Neoliberalism needs to be understood not just as a set of economic policies - not just a particular way of deregulating markets or letting loose free enterprise or getting rid of progressive taxes or stripping out the welfare state - all those things are true. But it also needs to be understood as a form of reason that governs us even when there's no tyrant holding over our heads a particular set of threats or a particular set of instruments.

Theorist Wendy Brown examines the anti-democratic logic at the heart of neoliberalism - after a 40-year ruling class project to empty society of all forces but the free market and traditional morality, a libertarian ethno-nationalism regime maintains uses crumbling traditional heirarchies to maintain discipline over a fractured population.

Wend is author of In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West from Columbia University Press.