Neoliberalism’s activist stance contradicts its own claim that markets naturally triumph

Evidence

As the house historian of the MPS reports, Milton Friedman joked in a letter to Hayek, “Our faith requires that we are skeptical of the efficacy, at least in the short run, of organized efforts to promulgate [MPS doctrines].” The problem, quite clearly, was if the neoliberal portrait of market order was so overwhelmingly superior, then why hadn’t it just naturally come to dominate all other economic forms? Why hadn’t it already summoned the spirit of liberalism that would guarantee it to flourish? Who really needed the shock troops of the Neoliberal Thought Collective? Classical liberals had adopted the consistent position either that it already had or would happen inexorably, so just sit back and enjoy the inexorable trend of history. Neoliberals had rejected all that in favor of an activist stance, but then had to face up to the vexatious intellectual lack of consilience between their sneers at the impudence of the will to planning and their own presumption of the utter nobility of their own will to power. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 202

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader ‘thought collective’ theme and Mirowski’s argument that neoliberalism is a self-consciously engineered project, not a natural emergent order. — connects to: Market advocacy can rest on despair about alternatives rather than genuine conviction — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 97; Neoliberals disagree sharply among themselves about what a market is — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 151; Neoliberals preach market supremacy while exempting themselves from its rule — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 281 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals pursued an engineered order rather than expecting free markets to emerge naturally #corroborates (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1907
• Neoliberalism operates through systematic contradiction and disavowal of its own practices #corroborates (0.90) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 81
• Neoliberals preach market supremacy while exempting themselves from its rule #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 281