Neoliberal freedom is confined to market-compatible choices within a predetermined margin

Evidence

Neoliberals extol freedom as trumping all other virtues; but the definition of freedom is recoded and heavily edited within their framework. Some members of the neoliberal thought collective (e.g., Friedman) refuse to define it altogether, while others (Hayek) forge links to thesis 2. by motivating it as an epistemic virtue (Hayek 1960, 81). In practice, Freedom is not the realization of any political, human, or cultural telos, but rather is the positing of autonomous self-governed individuals, all coming naturally equipped with a neoclassical version of rationality and motives of ineffable self-interest, striving to improve their lot in life by engaging in market exchange. Education is consequently a consumer good, not a life-transforming experience. Foucault is often strongest on the role of these “technologies of the self,” which involve an elaborate revision in cultural concepts of human freedom and morality. This argument broke out within the MPS in the 1970s, with Irving Kristol accusing Friedman and Hayek of depending on a version of self-realization as the great empty void at the center of their economic doctrines. Freedom can only be “negative” for neoliberals (in the sense of Isaiah Berlin) for one very important reason. Freedom cannot be extended from the use of knowledge in society to the use of knowledge about society, because self-examination concerning why one passively accepts local and incomplete knowledge leads to contemplation of how market signals create some forms of knowledge and squelch others. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2130 (#expands, via linked claim)

One can only concur with Grant Farred’s comment, then, that the “new” society of post-apartheid South Africa is characterized by the pretense of choice. The pretense of choice, its formalistic possibility, concerns the partial parameters facing those for whom the conditions enable choices freely to be made. This pretense of choice perfectly characterizes the neoliberal condition. It is choice within the limits of one’s means and networks, one’s inheritance and education, one’s class and gender, all of which are racially marked if much less deeply and directly determined than under apartheid. While hardly a perfect analogy, it is perhaps revealing to note that one can move through South African society today marked by race to something like the extent citizens were mobile in midtwentieth-century America marked by religion. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1599 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Foucault is clearly intrigued by the “freedom” that liberalism and neoliberalism promise. He knows we can be governed through such freedom, but refuses the Marxist point that what is being named as freedom elides and even discursively inverts crucial powers of domination. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 153 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Neoliberal ‘freedom’ is internally redefined to mean market autonomy, not political liberty — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 166; Within neoliberalism, one’s theory of markets determines one’s definition of freedom — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 167; Neoliberals restrict freedom to negative freedom to shield market epistemology from scrutiny — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 169 (+8 more)

Related

• Within neoliberalism, one’s theory of markets determines one’s definition of freedom (similarity 0.88)
• Neoliberal freedom is recoded as negative liberty to protect market supremacy (similarity 0.87)
• Neoliberal ‘freedom’ is internally redefined to mean market autonomy, not political liberty (similarity 0.87)
• Neoliberal freedom amounts to submission to market sovereignty enforced by price fluctuations (similarity 0.86)
• Neoliberals redefine freedom as something to be limited and detached from democracy (similarity 0.85)
• Neoliberals restrict freedom to negative freedom to shield market epistemology from scrutiny (similarity 0.85)
• Leading neoliberals defended restricting political freedom to preserve economic freedom (similarity 0.84)
• Neoliberalism frames free choice as exercised through secured commercial interaction. (similarity 0.83)
• Neoliberal freedom can be a vehicle for governance and domination (similarity 0.83)
• Neoliberalism framed itself as a defence of individual freedom against all collectivist systems. (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberal power works by interiorizing relations that subjects read as freedom (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism redefines coercion so that no market exchange can ever count as coercive (similarity 0.81)
• Neoliberal choice is a pretense limited by means, networks, and inherited position (similarity 0.81)
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline (similarity 0.81)
• Neoliberal ‘economic rights’ protect capital’s market freedom, not welfare entitlements. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal freedom is recoded as negative liberty to protect market supremacy #expands (0.92) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2130
• Neoliberal choice is a pretense limited by means, networks, and inherited position #corroborates (0.88) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1599
• Neoliberal freedom can be a vehicle for governance and domination #expands (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 153
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline #expands (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297
• Market ideology functions to repress freedom rather than secure it #complicates (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 600