Neoliberalism works best when subjects willingly internalize market logic through everyday micro-interactions

Evidence

Not many people can be bothered to actually read Hayek or Buchanan or Milton Friedman or (even) Ayn Rand; but a whole lot more people drink fair trade coffee from time to time, watch Big Brother or Jerry Springer; have a Facebook page they desultorily update; contemplate whether to buy insurance; find themselves short until payday; are worried enough to check their FICO score; spring for a lottery ticket at the checkout; feel conflicted at the sight of a scruffy panhandler; worry about the foreclosure sale down the street; commiserate with friends over what to think about the British summer of riots in 2011; take medication to lose weight; or anguish over whether to visit a fertility clinic. In these thousand and one little encounters spread over a lifetime, the average person begins to absorb a set of images, causal scenarios, and precepts that begin to add up to something approaching a worldview. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 431 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Neoliberalism contains a discursively embedded ideal subject. In an uncertain economic climate, successful workers must be active, entrepreneurial risk-takers. Given corporate deregulation and the de-emphasis on government-provided social services, neoliberal citizens should be self-sufficient and responsible. The rapid pace of information technology and global labor requires a flexible workforce that learns quickly. An effective neoliberal subject attends to fashions, is focused on self-improvement, and purchases goods and ser vices to achieve “self-realization.” He or she is comfortable integrating market logics into many aspects of life, including education, parenting, and relationships. In other words, the ideal neoliberal citizen is an entrepreneur. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 36 (#expands, via linked claim)

The freedom that mattered most to the neoliberals was the freedom to trade across borders on non-discriminatory terms, which they represented as the necessary foundation of all freedoms and rights. ‘The institution of a free market, of competition among enterprises, freedom of entry and freedom of exit to professions and any sort of business are the safeguards and anchors of freedom and justice for the people in underdeveloped areas’, Brandt made clear. While he looked forward to the ‘gradual abolition of the privileged status of the white people’, this move towards equality was predicated on newly independent states accepting market discipline. Self-government was conditional on newly independent countries submitting to the demands of the market and respecting the rights of foreign traders. The neoliberals envisioned what B. S. Chimni calls a ‘borderless global space’ in which the role of Third World nation-states is to ‘facilitate the expansion of global capitalism through promoting free trade, lifting constraints on movements of capital, and ensuring infrastructure development’. Creating such a space could not be left to laissez-faire; it required enforceable international standards – and the right to intervene when they were flouted. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 297; Neoliberalism is a governing rationality that frames all life in market terms — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 357; The ideal neoliberal subject is a self-sufficient entrepreneurial risk-taker — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 36 (+10 more)

Related

• Neoliberalism works best when subjects voluntarily adopt market-logic selves (similarity 0.90)
• Neoliberalism is transmitted through everyday consumer encounters, not texts (similarity 0.88)
• The ideal neoliberal subject is a self-sufficient entrepreneurial risk-taker (similarity 0.85)
• 1980s neoliberal politics let market logic colonize all of life (similarity 0.85)
• Neoliberal markets and selves co-evolve through mutual trial-and-error adjustment (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism extends market logic to regulate all human behavior. (similarity 0.82)
• Neoliberalism replaces natural self-interest with governed self-investment tied to macroeconomic growth. (similarity 0.81)
• Neoliberalism is a governing rationality that frames all life in market terms (similarity 0.80)
• Neoliberalism frames free choice as exercised through secured commercial interaction. (similarity 0.80)
• Neoliberalism redefines coercion so that no market exchange can ever count as coercive (similarity 0.80)
• Neoliberalism transforms the self so that crises stop being read as system failures (similarity 0.80)
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline (similarity 0.80)
• The neoliberal subject must constantly self-invest across all life domains (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberal persuasion works by convincing people they cannot be manipulated (similarity 0.79)
• Neoliberal competitiveness outpaces its communitarian moral underpinnings, fueling populism. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism is transmitted through everyday consumer encounters, not texts #exemplifies (0.88) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 431
• The ideal neoliberal subject is a self-sufficient entrepreneurial risk-taker #expands (0.85) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 36
• Neoliberals conditioned self-government on accepting market discipline #expands (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 297
• The neoliberal subject must constantly self-invest across all life domains #expands (0.80) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 360
• Neoliberal persuasion works by convincing people they cannot be manipulated #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 392
• Neoliberalism is a governing rationality that frames all life in market terms #expands (0.78) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 357
• Neoliberal markets and selves co-evolve through mutual trial-and-error adjustment #exemplifies (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 288