In her new book, Wendy Brown brings her immense intellectual powers to bear on what is arguably the most important but also the most difficult question: Where are we? Brown has an outstanding track record not only as a theorist but also as a perceptive diagnostician of “what our present is,” to borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault. In In the Ruins of Neoliberalism she continues this diagnostic work, addressing the seemingly contradictory mélange of neoliberal and (ultra-)conservative, populist, or outright authoritarian ingredients.
The approach Brown pursues in her book rests on two key assumptions. First, she highlights the importance of a view of neoliberalism that is not confined to the strictly economic realm but also takes into account that “nothing is untouched by a neoliberal mode of reason and valuation,” implying that its critical analysis also “requires appreciating neoliberal political culture and subject “production” (p. 8). This means, among other things, that neoliberalism is not understood as an exclusively economizing project but rather as a political one that promotes the duo of markets and morals. It is through this novel conceptualization, which builds on the pioneering work of Melinda Cooper on the mediations between neoliberalism and social conservatism, that Brown gains a diagnostic handle on the more reactionary aspects of the contemporary conjuncture; for example, treating appeals to traditional morality not so much as antithetical to but as part and parcel of neoliberalism.
However, this does not lead her to the conclusion that ours is simply a neoliberal world properly understood in its more encompassing meaning, which brings us to the second key assumption. To be sure, neoliberalism did prepare the ground for the mess that today’s world appears to be. However, Brown maintains that neoliberals and neoliberalism are not its cause in the strict sense of the term. After all, the result of a decade-long pursuit of the neoliberal project is not a world straight out of the neoliberal textbook but rather a political-economic landscape that would be abhorrent to its intellectual founding fathers, Brown argues: far from a straightforward neoliberal dream come true, the present is ripe with aspects and elements that represent genuine nightmares to the neoliberal imagination. In other words, we live in a world that is marked by the unintended consequences of the neoliberal project, which have even turned it into its opposite in some respects. It is a world that had to endure a frontal attack in the name of markets and morals, which still only succeeded halfway and consequently created a monstrous hybrid of what might be called authoritarian neoliberalism: in this sense, we truly live in the ruins of neoliberalism.
The focus of the opening chapter, “Society Must be Dismantled” (which is a play on the title of Foucault’s lectures, Society Must be Defended), is the realm of the social and an account of neoliberalism’s tactics and the rationale behind its attack on society, including the concomitant notion of social justice. Not surprisingly, the main reference point here is the work of Friedrich Hayek who (in-)famously lashed out against the notion of social justice as deeply inimical to notions of individual freedom. As Brown shows, Hayek’s concern is that politically mandated justice will destroy the twin spontaneous orders of market and morality. His strategy consists in a negation of the realm of the social, including structural powers of domination, and instead focusing on a narrowly conceived notion of coercion as the sole threat to individual liberty. The result of this erasing of the social, which is also the locus of democracy and the concrete experience of the nonfamilial other, is individual freedom disembedded and thus turned into unlimited license.
In the second chapter, “Politics Must Be Dethroned” (which is a reference to Hayek’s demand to the same effect), neoliberal reservations regarding democracy are subjected to critical scrutiny. Brown’s starting point is to identify the political as the actual cause of concern for neoliberals, who sought to constrict and de-democratize it. Three varieties of neoliberal thought—Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and the German Ordoliberals—are examined in order to identify their respective critiques and remedies. Although these differ notably—for example, Hayek’s critique of sovereignty as the root problem of democracy against the ordoliberal espousal of strong, unified, and thus sovereign statehood as the very solution to that problem—the bottom line is the thrust toward a polity in which markets (and morality) are made safe from the intrusions of democracy. However, as in Frankenstein’s experiment, things go wrong. Brown shows that neoliberalism may have succeeded in demolishing democratic life across the board, but its failure to thoroughly theorize the political comes back to haunt it in the form of contemporary authoritarian forces that seize on the destabilization of liberal democracy to bring about that alter-neoliberal world we live in today.
Chapters 3 and 4 are devoted to the way “the personal, protected sphere must be extended” (p. 89), with the latter chapter focusing on the judicial dimensions of this undertaking through a critical reading of two recent Supreme Court decisions. The starting point of the argument is Hayek and his lauding of tradition, morality, and even—if only for strategic reasons—religion as noncoercive, spontaneously evolved orders that must be protected against the intrusions of state and democracy. Hayek thus serves as the prime example of the neoliberal entanglement of markets and morality/tradition and also offers some of the crucial strategies: restricting democratic calls for social justice through the requirement of general rules, and so on, and, conversely, expanding the private sphere that is shielded against state intrusion. However, the result is an actually existing neoliberalism that is twisted in any number of ways, where traditional values are politicized and commercialized and thus turned into the opposite of what Hayek thought they would provide. Freedom is no longer restrained by such traditions as he conceived of it; rather, it is a raw will to power that emerges from uninhibited freedom.
In the concluding chapter on fatalism, ressentiment, and nihilism, Brown draws on Nietzsche and Marcuse to discuss how the neoliberal-driven trivialization of values (from democracy to truth and morality) breeds nihilism that results in something close to what Marcuse called “repressive desublimation.” The latter loosens the reins of individual conscience and also releases the expectations of social conscience. As “nihilism intersects neoliberalism” (p. 171), vengeance becomes the battle cry born of the wounded sense of entitlement held by what used to be a diffuse ruling class of white men that now lives out its apocalyptic fatalism: if they cannot rule anymore, they will try to take everybody else down with them.
In the Ruins of Neoliberalism is a powerful book replete with acute observations, nuanced insight, and bold theorizing. It is also written with an eloquence and style that are evident down to the very rhythm that sentences and entire passages exude. Still, there are four broad issues I would like to highlight where Brown’s text prompts further questions.
First, despite some references to the European context, In the Ruins is a book that speaks to the transformations of neoliberalism in the context of the United States; however, it is not clear to what extent the respective arguments are generalizable and whether Brown would suggest that this is the general shape and form of neoliberalism today—which is a claim not easily defended. Similarly, despite the attempt to ground her claims in a neoliberal tradition that is understood to include a certain range of positions (as in her discussion of neoliberal critiques of democracy), there are parts of the book that rely heavily—and at times solely—on Hayek. This is most obvious and consequential in the case of the neoliberal appreciation of tradition and morality. The argument fits really well with Hayek, and it would probably fit as well with Ordoliberals. Still, it might be more difficult to square with someone like Milton Friedman, his known appreciation of the family notwithstanding. Although I find the interpretation of neoliberalism as a project of markets and morals to be prima facie highly plausible, it would still have to be demonstrated with respect to a broader range of thinkers.
This brings me to the second point, which is partly a matter of warring interpretations of Hayek and his take on morality, as well as on reform and history, more generally speaking. Brown emphasizes the conservative Hayek of tradition and rejects his own distancing from conservatism. But there is more ambiguity to this than Brown acknowledges. After all, the spontaneous order of traditional morality may be evolving slowly, but an evolutionary account such as Hayek’s will always emphasize the room for mutation and experimentation inherent in such an order. Traditions, therefore, are hardly locked in, and Hayek insists that his account is different from a conservative reflex to pull the brakes on any (moral) innovation. Ultimately, this points to a well-known ambiguity in Hayek’s overall framework where the quasi-conservative espousal of tradition and opposition to large-scale transformation sits uneasily next to his own calls for radical and abrupt reforms in the neoliberal spirit. If this is an accurate interpretation, what would this imply for neoliberalism understood as markets plus morals, given that Hayek is the key witness supporting this interpretation?
The third point is also related to the frame of reference of Brown’s book, which is mostly neoliberalism, US style. What emerges from her narrative is an unbridled freedom largely understood as a de-sublimated will to power that simply does not care about its own conscience, society, or the future of the planet, acting out its instinctual impulses in an almost hedonistic manner. Still, how does this sit with accounts of actually existing neoliberalism that stress its disciplinary aspects, ranging from the installment of workfare regimes across the OECD world to generalized austerity, in the very name of futurity—that our children’s children should not be forced to pay off our debts? In a nutshell, where Brown sees license and de-sublimation, I (also) see the harsh discipline of a punitive neoliberalism, to borrow a term from William Davies, which is all about a (financial) future orientation or at least pretends to be.
This brings up the final issue. Brown answers the question as to where we are in the most admirable fashion; still, she remains conspicuously silent on the follow-up: Where do/should we go from here? Although I think it is perfectly legitimate to focus on the diagnostic side without offering too much on the constructive side, some gestures as to how definitive and also possibly irreversible she deems the current transformations to be would have been welcome, especially given the ominously dark coloring of the last chapter.
