On neoliberalism

Some readings and thoughts gathered from the naked capitalism community 

Neoliberalism: The Movement That Dare Not Speak Its Name by Philip Mirowski 

“Neoliberalism is a political doctrine depending upon a strong state to pursue the disenchantment of politics by means of economics. – Will Davies

Neoliberalism themes:
(1) “Free” markets do not occur naturally. They must be actively constructed through political organizing.

(2) “The market” is an information processor, and the most efficient one possible—more efficient than any government or any single human ever could be. Truth can only be validated by the market.

(3) Market society is, and therefore should be, the natural and inexorable state of humankind.

(4) The political goal of neoliberals is not to destroy the state, but to take control of it, and to redefine its structure and function, in order to create and maintain the market-friendly culture.

(5) There is no contradiction between public/politics/citizen and private/market/entrepreneur-consumer—because the lat­ter does and should eclipse the former.

(6) The most important virtue—more important than justice, or anything else—is freedom, defined “negatively” as “freedom to choose,” and most importantly, defined as the freedom to acquiesce to the imperatives of the market.

(7) Capital has a natural right to flow freely across national boundaries.

(8) Inequality—of resources, income, wealth, and even political rights—is a good thing; it prompts productivity, because people envy the rich and emulate them; people who complain about inequality are either sore losers or old fogies, who need to get hip to the way things work nowadays.

(9) Corporations can do no wrong—by definition. Competition will take care of all problems, including any tendency to monopoly.

(10) The market, engineered and promoted by neoliberal experts, can always provide solutions to problems seemingly caused by the market in the first place: there’s always “an app for that.”

(11) There is no difference between is and should be: “free” markets both should be (normatively) and are(positively) the most efficient economic system, and the most just way of doing politics, and the most empirically true description of human behavior, and the most ethical and moral way to live—which in turn explains, and justifies, why their versions of “free” markets should be and, as neoliberals build more and more power, increasingly are universal.12

Neoliberalism: The Movement That Dare Not Speak Its Name https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2018/02/neoliberalism-movement-dare-not-speak-name/
And a longer article Hell is Truth Seen Too Late https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/Mirowski-Hell-is-Truth-Seen-Too-Late.pdf

Reply ↓

1. Lambert StretherFebruary 17, 2022 at 3:49 am

   The above forgets Rule #2 :-). Which is important.

   Adding, Mirowski is the author of The Road from Mont Pèlerin: the making of the neoliberal thought collective, another goddamned book I have to read.