Neoliberals reframed inequality as apolitical difference to erase colonial exploitation.

Evidence

Bauer concluded his speech at the LSF Colloquium by rejecting the premise of discussions about Third World poverty: ‘There is no problem in the Third World’, he argued; ‘there are only differences of income’ – differences which are ‘neither surprising nor reprehensible’. Along with his neoliberal colleagues, Bauer replaced the language of ‘inequality’ (which implied unjust structural relations) with that of ‘difference’ (which was merely the necessary condition of a competitive economy). There was nothing emancipatory about this stress on difference. For the neoliberals, ‘difference’ was the apolitical condition of a competitive economy, which, as Foucault notes, is defined not by the exchange of equivalents but by a ‘game of differentiations’ in which some have large incomes and others do not. The neoliberal rhetoric of ‘difference’ naturalised and justified deep and racialised inequalities, and obscured the history of colonial exploitation. … Repeatedly, he took aim at the contention articulated most succinctly by Tanzania’s President Julius Nyerere: ‘In one world, as in one state, when I am rich because you are poor, and I am poor because you are rich, the transfer of wealth from rich to poor is a matter of right; it is not an appropriate matter for charity.’ — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 404

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The linguistic shift from ‘inequality’ to ‘difference’ — and the claim that the ‘emancipatory’ embrace of difference actually naturalizes racialized poverty — is a dense, genuine contribution to the ethics-of-markets debate.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: how the rhetoric of ‘difference’ migrated from anti-colonial/identity politics into neoliberal apologetics, and what ‘naturalising inequality’ means for human-rights discourse today.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports ‘On Sacrifice’ and the gift/charity theme: Nyerere’s moral claim that redistribution is a matter of right and not charity is exactly the anti-neoliberal position the sacrifice piece’s austerity critique would follow up.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberals treat inequality as a necessary motor of progress, not a flaw — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 173; Neoliberals redefined imperialism as an effect of politicising the economy, not of capitalist expansion. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 231; Locke’s improvement doctrine undergirded neoliberal justifications of colonial appropriation. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 399 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism removed race from public vocabulary while privatizing it #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1781