A Socio-Cultural Theory of Inclusive Neoliberalism

F. A. Hayek (1899-1992) was one of the most sophisticated thinker of contemporary neoliberalism. His main work is The Constitution of Liberty, 1960. This is a detailed development and redescription of the principles of liberalism of The Road to Serfdom, 1944. If we call contemporary neoliberalism the dominant culture and, on the other hand, the culture of social solidarity the social culture, can we not draw the latter intrinsically from the former? For this purpose I have considered the section ʻEmployment and Independenceʼ in Part 1, Chapter 8 of The Constitution of Liberty. According to him, the modern era is not the era of the ʻindependentsʼ, characterised by private property based on oneʼs labour. It is an era in which the majority of us work as employees. Independents command, and employed people act ʻon the basis of commands given to them by othersʼ. What, then, does it mean that such a society means freedom for the employed? Hayek lumps together fascism, socialism and the welfare state as ʻcollectivismʼ, all of which will sooner or later destroy the ʻfree societyʼ. Indeed, fascism and Soviet socialism collapsed due to a lack of freedom. What about the welfare state? However problematic the welfare state of the past may have been, the free society he relied on is the backdrop to the neoliberalism of the 21 st century, which has brought “war, environmental destruction and economic inequality” (Kojin Karatani). Neoliberalism remains unable to solve them. In view of this diagnosis, the freedom Hayek celebrated was freedom from coercion, especially from the arbitrary coercion of the state. This is the freedom of the separated Einzelne, which ultimately means the freedom of the private person. Moreover, since the private person is a concept that includes both the independent person and the employee, Hayekʼs principle of freedom not only results in the freedom of the private person alienated from the community, but also has as its essential condition the loss of the right of the employee to dispose of his or her work. Neoliberalism cannot claim universal freedom for all as long as it is based on an asymmetrical theory of freedom between the independent and the employee. From this perspective, I conclude that the freedom of the employee lies in the restoration of the ʻdispossition of workʼ and that, for the time being, the welfare state is the will of social rights to ʻdictate to those who dictateʼ. The social culture can only be a new culture that embraces neoliberalism.