Martijn Konings and Adam Kotsko Discuss Neoliberalism
Stanford University Press is proud to present the second part of a conversation between Martijn Konings, author of Capital and Time, and Adam Kotsko, author of Neoliberalism's Demons.
Adam Kotsko:
You mention that “neoliberalism has a unique capacity to roll challenges to its mode of operation into its mode of operation,” which is certainly true. And I think that my theory of neoliberalism, as an extreme vision of the “trap of freedom” that we see in both Christian culture and previous models of capitalism, accounts for why that is possible—there is always a fresh pool of people to blame. Who would have thought, for instance, that pursuing the American Dream of home ownership would turn out to imperil the world economy? But once that happened, the Tea Party movement arose to let us know that those subprime borrowers were to blame for everything and deserved no government assistance of any kind. In that respect, Trump is in perfect harmony with the neoliberal ethos, as his followers come up with all kinds of improbable “you should have thought of that” scenarios to scapegoat people. And these choices are always moralized—I remember one legislator, during the attempted repeal of Obamacare, asking aloud why we should support those “bad people” who were so inattentive to their health.
These moralizing dynamics seem to be absent from your analysis, and I suspect that might be why other dynamics, such as racism, misogyny, and nationalism do not really figure in it. Your book is brilliant on questions of risk and state entanglement in markets, but it all seems very bloodless—as though a figure like Hayek embraces market neoliberalism simply out of a recognition that the world is open-ended and unknowable. But we know that all the great neoliberal figures were in fact deeply socially conservative and that part of the reason they found such ready allies in right-wing parties was that the market was supposed to be an efficient method for reproducing and even entrenching social and political hierarchy—and, in my terms, for finding ways to blame subaltern populations for their own position, which supposedly results from their own “free choice.”
More generally, I get from your work a sense that there was something necessary about the emergence of neoliberalism, as though it simply fits with the way the world is (according to Luhmann, for instance). I don’t see it that way at all—I see it as a very skillful political campaign that took advantage of a crisis within the Keynesian model but did not supply the only possible, or even the most plausible, solution to the unexpected problems that were emerging.
Martijn Konings:
You’re definitely right to say that the sociology of class, race, gender, etc. don’t play a major role in my book. In part that’s a choice to focus on the way capital and neoliberalism work at a more abstract level and to examine them through the register of economic and financial policymaking. But my specific focus is bound up with a specific concern, namely, to understand the driving force behind neoliberalism’s relentless need (and ability) to blame external factors for the damage that it wreaks. To my mind, the issue is not just that there is always a new pool of people to blame; it is what sustains this logic of blaming.
In your previous book, you laid out how theological power operates by setting the bad subject(s) up for failure. That logic is paradoxical. On the one hand, it’s essential that there be an element of choice; on the other, waywardness is essential, not contingent. Sociologically, this captures the structure of blame very fruitfully: when we blame, it is very important to our sense of self-righteousness that we believe that the other person has chosen AND that their bad choice captures their essence. The absence of either of these elements would undermine the ability to be invested in blaming.
Your current book discusses in very fruitful ways how this logic acquires a particular kind of currency in neoliberalism. What I miss, though, is a theoretical account of this transition. Why, exactly, is the neoliberal public a “blaming cult,” to cite Benjamin’s expression? Why does a key theological mechanism come to play such a central role in an apparently secular project? To say that neoliberalism is “essentially” theological would be to take the Schmittian route. Nor does saying that it is “still” theological seem to capture what is going on, because we’re not trying to explain the residual influence of this logic but rather its intensification and proliferation.
That’s where political theology as a mode of explanation requires a specifically secular dimension that can’t simply be bridged by emphasizing the fluidity of the theological/secular distinction. In other words, the reinvestment of the theological dimension becomes such an energetic affair precisely because the modern subject always and acutely knows that the devil is a discursive construction. So the blaming acquires a strong defensive function and comes to serve more specifically in a psychoanalytic register. Which returns us to the Trump question: does his idiocy stretch the logic of rational legitimation to such an extent that it is undermining any kind of political order (neoliberalism, in this case), or does this continuous invention and performance of new forms of blaming simply represent the logic of neoliberalism at work?
One way of making sense of neoliberalism’s nasty side is to focus on all the problematic political affinities of its originators. I think this is being done very fruitfully, and it’s absolutely necessary to underscore the roles that racism, elitism, and the like play here. But this approach sometimes prematurely politicizes neoliberalism and makes it hard for us to see how such cynical strategies have had such appeal and traction. Examining the economics of Hayek gives us insight into how a secularized theological logic works: we see him struggle between his thoroughgoing secularism and a constant need to blame the imperfections of capitalism on external circumstances. Which I think is one way to look at the psychological motor of neoliberalism.
Who would have thought, for instance, that pursuing the American Dream of home ownership would turn out to imperil the world economy? But once that happened, the Tea Party movement arose to let us know that those subprime borrowers were to blame for everything and deserved no government assistance of any kind.
Adam Kotsko:
Your last comments bring up a problem I try to address in my chapter on the right-wing reaction—namely, in the alliance between cultural conservatives and neoliberals, what is the end and what the means? Cultural conservatives would probably say that they are using neoliberal policies to restore traditional values (much as Polanyi would roll over in his grave at this idea), and the neoliberals would probably say that they are using those cultural conservatives' expectations as a means of getting their preferred economic model implemented. Perhaps the reason everyone is a dupe—that everyone falls for such cynical policies—is that they assume they're the ones doing the duping in the first place. And then, of course, the "left" neoliberals of the 90s thought that they could use those same policies to more progressive ends, which is, if anything, even more difficult to understand.
My sense is that the reason policy makers find neoliberalism so seductive is a kind of corollary to the fact that neoliberalism has externalized blame—that is to say, it frees me, the policy maker, of responsibility for outcomes. Neoliberalism holds open the promise of achieving all one’s political goals without having to argue for them, without having to struggle for them, without having to answer for them. It’s all supposed to happen automatically, through the indirect action of a perfectly calibrated market!
And isn't this the problem of the market society as a whole? We no longer have to be good, generous people—the invisible hand will transmute our selfish impulses into social good. It is that promise of irresponsibility that gives rise to the cult of blame, and hence the reason that neoliberalism is a cult of blame isn't so much that it is "still" theological (in the sense that there are "leftover" Christian elements), but that it is still capitalist. And I don't think it makes sense to wish for a capitalism purged of those Christian elements, because such a capitalism would simply no longer be capitalist. No matter where those elements came from, they are currently an integral, non-negotiable element of capitalism—which also means that the hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual practice generated by the cult of blame are also integral, non-negotiable elements of capitalism.
Whether Trump represents an endpoint or not is unclear to me. Certainly, he represents a logical endpoint, an extreme manifestation of the transparent bad faith of the system—as when he declares a state of emergency while in the same breath admitting that he didn't have to do so. But the system already has an answer for this: it's not our fault, it's the Russians. The blame-generating machine can even account for the master of blame—and when it does, everyone will be relieved that things are "back to normal." Both Trump and the rejection of Trump can therefore embody the ever-flexible, ever-shifting logic of neoliberalism that you trace so well in your book and that I, from a different angle, have tried to trace as well.
Read Part 1 of Between Political Economy and Political Theology »
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