Neoliberalism aimed at class decomposition, not market freedom

Evidence

The starting point of neoliberalism is the admission, contrary to classical liberal doctrine, that their vision of the good society will triumph only if it becomes reconciled to the fact that the conditions for its existence must be constructed and will not come about “naturally” in the absence of concerted political effort and organization. As Foucault presciently observed in 1978 (2004, 137), “Neoliberalism should not be confused with the slogan ‘laissez-faire,’ but on the contrary, should be regarded as a call to vigilance, to activism, to perpetual interventions” [our translation]. The injunction to act in the face of inadequate epistemic warrant is the very soul of “constructivism,” an orientation shared (curiously enough) with the field of science studies. Classical liberalism and Burkean conservatism, by contrast, disavowed this precept. The fact that during one phase of his career Hayek railed against something he called “constructivism” should not obscure this important fact. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2125 (#expands, via linked claim)

First off, the timeworn conventional complaint that economics is too pigheadedly methodologically individualist does not begin to scratch the neoliberal program. “Individuals” are merely evanescent projects from a neoliberal perspective. Neoliberalism has consequently become a scale-free Theory of Everything: something as small as a gene or as large as a nation-state is equally engaged in entrepreneurial strategic pursuit of advantage, since the “individual” is no longer a privileged ontological platform. Second, there are no more “classes” in the sense of an older political economy, since every individual is both employer and worker simultaneously; in the limit, every man should be his own business firm or corporation; this has proven a powerful tool for disarming whole swathes of older left discourse. It also appropriates an obscure historical development in American legal history—that the corporation is tantamount to personhood—and blows it up to an ontological principle. Conversely, it denies personhood to government: “Government has no economic responsibility. Only people have responsibility, and government is not a person.” Third, since property is no longer rooted in labor, as in the Lockean tradition, consequently property rights can be readily reengineered and changed to achieve specific political objectives; one observes this in the area of “intellectual property,” or in a development germane to the crisis, ownership of the algorithms that define and trade obscure complex derivatives, and better, to reduce the formal infrastructure of the marketplace itself to a commodity. Indeed, the recent transformation of stock exchanges into profit-seeking IPOs was a critical neoliberal innovation leading up to the crisis. Classical liberals treated “property” as a sacrosanct bulwark against the state; neoliberals do not. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 164 (#expands, via linked claim)

To Friedrich Hayek and his fellow neoliberals, the individualist and none-galitarian society that neoliberalism envisaged was not a natural condition. They did not expect it to emerge spontaneously once the powers of the state were reduced, as nineteenth-century liberals had believed. The neoliberal order was an economic and social project to be built by capturing and reorganizing political power. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1907 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Neoliberal school reforms operate as Freirean banking education — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 943; Neoliberalism is about class power, not market freedom. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1657; Neoliberalism succeeded by seducing workers out of class identification. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1649 (+9 more)

Related

• Neoliberalism abolishes classes, the individual, and Lockean property in one move (similarity 0.87)
• Neoliberal erasure of class discourse captures struggles for bourgeois liberalism (similarity 0.86)
• Neoliberalism framed itself as a defence of individual freedom against all collectivist systems. (similarity 0.83)
• Neoliberalism is activist constructivism, not laissez-faire passivity. (similarity 0.83)
• Neoliberalism restored elite class power rather than innovating. (similarity 0.83)
• Neoliberals do not practice the laissez-faire they preach to the public. (similarity 0.83)
• Neoliberalism is about class power, not market freedom. (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism is a class-power restoration, not an innovation (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberal theory has no answer to a free society producing enemies of itself. (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism succeeded by seducing workers out of class identification. (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism evolved by sloughing off earlier liberal doctrines without acknowledging reversals (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberal institutions aimed to build a new creed, not revive old liberalism (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism redefined liberty as economic rather than political. (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism rejects laissez-faire in favor of perpetual constructionist state intervention (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism subordinates the state to capital rather than freeing markets (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism abolishes classes, the individual, and Lockean property in one move #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 164
• Neoliberalism is activist constructivism, not laissez-faire passivity. #expands (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2125
• Neoliberalism extinguishes the political subject that critiques of capitalism presupposed #expands (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 218
• Neoliberals pursued an engineered order rather than expecting free markets to emerge naturally #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1907
• Neoliberalism replaces class analysis with a cynical catechism of limitless self-transformation #complicates (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 332