Neoliberalism replaces natural self-interest with governed self-investment tied to macroeconomic growth.

Evidence

Moreover, the idea and practice of responsibilization—forcing the subject to become a responsible self-investor and self-provider—reconfigures the correct comportment of the subject from one naturally driven by satisfying interests to one forced to engage in a particular form of self-sustenance that meshes with the morality of the state and the health of the economy. Thus, neoliberalism differs from classical economic liberalism not only in that there ceases to be what Smith formulated as an “invisible hand” forging a common good out of individual, self-interested actions, and not only because the naturalism is replaced by constructivism, although both of these are the case. Equally important, reconciling individual with national or other collective interests is no longer the contemporary problem understood to be solved by markets. Instead, the notion of individuals naturally pursuing their interests has been replaced with the production through governance of responsibilized citizens who appropriately self-invest in a context of macroeconomic vicissitudes and needs that make all of these investments into practices of speculation. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 167

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘responsibilization’ as the core mechanism distinguishing neoliberal from classical liberal subjectivity.
• XREF: Connects to Brown’s broader argument and to Foucault’s governmentality lectures this chapter engages. — connects to: Neoliberalism governs people by getting them to self-regulate toward economic ideals. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 38; Neoliberal welfare-state retreat expects everyone to act as financial self-managers — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 35; Neoliberalism replaces labor with human capital and dissolves the stable self — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 162 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline #corroborates (0.90) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297
• Neoliberalism redefined liberty as economic rather than political. #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 380
• Neoliberalism abolishes classes, the individual, and Lockean property in one move #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 164
• Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 421
• Austerity transforms neoliberal rationality from freedom toward sacrifice. #corroborates (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 135
• Neoliberalism activates the state for the economy rather than withdrawing it. #complicates (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 106
• Neoliberalism makes competition rather than exchange the essence of the market #expands (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 59