Neoliberalism exists to reverse modernity’s claims to self-determination

Evidence

In spite of its liberating potential, the second modernity was slated to become a hard place to live, and our conditions of existence today reflect this trouble. Some of the challenges of the second modernity arise from the inevitable costs associated with the creation and sustenance of one’s own life, but second-modernity instability is also the result of institutionalized shifts in economic and social policies and practices associated with the neoliberal paradigm and its rise to dominance. This far-reaching paradigm has been aimed at containing, rechanneling, and reversing the secular wave of second-modernity claims to self-determination and the habitats in which those claims can thrive. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 116

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A defining thesis claim of the book: locates the modern crisis in a deliberate political-economic counterproject against self-determination, not merely a policy regime. Dense enough to sit with.
• XREF: Echoes Polanyi’s ‘The Great Transformation’ framing of market society as a countermovement against social protection. — connects to: Neoliberalism abolishes classes, the individual, and Lockean property in one move — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 164; Neoliberal self-entrepreneurship destabilizes the fixed boundaries of personhood — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 418; Neoliberals theorized peace as the separation of ownership from sovereignty — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 258 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism’s social theory is fundamentally epistemological, recoding freedom as instrumental to independent orders #expands (0.80)
• Neoliberal modernisation aimed to destroy non-market sources of social reproduction #expands (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 354
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline #exemplifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297
• Modernity’s self-image as rational depends on denying its own tacit metaphysics #complicates (0.72)