Neoliberals rejected ‘economy’ because it implied manageable collective ends.

Evidence

No doubt there are aspects of neoliberalism that support the charge of economisation. From the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises’s argument that the market is a permanent election in which each dollar counts as a ballot, to the US public-choice theorist James Buchanan’s reconfiguring of politics as a sphere of self-maximising individual competition, to the Chicago School economist Gary Becker’s contention that a marriage is a two-person firm and children are household-produced commodities, neoliberalism appears to be the extension of economic rationality to all areas of life. Yet, drawing on the ancient Greek origins of economics in oikonomia – the management of a household – the early neoliberals worried that conceiving of the overall market order as an economy licensed the belief that this order was governed by collective solidarity and had a single set of ends that could be managed by Keynesian or social-democratic planners. This, they argued, was the very definition of totalitarianism, and a threat to the individualistic social order of ‘the West’. The competitive market they sought to revive was not simply a more efficient means of distributing resources; it was the basic institution of a moral and ‘civilised’ society, and a necessary support for individual rights. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 21

Categorization

• DEFINE: Grounds the whole book’s thesis: for early neoliberals the market order must NOT be an ‘economy’ (oikonomia) manageable as a household — that framing is what they called totalitarian.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: given this anti-economism, why does the economisation critique of Becker/Buchanan/Mises get attached to ‘neoliberalism’ as a single movement? Internal tension between anti-economist founders and later economic imperialists.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberals rejected treating economics as ironclad natural law — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 194; Neoliberals rejected classical liberalism’s rationalism in favor of critical conventionalism. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 90; Neoliberals reject market-failure theory, so they cannot see crisis as market glitch — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 154 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism defined itself in opposition to the constructed object of the economy #corroborates (0.88) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1919
• Early neoliberals attacked economism rather than reducing life to economics. #corroborates (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 20
• Neoliberals rejected classical liberalism’s rationalism in favor of critical conventionalism. #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 90
• Neoliberals rejected treating economics as ironclad natural law #qualifies (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 194
• Neoliberals reject market-failure theory, so they cannot see crisis as market glitch #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 154
• Neoliberals rejected the deistic self-regulating market as naive optimism. #corroborates (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 332
• Neoliberal philosophers rejected the idea that scientific method could directly shape social reform. #expands (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 64
• Neoliberals distanced themselves from general equilibrium to counter market socialism #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 12