Page 69 - Šolsko polje, XXIX, 2018, no. 1-2: The Language of Neoliberal Education, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 69
m. a. peters ■ neoliberalism as political discourse ...
and began to embark of massive state asset sales and privatisation strate-
gies to alleviate the state of its financial and welfare responsibilities. The
neoliberal discourse of individual responsibility and market choice gained
traction in endless debates where these ideas contested the prevailing par-
adigm of social democracy.
The classical model of social democracy emphasised its pervasiveness
in economic life where the state predominates over both civil society and
the market with a collectivist welfare orientation based on Keynesian de-
mand management and the mixed economy with narrow role for markets
and an emphasis on full employment. The comprehensive welfare state,
protecting citizens ‘from cradle to grave’ reflected a philosophy of egal-
itarianism based on an inherited value of equality. By comparison, neo-
liberal stressed minimal government and autonomous civil society with a
philosophy of market fundamentalism based on economic individualism
that accepted inequalities and provided welfare state as safety net.
Except for a brief episode of so-called Third Way, a new democrat-
ic state based on active civil society and social investment where equali-
ty is defined in terms on inclusion, neoliberalism has been the only game
in town. The economic discourse of neoliberalism has presided over the
social sciences and humanities as the mega-paradigm for all social be-
haviour. It has export its methodologies to all the social disciplines and
policies and the rational autonomous chooser – ‘the rational utility max-
imiser’ – has been the modern derivation of homo oeconomicus. The ori-
gins of the discourse of family of discourses go back some way historical to
the development of forms of economic liberalism as Foucault so expertly
points out. Indeed, the meta-values of freedom and equality that sustain
philosophical discourses of the 18th and 19th centuries get transcribed and
re-theorised through the introduction of the discipline of political econo-
my beginning with Callon and Adam Smith among others.
The history of equality from antiquity onward reveals that the no-
tion of equality has been considered a constitutive feature of justice
whether in its formal, proportional, or moral sense. Until the eighteenth
century human beings were considered unequal by nature. The princi-
ple of natural equality only became recognized in the modern period be-
ginning in the seventeenth century in the tradition of natural law as de-
fined by Hobbes and Locke, and in social contract theory first postulated
by Rousseau. The equality postulate of universal human worth and the
idea is taken up formally in declarations and modern constitutions, no-
tably the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(1789) (Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen), the American
67
and began to embark of massive state asset sales and privatisation strate-
gies to alleviate the state of its financial and welfare responsibilities. The
neoliberal discourse of individual responsibility and market choice gained
traction in endless debates where these ideas contested the prevailing par-
adigm of social democracy.
The classical model of social democracy emphasised its pervasiveness
in economic life where the state predominates over both civil society and
the market with a collectivist welfare orientation based on Keynesian de-
mand management and the mixed economy with narrow role for markets
and an emphasis on full employment. The comprehensive welfare state,
protecting citizens ‘from cradle to grave’ reflected a philosophy of egal-
itarianism based on an inherited value of equality. By comparison, neo-
liberal stressed minimal government and autonomous civil society with a
philosophy of market fundamentalism based on economic individualism
that accepted inequalities and provided welfare state as safety net.
Except for a brief episode of so-called Third Way, a new democrat-
ic state based on active civil society and social investment where equali-
ty is defined in terms on inclusion, neoliberalism has been the only game
in town. The economic discourse of neoliberalism has presided over the
social sciences and humanities as the mega-paradigm for all social be-
haviour. It has export its methodologies to all the social disciplines and
policies and the rational autonomous chooser – ‘the rational utility max-
imiser’ – has been the modern derivation of homo oeconomicus. The ori-
gins of the discourse of family of discourses go back some way historical to
the development of forms of economic liberalism as Foucault so expertly
points out. Indeed, the meta-values of freedom and equality that sustain
philosophical discourses of the 18th and 19th centuries get transcribed and
re-theorised through the introduction of the discipline of political econo-
my beginning with Callon and Adam Smith among others.
The history of equality from antiquity onward reveals that the no-
tion of equality has been considered a constitutive feature of justice
whether in its formal, proportional, or moral sense. Until the eighteenth
century human beings were considered unequal by nature. The princi-
ple of natural equality only became recognized in the modern period be-
ginning in the seventeenth century in the tradition of natural law as de-
fined by Hobbes and Locke, and in social contract theory first postulated
by Rousseau. The equality postulate of universal human worth and the
idea is taken up formally in declarations and modern constitutions, no-
tably the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen
(1789) (Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen), the American
67
