Neoliberal market freedom required state violence to enforce submission to the market

Evidence

Long before Friedman, Mises described the market order as the real basis of all the declarations of rights and charters of liberties, which remained a ‘dead letter’ without economic freedom. The freedom of a market society, as we have seen, operated within strict margins; there is no freedom to challenge the market as the key allocator of goods and social positions, to ameliorate the inequalities it produces, or to establish ends collectively. Rather, individual freedom is subject to the ‘harsh social pressure’ of the sovereign market, and the pursuit of individual values through consumption is limited by personal finances. … Mises spelled out the necessary relation between market freedom and political repression most clearly: there is ‘in the operation of the market no compulsion or coercion’, he argued. Therefore, the state ‘employs its power to beat people into submission solely for the prevention of actions destructive to the preservation and the smooth operation of the market economy’. The neoliberals knew all too well that their vision of freedom was indistinguishable from the violence that secured submission to the market. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 328

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Mises’ internal contradiction: market coercion is denied while state violence is justified as merely protective.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s knowledge of negative-liberty criticisms of liberalism (Berlin, Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty) where state coercion is legitimated to protect markets. — connects to: Launching a new market contract requires coercive mobilization of its own members. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 774; Neoliberal freedom amounts to submission to market sovereignty enforced by price fluctuations; Neoliberal human rights legitimize state violence to protect global markets. (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism resorts to violent enforcement when local socialities reject its order #corroborates (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1887
• Neoliberal order theorists saw authoritarian state coercion as protecting the market’s spontaneous order #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 364
• The free market requires constant state interventionism to be established and maintained #corroborates (0.88) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2137
• Market ideology functions to repress freedom rather than secure it #responds-to (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 600