This strange phenomenon points to the core question that drove my research in Neoliberalism’s Demons: if everyone either hates neoliberalism or denies that it exists, then why do people go along with it? I presuppose that the neoliberal order has been dominant for at least a generation (roughly since Thatcher and Reagan) and that it has had the destructive effects that its critics attribute to it—of which the Global Financial Crisis is only the most spectacular example—and ask how such a system could be regarded as legitimate and binding upon populations that have for the most part grown more materially insecure and politically disempowered under its sway.

Ever since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, neoliberalism has been an object of increasing debate and critique. Since the late 1970s, neoliberalism has reshaped public policy and arguably every area of life on the model of market competition, which it presents as the most authentic expression of human freedom. But the term itself has largely been the province of academic analysts, and it was arguably only in the wake of the contentious Democratic presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders that it entered the mainstream political lexicon. Still, the debate over neoliberalism has in many ways been a missed encounter. On the one hand, left-wing critics of neoliberalism have used the term, with varying degrees of precision, to characterize everything that is wrong and unjust in the political-economic system. On the other hand, mainstream liberals, far from defending neoliberalism, insist that it simply does not exist. We are faced with a bizarre situation wherein the ruling ideology of our age is either viewed as destructive or completely disavowed.

Neoliberalism's Demons» explores the sources of neoliberalism's remarkable success and the roots of its current decline.

The question of neoliberalism’s legitimacy is not an economic, or even a political one. It is not simply a matter of tracing the history of the laws and policies that created the neoliberal world but of understanding the ways that the neoliberal paradigm exercises its influence. As many commentators have shown, this influence is profound: it goes beyond public policy to shape our own sense of ourselves and our self-worth. Under neoliberalism, we are continually marketing ourselves; we establish a personal brand where we might once have had a reputation, or we network where we might once have made friends. This market for selfhood is a deeply competitive one. We are in a constant struggle for attention, prestige, and respect—and can easily lose all three at any moment.

Clearly it is not enough to point to the power of law and state enforcement when dealing with such phenomena. There is a coercive element to neoliberalism, yet it would not be able to function without the soft power of persuasion and voluntary compliance. In other words, neoliberalism needs to make something like a moral claim on us. Neoliberalism’s Demons contends that it achieves this by emphasizing the value of freedom. In many ways, the neoliberal model of freedom is very narrow: it prizes participation in the market through voluntary transactions and contractual agreements above all else. As for other forms of freedom—particularly the freedom to engage in collective rather than individual action—they are dismissed or even proclaimed contrary to “true” freedom. But this very narrowness is what grants neoliberalism its remarkable consistency and staying power.

To show why this is so, I draw on the conceptual resources of political theology. This hybrid field, which originated in the work of the German jurist Carl Schmitt, studies the often striking parallels between political and theological systems as well as the “secularization” of medieval theological concepts in modern political thought. My book attempts to broaden the field. It asks why parallels between the political and theological realms should exist in the first place and answers that both realms deal with a similar problem. On the theological side, we can speak of the problem of evil, namely, the problem of how an all-powerful and all-beneficent God can allow bad and unjust things to take place. On the political side, we can speak of the problem of legitimacy, which is to say, the problem of why the political order deserves our obedience and allegiance. I contend that these problems are fundamentally one and the same: the problem of evil asks why God deserves to rule over creation, and the problem of legitimacy asks why the political order allows bad things to happen to good people.

Under neoliberalism, we are continually marketing ourselves; we establish a personal brand where we might once have had a reputation, or we network where we might once have made friends.

Freedom provides neoliberalism with an easy answer to the political problem of evil: bad things happen because we have chosen for them to happen. The market chooses winners and losers, and we all choose how to equip ourselves for market competition. Whatever happens, no matter how apparently unjust or arbitrary, thus reflects the free choice of everyone involved, which is in turn reflected in market outcomes. This dynamic reveals that the neoliberal concept of freedom is narrow in still another way. Not only is it limited to market transactions, but it is limited to generating blameworthiness.

And this, I argue, is where we find the strongest parallel between neoliberalism and Christian theology. In its classical forms, Christianity has always insisted on the existence of human free will, even while also insisting that exercising that will in any way that does not echo the will of God is evil or destructive. In other words, God has given us free will so that we will freely choose not to use it. This reasoning offers a two-pronged solution to the problem of evil. On the one hand, God is not responsible for it, as evil results from the free choice of his creatures; on the other, out of evil, God can draw even greater good, at once undoing that evil while ensuring that it contributes to his glory.

Over the centuries of Christian tradition, this latter point is increasingly emphasized, and eventually, it appears that God, in his endless pursuit of glory, actually entraps rebellious angels (that is, demons) in order to make sure that there is plenty of evil available for redirection toward the greater good. It is this perverse pattern that gives my book its title. My intention is not to demonize neoliberalism but to show how neoliberalism demonizes us. Just as God lures the fallen angels into making the mistakes that he will gloriously correct, so too does neoliberalism entrap us into taking the fall for its shortcomings and failures—all for the greater glory of shareholder value.

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Adam Kotsko is on the faculty of the Shimer Great Books School of North Central College. His most recent book is The Prince of This World (Stanford, 2016).