Neoliberalism advanced a political, not merely economic, case for the competitive market

Evidence

Unlike Hirschman, I argue that a version of this justification of capitalism was central to neoliberal thought in the inauspicious circumstances of the twentieth century. For Hayek, who described his own project as doing ‘for the twentieth century what Montesquieu had done for the eighteenth’, and for his neoliberal colleagues, the challenge was to revive the argument that a society coordinated through the competitive market would replace the coercion, conquest and conflict endemic to politics with voluntary, mutually beneficial, harmonious social relations. The tendency to view neoliberalism as the dominance of the economy over all other spheres of life has obscured its distinctive political argument for the competitive market. Throughout the twentieth century, neoliberals argued that the demise of market competition was a threat to individual freedom that augured the rule of a coercive, bureaucratic power. They faulted socialism and social democracy for politicising distribution and replacing consensual market relations between individuals with violent sectional conflicts over ends. In the wars of the twentieth century, they saw the inevitable result of a turn away from the market economy. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 34

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Hirschman’s doux commerce thesis and debates on the ethics of markets central to the reader’s stated purpose. — connects to: Neoliberalism extends market logic to regulate all human behavior. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 32; Neoliberalism pivoted from the economy to the framework encasing it — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 88; Neoliberalism emerged from practical business advocacy, not abstract theory — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 119 (+14 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the contested frame of neoliberalism as a political theory rather than mere economic dominance.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism triumphed through political arguments against redistribution, not market-efficiency claims #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 437