How judges made neoliberalism

In the growing field of books about the neoliberal economic era in the United States, there are many that focus on neoliberalism as a political and legislative project, pointing to the expansion of free trade agreements, the push to lower taxes and reduce regulation, and the export of this model to developing countries through the so-called Washington Consensus that held sway at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s. In these accounts, a symbolic starting point of neoliberalism is the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

Mehrsa Baradaran is a law professor, and this gives The Quiet Coup a unique perspective on neoliberalism. For Baradaran, neoliberalism was as much about court decisions and legal ideologies as it was about legislation. In particular, Baradaran argues that what we now call neoliberalism originates in both the wave of independence in former colonies in the 1950s and 1960s and the backlash to the civil rights movement. Neoliberalism, she writes, was not primarily about reacting to Keynesian economics at home “but rather a rhetorical tactic in forestalling a racial reckoning.” Her arguments are sweeping, fascinating, and largely persuasive.

Baradaran illuminates the racial inflection of many ideas of early proponents of neoliberalism, such as Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, Lewis Powell, and Friedrich Hayek. Greenspan, for instance, was largely responsible for Richard Nixon’s racially charged approach to the 1968 presidential campaign, even though Greenspan as an economist had no background in social policy. Greenspan argued that the government should not engage in efforts to address the historic injustices that fed racial uprisings during the campaign. To do so would be an unjustifiable intervention in market dynamics that would impoverish the people it sought to help. Baradaran notes wryly that Greenspan’s memo laying out this strategy “contained no numbers, data, or cited studies. What Nixon . . . wanted was not Greenspan’s knowledge or expertise, but his ideology. . . . Greenspan helped the campaign adapt [George] Wallace’s resentful message on race . . . and present it as an embrace of capitalism and liberty.”