Neoliberalism’s double-truth doctrine originated in Hayek’s covert borrowing from Schmitt

Evidence

One can therefore only second the verdict of Christi that, “In truth, Hayek owed much to Schmitt, more than he cared to recognize.” For Hayek and the neoliberals, the Führer was replaced by the figure of the entrepreneur, the embodiment of the will-to-power for the community, who must be permitted to act without being brought to rational account. While he probably believed he was personally defending liberalism from Schmitt’s withering critique, his own political “solution” ended up resembling Schmitt’s “total state” more than he could bring himself to admit. If it had been apparent to his audience that he was effectively advocating an authoritarian reactionary despotism as a replacement for classical liberalism, it would certainly have not gone down smoothly in the West right after World War II. Further, there was no immediate prospect of a strong authority taking over the American university system (by contrast with Germany in the 1930s) and sweeping the stables clean. In an interesting development not anticipated by Schmitt, Hayek and his comrades hit upon the brilliant notion of developing the “double truth” doctrine of neoliberalism—namely, an elite would be tutored to understand the deliciously transgressive Schmittian necessity of repressing democracy, while the masses would be regaled with ripping tales of “rolling back the nanny state” and being set “free to choose”—by convening a closed Leninist organization of counterintellectuals. There would be no waiting around until some charismatic savior magically appeared to deliver the Word of Natural Order down from the Mont to the awestruck literati. Intellectual credibility could not be left to the vagaries of “spontaneous order.” The constellation of double-truth doctrines enumerated in this chapter are the direct consequence of Schmitt’s definition of politics as the logic of the friend/enemy distinction. … 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 one very powerful source of ongoing attractions of neoliberalism, viz., 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, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 239

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Mirowski’s broader ‘thought collective’ argument about Mont Pèlerin, and to the ‘neoliberal thought collective’ theme central to the reader’s stated purpose. — connects to: Neoliberals reframed Schmitt’s critique as a positive blueprint for world order. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 51; Neoliberalism rests on a double truth separating elite doctrine from mass propaganda — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2146; Neoliberalism sustains itself through double-truth pretenses of spontaneous revolt masking top-down organization — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 210 (+11 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The double-truth doctrine — an elite secretly tutored to repress democracy while masses hear freedom rhetoric — is a paradigm-level claim about how a political movement sustains itself, resisting one-sentence summary.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the genealogy of the ‘double truth’ concept from medieval Averroism through Strauss to its appropriation by Hayek’s circle.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism rests on a double truth separating elite doctrine from mass propaganda #expands (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2146
• Neoliberalism operates through a double truth doctrine separating masses from elites. #expands (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2106
• Neoliberalism sustains itself through double-truth pretenses of spontaneous revolt masking top-down organization #expands (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 210
• Hayek’s political solution resembled Schmitt’s total state despite his liberal self-image #expands (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2146
• Early neoliberalism crystallized partly in intellectual dialogue with Carl Schmitt’s anti-liberalism #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 358
• Neoliberalism’s freedom ideology borrowed from fascist critics of liberalism #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 234
• Ordoliberals borrowed Schmitt’s diagnosis of the state but rejected his authoritarian conclusions #complicates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 577
• Neoliberalism’s purported state-skepticism actually mandates a strong state #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 238
• Kantorowicz and Straussians suppressed Schmitt’s emphasis on enmity and hostility #responds-to (0.80) — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 535
• Carl Schmitt’s writings link political theology to total enmity and the total state. #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1814