Neoliberalism expands state penal power while professing to shrink government
Evidence
The neoliberal program ends up vastly expanding incarceration and the carceral sphere in the name of getting the government off our backs. Members of the Mont Pèlerin Society were fond of Benjamin Constant’s adage: “The government, beyond its proper sphere ought not to have any power; within its sphere, it cannot have enough of it.” Although this might seem specious from the perspective of a libertarian, it is central to understanding the fact that neoliberal policies lead to unchecked expansion of the penal sector, as has happened in the United States. As Bernard Harcourt has explained in detail, however much tenet 11 might seem to suggest that crime be treated as just another market process, the NTC has moved from the treatment of crime as exogenously defined within a society by its historical evolution, to a definition of crime as inefficient attempts to circumvent the market. The implication is that intensified state power in the police sphere (and a huge expansion of prisoners incarcerated) is fully complementary with the neoliberal conception of freedom. In the opinion of the MPS member Richard Posner, “The function of criminal sanction in a capitalist market economy, then, is to prevent individuals from bypassing the efficient market.” — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 179
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to Loic Wacquant and Michelle Alexander’s work on the carceral state as a racialized governance mechanism. — connects to: Early neoliberals sought to radically shrink national sovereignty in service of free trade. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 440; Neoliberalism strengthens repressive state apparatuses rather than shrinking government — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1748; Neoliberalism seeks to strengthen rather than shrink the state — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2128 (+15 more)
- ADDENDUM: The state-power/freedom complementarity echoes how the sacrifice article treats ritual power as stabilizing rather than contradictory—here government coercion and market freedom are mutually reinforcing, not opposed.
Broader Connections
- Neoliberalism strengthens repressive state apparatuses rather than shrinking government
#corroborates(0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1748 - Neoliberalism seeks to strengthen rather than shrink the state
#corroborates(0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2128 - Neoliberalism replaces the welfare state with a traffic-cop state
#corroborates(0.85) - Neoliberal states redefined their mandate from welfare to securitization and control
#expands(0.85) - Neoliberalism centered on a strong state, not the classical night-watchman state
#corroborates(0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2145 - Neoliberal crisis response expanded rather than shrank state power
#corroborates(0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 288 - Neoliberal reforms pushed states toward authoritarian repression to enforce unpopular policies
#corroborates(0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 452 - Neoliberalism funds repressive state functions at welfare’s expense
#corroborates(0.80) - State interventionism itself was deployed to rescue and deepen the neoliberal model
#corroborates(0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1605 - Neoliberalism seeks to transform and take over the state, not shrink it
#corroborates(0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 117 - Neoliberalism resorts to violent enforcement when local socialities reject its order
#expands(0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1887 - A welfare state targets structural deficits while a neoliberal state targets crime and securitization
#expands(0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1755 - Neoliberal theorists framed social and economic rights as a dangerous expansion of state power
#responds-to(0.72) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 388 - State expansion paradoxically reduces effective control and increases reliance on violence
#expands(0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1726 - Neoliberal complaints about big government fuel further privatization that expands government.
#corroborates(0.70) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2185