shield market epistemology from scrutiny — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 169; Neoliberalism denies any harmable self, dissolving all positive freedom — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 308 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Neoliberalism defined itself in opposition to the constructed object of the economy
#expands(0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1919