IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-00553001.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Morals and politics in the ideology of neo-liberalism

Author

Listed:
  • Bruno Amable

    (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse the links between the moral and political aspects of neo-liberal ideology and how appeals to certain ethics may legitimate the establishment of the institutions of neo-liberal capitalism through political action. It presents the original characteristics of neo-liberal ideology by emphasizing how it differs from classical liberalism. Although pressures and contradictions are inherent in neo-liberalism, it is possible to single out some of its most original characteristics which are far more vital to the analysis of capitalism than vague and commonplace notions such as "market fundamentalism". It also describes those moral aspects of neo-liberalism which differ from traditional morals and place the ethos of competitiveness at the centre of social life. It shows how the morals of neo-liberalism are linked to neo-liberal politics and policies. Freed in part from public sovereignty, neo-liberal politics must be guided by a moral imperative linked to competition. This paper reveals the consequences of these morals and politics for the definition of social policy. A contract based on reciprocity between the individual and society is substituted for collective rights to social protection and redistribution. This change in perspective is particularly important for the social policy advocated by the "modern" left.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruno Amable, 2011. "Morals and politics in the ideology of neo-liberalism," Post-Print hal-00553001, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00553001
    DOI: 10.1093/ser/mwq015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Béatrice Parguel & Johnson Guillaume, 2021. "Beyond greenwashing: Addressing 'the great illusion' of green advertising," Post-Print halshs-03425494, HAL.
    2. Clément Carbonnier, 2023. "Welfare Economics and Neoliberalism: Interpreting the ideal type of perfect competition general equilibrium," Working Papers hal-04062786, HAL.
    3. Cohen, Joseph N, 2011. "“Economic freedom” and economic growth: questioning the claim that freer markets make societies more prosperous," MPRA Paper 33758, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Bruno Amable, 2014. "The unsolved contradictions of the modernists. Economic policy expectations and political crisis in France 1978-2012," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00973926, HAL.
    5. Claes Belfrage & Markus Kallifatides, 2018. "Financialisation and the New Swedish Model [Ownership and control in Sweden: strong owners, weak minorities and social control]," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 42(4), pages 875-900.
    6. Victor Wong & Tat Chor Au-Yeung, 2019. "Autonomous precarity or precarious autonomy? Dilemmas of young workers in Hong Kong," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 30(2), pages 241-261, June.
    7. Rafael Robina-Ramírez & Marcelo Sánchez-Oro Sánchez & Héctor Valentín Jiménez-Naranjo & José Castro-Serrano, 2022. "Tourism governance during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis: A proposal for a sustainable model to restore the tourism industry," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(5), pages 6391-6412, May.
    8. Silvia Sacchetti & Carlo Borzaga, 2021. "The foundations of the “public organisation”: governance failure and the problem of external effects," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 25(3), pages 731-758, September.
    9. Lucy Baker, 2021. "Everyday experiences of digital financial inclusion in India's ‘micro-entrepreneur’ paratransit services," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(7), pages 1810-1827, October.
    10. Patrick Bresnihan, 2019. "Revisiting neoliberalism in the oceans: Governmentality and the biopolitics of ‘improvement’ in the Irish and European fisheries," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(1), pages 156-177, February.
    11. Julián Tole Martínez, 2021. "Empresas en el conflicto armado : aportes a la construcción de la paz en Colombia," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Derecho, number 1326.
    12. Hien, Josef, 2017. "The European Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Danger of Ideational Monocultures," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 25(2), pages 115-124.
    13. David Dequech, 2016. "Some Institutions (Social Norms And Conventions) Of Contemporary Mainstream Economics, Macroeconomics, And Financial Economics," Anais do XLIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 43rd Brazilian Economics Meeting] 006, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    14. Charles Harvey & Jillian Gordon & Mairi Maclean, 2021. "The Ethics of Entrepreneurial Philanthropy," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 171(1), pages 33-49, June.
    15. Gustav Hägg & Vera Haataja & Agnieszka Kurczewska & Alexander McKelvie, 2024. "Entrepreneurial Responsibility: A Conceptual Framework to Understand Ethical Dualism Throughout the Entrepreneurial Process," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 48(4), pages 1110-1126, July.
    16. Gregory Jackson, 2016. "Toward a Conceptual Framework for Understanding Institutional Change in Japanese Capitalism: Structural Transformations and Organizational Diversity," Working Papers halshs-01643921, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00553001. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.