Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

Neoliberals preach market supremacy while exempting themselves from its rule

Properties2
tagsja-picks, xref, define, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, category/causal-relationships
aliases@mirowski_never_2013, loc. 281

2 min read

Neoliberals preach market supremacy while exempting themselves from its rule

Evidence

If I had to summarize where the otherwise prescient Foucault took a wrong turn, it was in too readily swallowing the basic neoliberal precept that the market was an information processor more powerful and encompassing than any human being or organization of humans. What Foucault missed were the critical notions of double truths outlined at the end of the last chapter. The neoliberals preach that the market is the unforgiving arbiter of all political action; but they absolve themselves from its rule. They propound libertarian freedoms but practice the most regimented hierarchy in their political organization; they sermonize about spontaneous order, while plotting to take over the state; they catechize prostration of the self before the awesome power of the knowledge conveyed by the market, but issue themselves sweeping dispensations. Most significantly, they reserve to themselves the right of deployment of the Schmittian exception. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 281

Categorization

  • XREF: The ‘double truths’ concept ties to Mirowski’s earlier chapter and to the reader’s advanced thought-collective understanding; the Schmittian exception connects to political-theory discussions of sovereign power. — connects to: Neoliberals do not practice the laissez-faire they preach to the public.; Neoliberals disagree sharply among themselves about what a market is — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 151; Neoliberalism’s activist stance contradicts its own claim that markets naturally triumph — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 202 (+9 more)
  • DEFINE: Explains the ‘double truths’ doctrine — the esoteric/exoteric split that lets the thought collective hold contradictory positions simultaneously.

Broader Connections

✉️

Backlinks