Neoliberalism economizes justice, sovereignty, and the rule of law

Evidence

Most striking about the new homology between city and soul is that its coordinates are economic, not political. As both individual and state become projects of management, rather than rule, as an economic framing and economic ends replace political ones, a range of concerns become subsumed to the project of capital enhancement, recede altogether, or are radically transformed as they are “economized.” These include justice (and its subelements, such as liberty, equality, fairness), individual and popular sovereignty, and the rule of law. They also include the knowledge and the cultural orientation relevant to even the most modest practices of democratic citizenship. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 32

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Foucault’s concept of the economization of the social and to the reader’s interest in how economic rationality corrodes democratic institutions. — connects to: Neoliberalism means capital seizes biopolitical governance from the state — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 263; Early neoliberalism subordinated economic machinery to a prior moral authority and rule of law — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 363; Understanding the rights-neoliberalism convergence requires treating neoliberalism as more than an economic doctrine. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 14 (+12 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘economizing’ means here: subsuming all political concerns to capital enhancement, which is the core definitional move of the book.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism claims to liberate while actually eroding political sovereignty #expands (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 211