Neoliberals attacked welfare as a threat to family, race, and dignity

Evidence

The neoliberal argument against state welfare was not confined to the economic threat it posed to a free-enterprise system. Rather, neoliberals like Röpke positioned the welfare state as a political threat to a social order founded on the nuclear family and racial hierarchy, and as a moral threat to the values of self-reliance, independence, responsibility and human dignity. From this perspective, while the drafters of the UDHR also dedicated themselves to human dignity, their commitment to social and economic rights would ultimately be its ruin. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 178

Categorization

• SEED: This is the seed of an essay on how a shared term — ‘human dignity’ — was the battleground on which economic and social rights were defeated by the emerging human-rights discourse itself.
• XREF: Core connection for this reader: links the MPS statement of aims’ ‘disappearing dignity’ to the UDHR drafting — the pivot between human-rights law and market ethics. — connects to: Chicago School economists blamed the welfare state, not feminism, for family breakdown — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 210; American neoliberals defended kinship bonds as noncontractual obligations and opposed no-fault divorce — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 214; Reagan’s California welfare reform enacted neoliberal family-responsibility policies — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 242 (+19 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the sacrifice article’s theme of regime-stabilizing ideology: here, dignity discourse performs the stabilizing/reordering work in the economic sphere.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals attacked family welfare in the North but the same welfare in the South #contradicts (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 409
• Early neoliberals framed welfare dependency as a degrading threat to human dignity #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 176
• Neoliberals gendered welfare dependency as emasculating female domestic servitude #expands (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 177