Neoliberalism’s appeal lies in an esoteric knowledge reserved for the Elect

Evidence

Christian Arnsperger (2007) has captured the double truth doctrine nicely by insisting that Hayek had denied to others the very thing that gave his own life meaning: the imprimatur to theorize about society as a whole, to personally claim to understand the meaning and purpose of human evolution, and the capacity to impose his vision upon them through a political project verging on totalitarianism. It was, as Arnsperger puts it, a theory to end all theories; not so different from the end of history scenarios so beloved of his epigones. The doctrine of special dispensation for the Elect is a very powerful source of ongoing attraction of neoliberalism for a certain type of person, the feeling of having surrendered to the wisdom of the market by coming to know something most of the nattering crowd can’t possibly glimpse: freedom itself must be as unequally distributed as the riches of the marketplace. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2148

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes the long-running attraction of market-liberal intellectuals as a species of gnostic secret society — dense and worth sitting with.
• XREF: connects to: The neoliberal thought collective may deliberately split its doctrine into exoteric and esoteric versions — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 188; Ordinary citizens are deliberately kept ignorant of the esoteric neoliberal playbook — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 300; Neoliberalism reframed politics as an epistemological question of what can be known — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 54 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal legitimacy is secured by lifestyle knowhow rather than profit itself #expands (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 755
• Neoliberalism’s deliberate epistemic inconsistencies enabled its long-term success #expands (0.72)
• Neoliberalism is a self-consciously evolving thought collective, not a fixed catechism #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 141
• Feigned ignorance of outcomes is structurally required for neoliberal order #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 276
• Neoliberalism operates through systematic contradiction and disavowal of its own practices #expands (0.72) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 81
• Neoliberalism operates from a unified playbook despite surface variation #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 917
• Neoliberalism persists through pervasive cultural imagery, not popular political theory #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 246
• Neoliberalism fused philosophy of science and political economy against totalitarianism #expands (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 53