The ‘neoliberalism is amoral’ critique descends from conservative anti-capitalist rhetoric

Evidence

Neoliberalism is commonly understood as an amoral economic ideology that subordinates all values to an economic rationality. In a powerful instance of this critique, Wendy Brown argues that neoliberalism’s ‘economization’ of life configures the human ‘always, only, and everywhere as homo economicus’. Elsewhere she argues that, despite its pragmatic reconciliation with neoconservatism in the United States, neoliberalism is ‘expressly amoral at the level of both ends and means’. This form of criticism is not new, and nor is it confined to this neoliberal form of capitalism; it resembles nothing so much as The Communist Manifesto’s awe-struck descriptions of the bourgeoisie, which leaves ‘no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”’. Although the argument that capitalism drowns all values in the ‘icy water of egotistical calculation’ was borrowed from capitalism’s earlier conservative critics, Marx and Engels were without nostalgia for feudal bonds cemented by religion and sentimentality. Contemporary critics, while largely agreeing that neoliberalism reduces all values to cash value, have been similarly divided about whether this is cause for celebration or denunciation. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 15

Categorization

• XREF: Directly engages Wendy Brown’s economization thesis, which the reader would know from contemporary market-ethics debate; frames the contested conceptual baseline for what follows. — connects to: The critique of capitalism as amoral predates Marx and echoes conservative critics.; Ordoliberalism’s founding critique of capitalism was culturally conservative and antimodernist — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 509; Neoliberalism’s freedom ideology borrowed from fascist critics of liberalism — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 234
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: whether framing critique of economization as ‘romantic anti-capitalism’ disarms it or whether a defensible version remains.

Broader Connections

• The critique of capitalism as amoral predates Marx and echoes conservative critics. #expands (0.85)
• Ordoliberalism’s founding critique of capitalism was culturally conservative and antimodernist #exemplifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 509
• Neoliberalism’s freedom ideology borrowed from fascist critics of liberalism #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 234