Neoliberals deployed formal legal equality to block redistribution and reparations.

Evidence

The neoliberals, in contrast, celebrated equal right precisely for its role in perpetuating existing inequalities. Hayek and his neoliberal colleagues were fervent defenders of the rule of law because they believed that, given that people are unequal, the ‘only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently’. They saw a stress on formal equality before the law as a means to prevent redistribution for the purpose of greater substantive or socioeconomic equality, and to rule out demands for foreign aid, support for industries of former colonies, or reparations to transform the legacies of past injustice. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 417

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the left critique of formal equality as masking substantive inequality — mirrors the reader’s broader human-rights-vs-markets debate reading, and echoes Marx’s ‘so-called rights of man’ critique invoked at 418. — connects to: Formal legal equality substituted for material redistribution as a way to end reform. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 665; Formal equality doctrine becomes a weapon against material equality — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 959; Formal legal equality leaves substantive social inequality untouched — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 959
• SEED: Angle: ‘the egalitarian defense of inequality’ — how formal equality functions as an anti-redistributive technology in neoliberal legal thought versus its usual left framing.

Broader Connections

• Formal legal equality substituted for material redistribution as a way to end reform. #corroborates (0.95) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 665
• Formal equality doctrine becomes a weapon against material equality #corroborates (0.92) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 959
• Formal legal equality leaves substantive social inequality untouched #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 959