Neoliberals tarred Third World redistribution schemes as totalitarian

Evidence

Rather, its failure, as Umut Özsu notes, ‘was at root an affirmation of the weakness of public authority in the face of private power, the Global South in the face of the Global North, the developmental state in the face of the state legitimated market’. In 1979, Hayek warned that the ‘strongest support of the trend towards socialism comes today from those who claim they want neither capitalism nor socialism but a ‘middle way’ or a ‘third world’. To follow them, he argued, was a sure path to socialism, and ‘socialism as much as fascism or communism inevitably leads into the totalitarian state’. Increasingly, the Third World vision of economic redistribution was viewed not only as economically suicidal but also as ‘totalitarian’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 427

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s austerity/neoliberalism focus — a rhetorical strategy parallel to later equations of any welfare intervention with tyranny. — connects to: Neoliberalism fused philosophy of science and political economy against totalitarianism — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 53; Neoliberals coined ‘totalitarianism’ to denounce any collectivist market intervention, not just terror states — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 153; Neoliberal development framed egalitarian welfare norms as obstacles to be overcome — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 409 (+6 more)
• SEED: Could build an essay on how ‘totalitarianism’ functioned as a floating signifier deployed by Hayek and successors to discredit middle-way redistribution.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals saw economic rights as a path toward totalitarianism #corroborates (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 163
• Neoliberals framed welfare states as existential threats to individual rights and civilisation #expands (0.78)
• Neoliberalism triumphed through political arguments against redistribution, not market-efficiency claims #expands (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 437