Neoliberals redefined imperialism as an effect of politicising the economy, not of capitalist expansion.

Evidence

For the neoliberals, this attempt to politicise the postcolonial economic order was a threat to the world market and international peace. They argued that this postcolonial economic project was the inheritance of mid-century colonialism, which had abandoned the free-trade policies of the earlier British Empire in favour of economic planning. Faced with rising anticolonialism, the neoliberals sought to change the terms of the debate over imperialism and colonialism. They argued that imperialism was not the ‘highest stage of capitalism’, as Vladimir Lenin had argued, but the result of the politicisation of the economy. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 231

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages the Lenin thesis and inverts it; connects to the reader’s work on market ethics debating causal claims about markets and coercion. — connects to: Some neoliberals explicitly embraced empire as a model for global economic order. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 858; Neoliberals argued political meddling, not markets, causes war — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 256; Neoliberals blamed Rousseau’s popular sovereignty, not the state, for imperialism and totalitarianism — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 282 (+8 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: how the neoliberal inversion of Lenin’s imperialism theory became the intellectual warrant for neocolonial market ‘partnership’ — a causal-claims battle over what actually drives conquest.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals argued that politicizing the economy, not capitalism, caused imperialism. #corroborates (1.00) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 434
• Imperialism is capitalism’s political drive for the remainders of the noncapitalist world #contradicts (0.90) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2224
• Capitalism depends on a noncapitalist world whose possession is imperialism’s core project #corroborates (0.85)
• Neoliberal theorists could recast imperialism as a civilizing expansion of legal order. #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1307
• Neoliberalism is a reprogramming of liberal governmentality, not a reaction to capitalist crisis #qualifies (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 83
• Neoliberals reframed inequality as apolitical difference to erase colonial exploitation. #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 404
• Imperialism is the first stage of bourgeois political rule, not capitalism’s last #contradicts (0.75)