Neoliberalism’s defeat of its own aims produced states yanked by capital and popular zeal

Evidence

The aim of dismantling society, choking democracy, and leashing and reprogramming the state was to neutralize a panoply of corrupting forces—powerful market actors, egalitarians and social engineers, and ignorant, myth-mongering masses. However, things went awry in actually existing neoliberalism, as they did in the Marxist revolutions of the last century, which is one reason there is such confusion about what neoliberalism is and whose fault its economic and political disasters are. Democracy has been throttled and demeaned, yes. However, the effect has been the opposite of neoliberal aims. Instead of being insulated from and thus capable of steering the economy, the state is increasingly instrumentalized by big capital—all the big industries, from agriculture and oil to pharmaceuticals and finance, have their hands on the legislative wheels. Instead of being politically pacified, citizenries have become vulnerable to demagogic nationalistic mobilization decrying limited state sovereignty and supranational facilitation of global competition and capital accumulation. And instead of spontaneously ordering and disciplining populations, traditional morality has become a battle screech, often emptied of substance as it is instrumentalized for other ends. As antidemocratic political powers and energies in constitutional democracies have swollen in magnitude and intensity, they have yielded a monstrous form of political life—one yanked by powerful economic interests and popular zeal, one without democratic or even constitutional coordinates, spirit, or accountability, and hence, perversely, one without the limits or limitability sought by the neoliberals. — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 139

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The full inversion analysis — throttled democracy yields capture by capital and demagogic rage simultaneously, each of the three aims (market steering, pacified citizenry, ordered morals) reversing — is the chapter’s dense payoff.
• XREF: Mirrors the Frankfurt School history’s account of how delegitimized liberal forms breed fascistic energies; both books share the irony structure. — connects to: Neoliberalism’s founding intellectuals aimed to immunize markets against fascism — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 24; Neoliberal globalization crashed white working-class fortunes in the Global North — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 324; Universal suffrage in capitalist states inevitably produces social-democratic majorities — Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise…, 102 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism intensifies rather than breaks with capitalist state form #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1748
• Neoliberal deregulation erodes democracy as politics abdicates to market pressure #contradicts (0.80) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 81