Neoliberalism’s durability rests on fusing the economic with the cultural

Evidence

The core insight of the Neoliberal Thought Collective was that the cultural and the economic should not be treated as substitutes, much less discrete spheres of experience, but rather, as integrated into a virtuous whole: surrender your selfish arrogance and humbly prostrate yourself before the Wisdom of the Universe, as nurtured and conveyed by the market. “Be all you can be” had jettisoned the injunction to “know yourself” and replaced it with “Start your own business!” even if it only meant homeschooling your children. As religion took on more of the trappings of just-in-time provision of entertainment services, and “values” assumed the mix-and-match character of Do It Yourself bricolage, the materiality of rock-solid “interests” melted into thin air. After all, neoliberals deny that you are the unimpeachable judge of your own welfare, however much they worship at the altar of Freedom. The more the line between “The Sphere Previously Known as the Economic” and culture or religion was progressively obscured and erased, the more irreversible the neoliberal long march. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 298

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Mirowski’s own distinction (previous chapter’s language of exoteric vs. esoteric doctrines) and to Foucault’s point about ‘no first or final point of resistance’ beyond the self-self relation. — connects to: Web 2.0 culture promotes a neoliberal identity that is constructible and improvable. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 495; Culture is not superstructural but is where financialized capitalism subjugates social values — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 563; Neoliberalism persists through pervasive cultural imagery, not popular political theory — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 246 (+17 more)
• QUESTION: How does this account of erasing the economic/cultural boundary square with the chapter’s earlier critique of Tom Frank’s bait-and-switch compartmentalization? Worth tracing how the thought collective operationalizes this fusion.
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the load-bearing mechanism claim of the argument: the erasure of the economic/cultural line is what makes the neoliberal project irreversible — a dense, paradigm-level claim.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism’s durability rested on transforming culture and winning over former opponents #corroborates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1607
• Treating culture and economics as separate spheres misreads how neoliberalism operates #expands (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 298
• Neoliberalism survived by co-opting multiculturalism into marketable identity commodities #exemplifies (0.85) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 185
• Neoliberalism reshapes cultural incentives by prioritizing extreme profit seeking #exemplifies (0.80)
• Capitalism’s material system is interwoven with cultural reproduction #corroborates (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 122
• Neoliberalism required culturally transforming non-capitalist societies to extend markets #exemplifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 88
• Neoliberalism’s internal contradictions are displaced onto cultural theaters of cruelty #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 366
• Neoliberal culture recasts welfare-state dependence as a moral failure to embrace risk #exemplifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 338