Neoliberals out-thought the left on how knowledge is organized politically.

Evidence

The Russian doll structure of the Neoliberal Thought Collective would tend to amplify and distribute the voice of any one member throughout a series of seemingly different organizations, personas, and broadcast settings, lending it resonance and gravitas, not to mention fronting an echo chamber for ideas right at the time when hearing them was most propitious. … Not without admiration, we have to concede that neoliberal intellectuals struggled through to a deeper understanding of the political and organizational character of modern knowledge and science than did their opponents on the left, and therefore present a worthy contemporary challenge to everyone interested in the archaeology of knowledge. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 137

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘Russian doll’ amplification echoes the epistemic authority mechanisms in the reader’s silence/noise line of reading (communication infrastructure shaping thought), and Foucault’s archaeology of knowledge. — connects to: Neoliberals have repeatedly appropriated left-wing ideas and twisted them to their own purposes. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 21; Neoliberals understood the organizational nature of knowledge better than their critics did — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2117; Neoliberalism reframed politics as an epistemological question of what can be known — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 54 (+4 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: This concedes a genuine strategic superiority of the neoliberal ‘thought collective’ over the left without endorsing its goals — a nuanced, uncomfortable recognition worth sitting with.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals understood the organizational nature of knowledge better than their critics did #corroborates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2117
• Neoliberalism reframed politics as an epistemological question of what can be known #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 54