Overcoming the Allure of Neoliberalism’s Market Myth

Dr. Ian Bruff (University of Manchester, UK), ianbruff@gmail.com

There is widespread recognition that neoliberalism’s rhetorical valorization of

freedom through markets stands in considerable tension with “actually existing”

neoliberalizing processes. Nevertheless, despite how things have turned out in

practice, there is still underlying respect for such claims; that is, the market

principle is understood to be axiomatic for neoliberals. In contrast, the paper

contends that a re-examination of neoliberal thought – here, Friedrich Hayek and

Milton Friedman – reveals that neoliberalism has never been about markets in

the manner indicated by the rhetoric. Instead, envisioned in canonical neoliberal

texts are specific and particular conceptualizations of markets, states and

households, which means that neoliberalism is fundamentally about the

remaking of states and households in the name of markets rather than markets

per se. As a result, retaining respect for the rhetoric makes it difficult to

acknowledge the beating heart of neoliberalism: the coercive, non-democratic

and unequal reorganization of societies. In particular, we need to recognize that

authoritarian forms of neoliberalism – increasingly visible in the current period

– bring societies closer to, not further away from, the project as it was originally

articulated. This has significant implications, because the widespread perception

that neoliberalism is fundamentally interested in markets is an obstacle to

developing more informed understandings, more appropriate critiques, and more

effective resistances.

Keywords markets, states, households, neoliberalism, authoritarian

neoliberalism

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There is widespread recognition that neoliberalism’s rhetorical valorization of freedom

through markets stands in considerable tension with “actually existing” neoliberalizing

processes (cf. Brenner and Theodore 2002). This has made it possible for our understanding

of neoliberalism to advance immeasurably in the last two decades – not least for taking us

well beyond simplistic “market liberalization vs. social protection” narratives which

essentialize the state as inherently protective of its citizens (for example, Harvey 2005;

Mirowski 2013; Davies 2014). As Jamie Peck (2013: 144) argues:

it is more appropriate to define neoliberalism – or the process of neoliberalization – through its

recurring contradictions and uneven realization than in reference to some presumed, transcendental

essence … At its contradictory heart, as an ongoing process of regulatory transformation, lies the

discrepancy between the galvanizing utopian vision of freedom through the market, discursively

channeling competitive forces that are far from imaginary, and the prosaic realities both of earthly

governance and endemic governance failure. Hence the now well-understood gulf between

neoliberalism as ideology, as a strong discourse of market progress, and the much less

prepossessing array of actually existing neoliberalisms.

The point of departure for this article is the possibility that neoliberal thought is as strongly

characterized by the importance of “non-market” domains as are neoliberalization processes.

This question has been marginal to scholarship on neoliberalism: despite how things have

turned out in practice, the underlying assumption is that the market principle is still axiomatic

for neoliberals. For instance, Peck concludes that “there can be no ‘purebred’ neoliberalisms”,

meaning that “critical theories of neoliberalization must therefore be purposefully addressed

to the contradictory dynamics between neoliberal theory and practice” (145). I explore below

whether neoliberalism, even in the most abstract and “in principle” contributions of key

intellectuals such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, was purebred. For instance, do

canonical neoliberal texts deploy synonymic terms such as “free markets”, “competitive

markets”, “markets”, or simply “the market”, to propose a pure and universal vision of

markets in capitalism, or do these seminal contributions actually offer a specific and particular

conceptualization? And if so, what are the consequences? (see also Bruff and Starnes 2018).

At one level, the present article will seem to dovetail with much of the literature on

neoliberalism. For example, there would be agreement that neoliberals tend to make their

arguments in terms of negation – that is, the need to eliminate undesirable interference in, and

thus distortions of, otherwise naturally occurring market processes. There is a crucial

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difference, though: rhetorically neoliberals seem to articulate a “pure” understanding, but

textually a rather different picture emerges. By showing that neoliberalism was never

purebred in the first place, the article suggests that neoliberalization processes do not

necessarily contradict neoliberal thought. In particular, I argue that neoliberalism, in theory

and in practice, is ultimately less interested in markets than in states and households, whose

remaking was and is at the core of the project. Moreover, and making use of insights from

feminist scholarship (such as Silvia Federici (2004), V. Spike Peterson (2010), Adrienne

Roberts (2013), Susanne Soederberg (2018)), the remaking of households in a manner which

denies social justice is as important to neoliberalism as is the remaking of states as anti-

democratic. This helps correct the tendency for “public” societal sites to be prioritized in the

literatures on neoliberalism, skewing analysis and critique towards questions of state power

and political authority.

While a detailed exploration of neoliberal thought is impossible in the context of this

article, canonical contributions by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman will be discussed as

exemplars of neoliberal thought more broadly. Additionally, the article focuses on their earlier

texts, for it is these that are the foundations upon which their broader and/or “public

intellectual” publications were built. This inevitably means that the richness of the intellectual

contributions made by the strands of neoliberalism they are associated with – Austrian and

Chicago respectively – are not represented. Word limits also make it necessary to leave

Ordoliberalism out of the article, on the grounds that Hayek and Friedman achieved greater

global intellectual and political influence than, say, Walter Eucken, and thus ought to be

tackled first and foremost.

Nevertheless, from the perspective of this article, for all strands of neoliberal thought the

market is rhetorically proposed as the ideal organizing principle for society, yet the heavy

intellectual burden is actually borne by the crucial roles for states and households in

capitalism. This is the case both for other Austrian and Chicago scholars (such as Ludwig von

Mises and Gary Becker), as well as for Ordoliberals such as Wilhelm Röpke, In other words,

the differences between various strands of neoliberal thought lie more in the forms taken by

the argument, the narrative techniques deployed, and the modes of articulation present in and

across the works, than in substantive disagreements. In this sense, for instance, Ordoliberals

are more textually explicit about the constitutive role of states compared to scholars such as

Hayek and Friedman, though the below discussion will show that the differences are

considerably less than is often assumed.

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Therefore, I understand neoliberalism as a worldview which seeks to remake states and

households in the name of specific and particular forms of markets. This entails the

privileging of corporate power on a large scale, the valorization of self-limiting and anti-

democratic states, and the disregard for households expected to absorb, process and respond

to capitalist crises. As such, it is possible to view neoliberalism’s underlying principles in a

different light: societies are to be orchestrated in coercive, non-democratic and unequal ways;

the differences, inequalities, hierarchies and divisions which pervade capitalist society are to

be intensified and extensified.1 As a result, we need to recognize that authoritarian forms of

neoliberalism bring societies closer to, not further away from, the project as it was originally

articulated. This does not mean that the current period witnesses some kind of end-state for

the neoliberal project, with final and eternal victories having been achieved. As Stuart Hall

(2011: 26) notes, all hegemonic projects are ongoing processes that need to be constantly

worked on. As such, the way we live today is not inevitable because it has been actively

constructed; our future modes of living could be different for the same reason.

The next two sections of the article examine the canonical, more theoretical work of Hayek

and Friedman. While superficially a defence of natural market processes against unnatural

non-market interferences, these texts are revealed below to advocate a specific and particular

conceptualization of markets in capitalism; in particular, an intensely relaxed attitude towards

concentrations of private forms of economic power. Subsequently, I argue that this means

they are more interested in the remaking of states and households than markets per se, with

minimal consideration given to democracy or social justice. This has implications for the

study of actually existing authoritarian neoliberalisms, and for how we could understand,

critique, and resist in the current period, both of which are then discussed.

Neoliberalism and Markets

There is a clear consistency between the more public-political and more abstract-theoretical

writings of Hayek and Friedman (Bruff and Starnes 2018). Nevertheless, if we are interested

in understanding the significance of foundational assumptions (such as those regarding

markets) then it is more fruitful to examine the more theoretical, canonical publications,

where such assumptions are most likely to be visible. This means that the below discussion

focuses on two texts in particular, for they are the most complete statement on markets written

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by either author. The texts are Hayek’s (1941) The Pure Theory of Capital (hereafter PTC)

and Friedman’s (1953a) “The Marshallian Demand Curve” (hereafter MDC), originally

published in 1949. PTC was Hayek’s final work of economic theory, before he moved

decisively to more explicitly public-political (Hayek 1944) and philosophical (Hayek 1960)

writings. Hayek himself understood PTC to have fallen short of its original aims and its

reception has tended to stress its elaborate and complex form of argumentation (White 2007),

but it nevertheless stands as the culmination of his earlier work (for example, Hayek 1935).

Moreover, PTC paved the way for subsequent interventions which made intensive use of its

core arguments and assumptions. MDC was a paper rather than monograph, but its content is

long and in-depth, and it generated a short addendum article which served as a template-like

application of the argument for analyzing the welfare effects of income and excise taxes

(Friedman 1953b). Additionally, it was the culmination of Friedman’s earlier work (for

example, Friedman 1946) while also informing his later microeconomic (Friedman 1957),

macroeconomic (Friedman and Schwartz 1963) and public-political (Friedman 1962)

contributions.

PTC made three key arguments: (i) markets in capitalism are inherently dynamic and

always in a continuous process of (re)formation; (ii) in consequence, it is impossible for

market participants to have full knowledge of their situation due to the future being unknown;

(iii) therefore, market participants do not act in predictable ways which reflect pre-conceived

preferences and goals, because always-evolving market conditions lead to continuous

adaptation to unforeseen changes. Many of the chapters critique neoclassical forms of

economics, which assume stationary equilibrium as the natural order of things for markets,

full knowledge among participants, and predictability of action. Indeed, this is how the

“Austrian” approach portrays itself, as substantially different to the mainstream (cf. Kirzner

1997). Nevertheless, Hayek is clear that while an equilibrial state of rest is impossible in

practice and misguided theoretically, a tendential state of equilibrium and order in the

economy is possible. Buried in a footnote is the clarification that “‘tendency’ does not mean,

as it is usually understood to mean, a movement towards a certain magnitude but merely the

probability that the variable under consideration will be near this magnitude.” (Hayek 1941:

27, fn. 2; emphasis added). This means that Hayek’s understanding of equilibrium is not

universal but intertemporal – instead of “the” equilibrium, there are instead a succession of

tendentially equilibrial points across time. As a result:

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we are here really not interested in the process which brings about equilibrium but merely in the

conditions of a state of equilibrium … And the approach to equilibrium of which we shall

occasionally speak is…a conceptual tool which leads us, as it were, as spectators from positions

which are more removed from equilibrium to positions which are closer to it, and finally to the

equilibrium position itself. (248; original emphases).

This quote comes from the beginning of Chapter 19, and the rest of the book (of 27 chapters)

is dedicated to outlining the conditions which make positions closer to and, crucially, further

away from states of tendential equilibrium. The latter conditions are those which prevent

markets from functioning in their inherently dynamic and processual way. And what are those

conditions? Anything that constitutes, in Hayek’s eyes, interference in the operations of

markets; for him, market processes entail “the compatibility of the independent plans of a

number of individuals” (247) to the extent that they are definite, regular yet also adjustable

over time (357). A key concern in this respect is the potentially disruptive role played by

concentrations of economic power in distorting and even blocking market (re)formations. For

instance, Hayek argues that entrepreneurs will need to adjust anticipations about future market

evolution when confronted with abrupt change, which is most likely to be due to “the action

of the Government or of monopolistic groups” (343). Nevertheless, private monopolies (i.e.

by a dominant firm) are conspicuous by their absence, presumably because Hayek would

claim that market processes would erode them naturally over time (if such processes were not

prevented from doing so by artificial forces). Hence, unwarranted concentrations of economic

power are beholden not to powerful firms operating across significant economies of scale but

instead to governments and trade unions. These are the sources of monopoly that Hayek seeks

to eliminate from markets, and what he is referring to when talking of monopolistic groups.

Friedman is similarly sanguine in MDC about private forms of economic power – in a

different way, but with similar implications. Superficially, the paper is exegetical in character,

seeking to clarify what he sees as vague and incomplete remarks relating to the definition of

the demand curve in Alfred Marshall’s seminal Principles of Economics (1920; the eighth and

final edition, which Friedman cites throughout). Friedman claims that, unlike what he

portrays as the dominant view, his interpretation of what a fully defined and elaborated

Marshallian demand curve looks like is “free from both logical inconsistency and

mathematical error but also is more useful for the analysis of economic problems.” (Friedman

1953a: 48).2 This indicates the importance Friedman attaches to his interpretation, beyond

exegetical debates: for example, he believes it to be consistent with the wider assumption of

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general equilibrium existing in the broader economy and thus ideally suited for generating

powerful explanations of and predictions for concrete market phenomena and developments

(89-92).

The argument rests on the claim that, contrary to what he sees as the dominant view which

considers all “commodities” (i.e. goods) as methodologically and analytically equal in

importance, the researcher “can take explicit account of only a limited number of factors”

(57). This means focusing on only a specific number of commodities: researchers ought to

ignore the “indefinitely long list of other variables [i.e. commodities]” that always exists,

instead generalizing from study of the chosen few commodities to the wider economy (59).

Hence, Friedman proposes a general demand curve which prioritizes average rather than

marginal outcomes in the given study, avoiding the trap of seeking to “include the price of

every commodity in the universe in the demand function rather than the average price of a

residual group.” (91). He rejects what he views as an additive and arithmetical approach –

which takes “the economy” as simply the sum of individual units – in favour of a more

agglomerated approach which takes collections of firms, in distilled categorical form (e.g.

“industry”), as more important for how we understand the economy more broadly. This leaves

open the question of how many firms constitute the category, because it is the average

agglomerative outcome which counts, not individual firm behaviour. Friedman does not

address this point, but he does explicitly criticize as a “blind alley” what he terms

monopolistic competition analyses and their assumption that each individual firm to be a

monopoly (91).

It is quite straightforward to infer from what Friedman does and does not say about

monopoly at this juncture in the text. Put simply, he is fundamentally uninterested in what

rhetorically he claims to be of great significance for a free society: unfettered competition

among many firms. General economic fortunes are considered in terms of the combination of

category averages rather than the adding up of individual units; economies of scale take

priority over, for instance, ensuring a certain, minimum number of firms exist in the industry

to prevent undue concentrations of economic power. Not for nothing in even Capitalism and

Freedom does Friedman argue that the state should counter only technical monopolies

(Friedman 1962: 34). Not only are technical monopolies left undefined, but substantive

monopolies seem, by virtue of their textual absence and the emphasis on average outcomes, to

be unproblematic.3

To summarize, from different starting points and with distinct narrative techniques, Hayek

and Friedman arrive on to remarkably similar terrain. Their conceptualization of markets in

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these canonical texts, texts which provide an essential foundation for the rest of their work,

can be observed in two ways. Firstly, we see Hayek’s emphasis on tendential equilibrium and

Friedman’s focus on average and agglomerative outcomes, and secondly there is (for both)

the consequential, intensely relaxed attitude towards concentrations of private economic

power. Hayek and Friedman consider concentrations of economic power in the hands of the

state or trade unions, and any attempts by states to deconcentrate economic power, as

fundamentally harmful to market processes. In other words, should markets end up in

situations of monopoly and oligopoly, this is not problematic per se because such scenarios

could be the result of market processes and thus the efficient use of economies of scale by

high-performing firms. Moreover, the same processes would be expected, over time, to undo

situations of monopoly and oligopoly: especially in economically dynamic sectors, the

emergence of new market participants to challenge the power of the established companies is

always possible. This means that, for neoliberals, private forms of monopoly and oligopoly

are (unlike government or union-driven forms) temporally specific. Nevertheless, it is

difficult to imagine a scenario which would lead Hayek and Friedman to advocate the active

deconcentration of private forms of economic power (for example, if monopoly and oligopoly

seem more permanent then expected).

At this point, it is incumbent upon us to ask, if these texts end up standing in considerable

tension with neoliberalism’s rhetorical valorization of freedom through markets, whether

something else is going on instead. That is, if the market as rhetorically articulated remains

elusive for neoliberals, could the intellectual burden of their texts lie elsewhere?

Remaking States and Households in the Name of Markets

The temporal context to neoliberalism’s emergence as a programme of societal transformation

has been widely acknowledged. Its genesis in the mid-twentieth century – in an era

characterized by the growing role in capitalism for “non-market” domains such as the state,

trade unions, and welfare programmes – meant that its worldview has always covered all

areas of social life. This gives neoliberalism its fundamentally dissatisfied character, for there

will always be “non-market” domains or factors to critique and seek to negate or transform.

At the same time, many have noted that the state can play a particularly important role in

neoliberalization processes via, for example, vigilance against “distortions” of the market by

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groups such as trade unions, and the maintenance of “law and order” in times of economic

crisis and/or protests against a smaller economic and social role for the state. It is clear from

especially the final two chapters of PTC and the extended footnote to MDC that Hayek and

Friedman did not seek to eliminate the state. For example, their arguments contain specific

illustrative points about regulation and policy regarding money (Hayek) and taxation

(Friedman). Both assert that certain regulations and policies are counter-productive and thus

should be discarded, proposing instead highly self-limiting ordinances – for instance,

abandoning any short-term horizon for monetary policy (Hayek 1941: 407-10) and forsaking

any redistributive mechanisms in fiscal policy (Friedman 1953b: 112-13).

Regarding the question of redistribution, Hayek is clear that he finds this problematic

because of the effect of changes in the distribution of income “against the capitalist class”

(1941: 346). He further argues that real wage increases achieved by organized labor will lead

to substitutions of capital for labor (347) and thus reductions in employment, and that

artificial state activism will lead to a “vicious spiral of delay” (348) in naturally occurring

market processes being able to have their effect. In his view, both lead “to a transition to less

capitalistic methods of production” and thus to lower living standards for a prolonged period

(348), because a community has chosen to live beyond its means. For Friedman, this issue is

of such importance that it underpins one of the key arguments in his paper on Marshall,

namely that real incomes are constant across the whole of the demand curve (Friedman

1953a: 59-65 especially). The agglomerative approach taken to markets more generally is

present here, too: changes to overall real income levels are unwelcome, because they disrupt

the chances for general equilibrium, and thus an optimal economic situation, to occur in the

wider economy (90). But, as he confirms in his “extended footnote” article (Friedman 1953b:

100) to the paper on Marshall, inequalities within the distribution of income are not important

for the analysis. In other words, distributions of income can change, but only as a result of

market processes and not via any other means.

Thus, through proposing that states deliberately absolve themselves of certain tasks and

practices – such as deconcentrating economic power and altering patterns of distribution –

Hayek and Friedman deny space for societies to mobilize states and associated institutions in

alternative, more expansive and democratic ways. This does not entail the elimination of

states but their remaking, rendering them conducive to Hayek and Friedman’s understanding

of markets in capitalism through ridding them of their obstructive properties. Moreover, it

brings to center-stage another key societal site, namely households. While this may not seem

obvious from the above analysis, a specific, submerged and highly gendered understanding of

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households can be rendered visible through consideration of the implications of what is said

about markets and states, and via close textual analysis of what is left unsaid about

households (see also Bruff and Starnes 2018).

For Hayek and Friedman, households are denied the possibilities for societal reforms or

transformations of axes of societal inequality by way of their subordination to corporate

power, their neglect by self-limiting and anti-democratic states, and the absence of socially

protective mechanisms such as welfare states and trade unions. As such, when Hayek talks of

market participants never having full knowledge of their situation owing to the inherently

dynamic nature of markets, and that market participants will engage in continuous adaptation

to unforeseen changes, he means that the burden of such adaptation will be borne by the

participants themselves. Participant plans and actions are, like equilibrium, temporally

contingent (Hayek 1941: 357), which inevitably means that some plans and actions are

inappropriate at any one point in time. While it is clear that the effects would be felt by firms

by way of bankruptcy, this could, and if desired would, lead to the incorporation of insolvent

firms into new activities via mergers and acquisitions.4 For households the effects would have

a more profound, corporeal and visceral impact. Similarly, when Friedman talks of inequality

not being a factor in consumption patterns or economic developments more generally, and

that it is average, agglomerative outcomes which count for analysis rather than individual

circumstances, he shrouds in mystery the more specific circumstances experienced by

particular societal groups. While individual company bankruptcies would tend be discounted

by Friedman for the same reasons, it means that he displays a clear disregard for vulnerable

and poor households exposed to, and affected by, the exhausting impact of having

insufficient, or barely sufficient, means of living.

Therefore, households are the pivot upon which economies turn, because they are

responsible for their own, and by implication for the economy’s, waxing and waning of

fortunes – for example, if they consume in a sub-optimal manner. Adjusting to, and bearing

the burdens of, periods of recession and crisis are the responsibility of households rather than

corporations and states. This may seem odd given for example company bankruptcies and

state indebtedness, but according to the logic of the texts corporations are to be unaffected by

the impact of trade unions and unnatural state regulation, and states are to limit themselves to

non-redistributive and non-protective activities. By neglecting to address concentrations of

private forms of economic power and by denying that states can do anything other than be

conducive to the conceptualization of markets that they outline, neoliberals leave us with a

stark and strongly gendered picture. Households are simultaneously condemned by Hayek and

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Friedman to exist in space and scale,5 and required by the same authors to be perpetually

remade in line with market exigencies across different temporal contexts. Through absorbing,

processing and responding to capitalist crises, households are both central to, and devalued

by, neoliberal texts.

While space has not permitted a broader interrogation of neoliberal thought, the above re-

examination of canonical neoliberal texts such as those authored by Hayek and Friedman has

shown that – even in the most “in principle” and abstract work – the key tension in the

neoliberal project does not exist between purebred theories and complicated realities, but

between purebred rhetoric and complex texts. Mirroring their specific and particular

conceptualization of markets, specific and particular states and households are envisaged by

Hayek and Friedman. The intellectual burden borne by the texts thus shifts from rhetoric in

favour of free markets to the privileging of corporate power on a large scale and the

consequential minimal scope for democracy or social justice to make a difference. Therefore,

the issue for neoliberalism is not “non-market” domains per se, but the form taken by and

social purpose of such domains.

In the current period – when states are reconfiguring into increasingly authoritarian entities

or are expanding already-existing forms of authoritarian practices, households have become

increasingly weighed down by indebtedness and intensified crises of social reproduction, and

the expulsion of the poor and vulnerable from social programmes supposed to help them has

become gradually normalized – it makes sense to see neoliberalism in this light (see also

Tansel 2017). In turn, the notion of a current authoritarian turn in neoliberalism is less about

neoliberalism mutating into something new, and more about “actually existing

neoliberalisms” (cf. Brenner and Theodore 2002) moving closer to the project as it was

originally articulated. It is to this question that I now turn.

Actually Existing Authoritarian Neoliberalisms

As Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore (2010) argue, for analyses of

neoliberalization processes to exhibit nuance and sensitivity to context there is a need to walk

the tightrope between over-stating the spatially and temporally uneven nature of the processes

and placing too much emphasis on the cumulative transformations across space and time that

we have witnessed since the 1970s. The present article does not depart from this method of

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thinking about neoliberalization processes, but utilizes it for a different purpose; namely,

reorienting the focus away from marketization, or market-disciplinary restructuring (Peck,

Theodore and Brenner 2012: 272), as the key driver. As Matthew Watson (2018: 125) has

observed, “the promise of a free market…does not stand up even in its own terms as a valid

description of what results when market ideology is as dominant even as it is today”. The

conclusions I draw from observations such as Watson’s is that to base our critique of

neoliberalism on precisely this failure risks a de facto acceptance of neoliberal rhetoric about

markets by virtue of offering a contrast to something that is already defined in a particular

way.

Therefore, the study of actually existing authoritarian neoliberalisms should begin from the

acknowledgement that the unevenly patterned yet cumulatively transformative processes of

neoliberalization have led to an increased scope for coercion across a broad array of societal

sites, multiplying attacks on political and social rights, and growing inequalities at the

intersection of a range of social relations. Moreover, this is taking place across the globe, in

the so-called global North and South (Jenss 2018; Tansel 2018). However, of equal

importance is the crisis-ridden nature of these processes: for example, the partial

delegitimation of the capitalist state by way of “the shifting sands of hegemonic situations”

towards the predominance of force (Morton 2013: 21); the hollowing out of mediating

societal sites such as workplaces, public spaces, social programmes and political

participations, generating novel or enhanced levels of alienation and mobilization; and the

growing politicization and self-organization of communities in the name of renewed or

innovative forms of social and democratic struggle (Bailey et al. 2017).

This means that states and households ought to be given parity in not just the study of the

neoliberal project and neoliberalization processes, but also in understanding how various

forms of resistance emerge, manifest and play out across various social and spatial contexts.

Much attention has been paid in the last decade to political, electoral and governmental

volatility in the wake of repeated bouts of crisis and protest, yet less has been given to

households. However, we need to acknowledge that if households are condemned by

neoliberal intellectuals, and increasingly by neoliberalization processes, to exist and to be

remade in the course of absorbing, processing and responding to crises, then it should not

surprise us when community-centered responses to intensified crises of social reproduction,

often based on principles of solidarity and prefiguration, emerge and take on significance in

and beyond their own socio-spatial context (Bruff and Wöhl 2016).

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Overcoming the allure of neoliberalism’s market myth has a further implication. I noted in

the introduction that the way we live today is not inevitable because it has been actively

constructed, and that our future modes of living could be different for the same reason.

However, there is a need to reflect on what this means for overcoming neoliberalism. For

example, opposing austerity in Europe is not enough if the termination of these policies leaves

intact workfare programmes which continue to practice various forms of societal punishment

in the context of a more expansionary fiscal stance; socializing healthcare in the USA will not

achieve its goals if private health companies remain dominant providers; taming the power of

transnational corporations in South America still leaves the door open for neglecting the land

and social rights of indigenous peoples; defending the role of the state in serving the national

rather than the market interest in East Asia provides ongoing opportunities for renewed or

novel forms of authoritarianism.

Therefore, seeking to prevent or reverse “marketizing” processes risks a misrecognition of

what is at stake, unless such resistances take into account the alternative understanding of

neoliberalism put forward in this article. Otherwise, there is a risk of potential, and

unintentional, complicity with neoliberal rhetoric about the market, skewing the outcome of

social struggles in favour of continued neoliberalization – even if under the guise of a break

with neoliberalism (cf. Springer, 2015).

Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Understanding, Critiquing, Resisting

This article has argued that neoliberal rhetoric on the need to eliminate undesirable

interference in, and thus distortions of, otherwise naturally occurring market processes cannot

be understood in terms of simply “letting go” and allowing markets to flourish unhindered,

but instead the remaking of states and households in order to rid them of their obstructive

properties. This has potentially significant implications for understanding, critiquing and

resisting during a period in which authoritarian forms of neoliberalism are becoming

increasingly visible and widespread.

As such, our understanding of authoritarian neoliberalism should begin from the insight

that the current period is not necessarily a digression from neoliberal principles and

philosophies. Many have argued that neoliberalism’s economic and political dominance since

the 1980s has been challenged in the last decade: examples include failure of pro-market

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policy paradigms regarding financial regulation, and the rise to prominence of a range of

political leaders and parties (e.g. Trump) seemingly hostile to putative axioms of

neoliberalism, such as free trade globally and free markets domestically. But these arguments

make sense only if one understands neoliberalism as fundamentally interested in markets, a

notion which this article has rejected (see also Bruff 2014; Bruff 2016a; Bruff and Starnes

2018). Further, the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism cannot be appreciated fully without

households being given equal weight to states in the analysis.

In consequence, critiquing authoritarian neoliberalism should take as its starting point the

notion that neoliberalism is fundamentally about the coercive, non-democratic and unequal

reorganization of societies towards the intensification and extensification of the differences,

inequalities, hierarchies, and divisions which pervade capitalist society (Bruff 2016b: 17; cf.

Federici 2004: 115). This, rather than questions of markets, individualism, and competition

ought to be central to critiquing what we see in the present conjuncture. Moreover, such an

understanding must incorporate a range of societal sites, which traverse and embody social

relations in ways that render redundant outmoded constitutive separations such as

market/society and public/private, thus enabling us to acknowledge and study their conflictual

entanglements (cf. Bruff and Wöhl 2016; Bruff and Tansel 2018). This helps uncover how

inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, and pushes us to

consider more fully how other worlds can be made possible.

Therefore, resisting authoritarian neoliberalism needs to embody the recognition that what

appears to be the politics of “free markets” – for example, privatization, reducing regulatory

standards, workfarism, “marketization” of public services, unequal tax regimes – is in fact

something quite different. However, such resistances should not be confined to these themes.

While seeking the reversal of neoliberal gains over the past few decades could be part of

struggles for a more equitable world, it is not enough to, for example, campaign against the

neoliberalization of the public realm without a vision of a different kind of public realm being

advocated as well. There is a need to do more than just act to prevent or to reverse. Moreover,

it will be necessary to engage in but also to look beyond formal forms of politics and

activism, for households are a potentially crucial site of politicization which “provide leverage

for radical social critique” (Young 2005: 146). In other words, if the great power of the

neoliberal project, in thought and in practice, has been the attempted remaking of states and

households in the name of markets, then the great power of an emancipatory project, in

thought and in practice, ought to be the attempted remaking of states and households in the

name of equality, justice, dignity and solidarity.

14

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1Acknowledgements

Thanks to Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore for inviting me to be part of the special issue, and for comments on a previous draft. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at the 2018 conferences organized by the British International Studies Association and the Critical Political Economy Research Network, and a preliminary argument formed part of a seminar talk in 2017 at the University of Nottingham, UK. Many thanks to all of those who asked questions and provided feedback. The paper has also benefited from conversations with Aliki Koutlou, Reecia Orzeck, Adrienne Roberts, Susanne Soederberg, Kathryn Starnes, Cemal Burak Tansel, and Matthew Watson.

Contributor’s Note

Ian Bruff is lecturer in European Politics at the University of Manchester, UK. He has published widely on capitalist diversity, European capitalisms, neoliberalism, and social theory: for example, a 2018 special issue of the journal Globalizations entitled “Authoritarian Neoliberalism: Philosophies, Practices, Contestations” (co-edited with Cemal Burak Tansel), for which he co-authored two articles. He is currently researching the foundations of neoliberal thought, and is the Managing Editor of the Transforming Capitalism book series published by Rowman & Littlefield International.

Notes

It should be noted that the phrase “differences, inequalities, hierarchies, divisions” originates in Silvia Federici’s Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation (Federici 2004: 115). Federici uses the phrase when discussing primitive accumulation and the alienating consequences of the accumulation of differences, inequalities, hierarchies and divisions. My usage is not quite the same, in that it concerns capitalism in general. Nevertheless, my approach complements Federici’s book-long argument that primitive accumulation is not merely capitalism’s originary “moment” but the condition for capitalism’s reproduction on an everyday basis.2 As noted in Bruff and Starnes (2018), Friedman lays claim to a directly expressed and notably confident form of verisimilitude.3 There is some overlap here with Rob van Horn’s (2009) analysis of what he terms neoliberal competition theory and its particular understanding of monopoly. However, his paper focuses on public-political responses to Left critiques of capitalism during the late 1940s and early 1950s. While interested in a similar time period, my understanding is that such a conceptualization of monopoly was already present in the foundations of neoliberal thought.4 “Competition will enforce, without respect for existing capital values, such a reorganisation of production as will, under the given circumstances, make the most profitable use of all available resources.” (Hayek 1941: 323; added emphasis).5 Paraphrasing Reecia Orzeck (2007: 504) here. Orzeck’s article concerns materialist (especially Marxist) theories of the body. While with a different focus to what is found in this article, her discussion of how capitalism leverages different bodies against one another resonates with the points made here about households, in the work of Hayek and Friedman, being held responsible for adjusting to and bearing the burdens of periods of capitalist crisis via the absence of redistributive and protective mechanisms.