Right-wing neoliberals justify border closure through utility-of-human-capital logic

Evidence

The far-right strain of neoliberalism deploys a similarly dispassionate calculus of human lives. The national community is not privileged for its transcendent value (in the Herderian sense of the Volk) but because of the utility of cultural homogeneity for stability and the accumulated cognitive capital of the population in industrialized nations. Combining critiques of foreigners and the welfare state with calls for closed borders and private property rights has become standard fare for right-wing neoliberals in the new millennium. A case in point is Erich Weede, sociology professor, MPS member since 1992, and leader of the right wing of the German Hayek Society. In an article from 2016, Weede, who has argued for the genetic basis of differential “human capital” endowments and has correlated economic growth to IQ, called for the closing and fortification of borders to prevent the influx of refugees. Using an intergenerational zero-sum logic, he wrote that “one must not forget that governments are always dispensing other people’s money—or in the case of higher and rising state debts, even the money of underage and yet unborn tax payers. Those who give governments the freedom to do good for foreigners must by necessity take freedom and property away from citizens.” Lifeboat neoliberalism sees empathy as feckless state spending, and openness to foreigners as a downgrading of human capital. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 30

Categorization

• XREF: Shows an internal cleavage in the neoliberal camp relevant to the book’s agenda of fracturing the caricature — far-right versions diverge from the free-movement-advocating cosmopolitan strain. — connects to: Neoliberal governance seeks managed borders, not borderless openness — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 864; Neoliberal ‘freedom’ prioritized cross-border capital mobility over domestic welfare. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 423; Border control is central to global capitalism’s logic of exploiting cheap labor (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Weede’s claim of a genetic basis for human-capital differentials warrants closer scrutiny as to how an MPS sociologist handled IQ-genetics and race-adjacent claims.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal states shift the cost of reproducing human capital onto individuals #expands (0.82) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 72
• Neoliberal ‘freedom’ prioritized cross-border capital mobility over domestic welfare. #expands (0.78) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 423
• Border control is central to global capitalism’s logic of exploiting cheap labor #expands (0.75)
• Neoliberal capitalism has turned permanent migration into impermanent transnational subcontracting #expands (0.74) — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 25