Hayek, Friedman, Buchanan: The Villains of “Neoliberalism”
In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West
by Wendy Brown
Columbia University Press, 2019
viii 248 pages
Wendy Brown, a well-known political theorist who teaches at UC Berkeley, does not like Friedrich Hayek very much. She in part blames him and others as well, including Milton Friedman and James Buchanan, for policies that have led to the bad state of the world in general and America in particular today. In the Ruins of Neoliberalism covers other topics, ranging from the case of the Colorado cake maker who refused to create a cake for a same-sex couple to the rise of nihilism about values and Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive desublimation” (not a good thing, I assure you); but I shall concentrate on what she says about Hayek.
Her most fundamental criticism of Hayek is that he opposes democracy in the sense in which she favors it. In her view,
democracy signifies political arrangements through which a people rules itself. Political equality is democracy’s foundation. Everything else is optional—from constitutions, to personal liberty, from specific economic forms to specific political institutions. Political equality alone ensures that the composition and exercise of political power is authorized by the whole and accountable to the whole. When political equality is absent, whether from extreme social or economic disparities, from uneven or managed access to knowledge, or from manipulation of the electoral system, political power will inevitably be exercised by and for a part, rather than the whole. The demos ceases to rule. (p. 23, emphasis mine)
One thing is missing from her account which you would expect to be present. Why is democracy in her sense a “good thing”? Is it just supposed to be obvious that it is? No doubt there are worse political systems than democracy, e.g., a communist dictatorship, but why is democracy to be preferred above all other social arrangements? She does not tell us. Her reticence is surprising in view of the considerable sympathy she show
Article from Mises Wire
