Neoliberal social policy was meant to adapt workers to market demands, not redistribute wealth.

Evidence

The form that a distinctly liberal approach to poverty should take had preoccupied neoliberal circles since the 1938 Walter Lippmann Colloquium. There, Rougier had posed the opening question: ‘can economic liberalism meet the social demands of the masses?’ The neoliberals worried that it was the planned economy’s promise to guarantee a ‘vital minimum’ that ‘attracts the masses to the totalitarian states’. In The Good Society, Lippmann himself had argued that what the classical economists dismissed as ‘frictions and disturbances’ in the market order were, in the eyes of their victims, ‘cruel injustices, misery, defeat and frustration’. The success of the competitive market, he argued, required a social policy that would assist people to adapt themselves to the market’s demands. There could be no question of ‘taking from the rich and giving doles to the poor’; rather, social insurance should help people make choices within the margin of freedom the market allowed, by tiding them over while they learnt the skills for new occupations or moved elsewhere in search of work. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 200

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s interest in market ethics debates — the ‘rights versus markets’ tension in social policy. — connects to: The neoliberal state governs for the market, not because of it. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 111; Neoliberals sought minimal welfare that avoided legitimizing the welfare state — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 206; Neoliberalism reduces social policy to a non-exclusion rule protecting the market game. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1062
• SEED: Article angle: how ‘social insurance as market adaptation’ undergirds modern job-training and ‘flexibility’ policy discourse.
• DEEPTHINKING: The genuinely sharp point: welfare for the poor is redefined as a tool of labor-market discipline (retraining, relocation) rather than income support — this is the conceptual origin of workfare.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals sought minimal welfare that avoided legitimizing the welfare state #corroborates (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 206
• The neoliberal state governs for the market, not because of it. #corroborates (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 111
• Neoliberalism reduces social policy to a non-exclusion rule protecting the market game. #qualifies (0.72) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1062