Rethinking the ‘neoliberal thought collective’ thesis

ABSTRACT

Numerous scholars have identified the ‘neoliberal thought collective’ as the key driver of the neoliberal transformation. These accounts emphasize the building of neoliberal hegemony through the mobilization of this collective, and the New Right parties who aligned to these ideas. We argue that Australia's corporatist road to neoliberalism pushes against this thesis, as the movement found little sympathy among policy makers. Rather, the thought collective acted more like a ‘ginger group’, attempting to radicalize public debate and create space for new neoliberal arrangements. In Australia, successive centre-left Labor governments rolled out neoliberalism in a series of formal corporatist arrangements with the trade union movement. This paper sets out a reconsideration of the role of the thought collective, on the basis of the Australian experience, and argues this can move us beyond the ideational determinism that has come to characterize key accounts of how neoliberalism developed.

KEYWORDS:

• Neoliberalism
• Australia
• think tanks
• corporatism
• intellectuals
• New Right

ORCID

Elizabeth Humphrys http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0192-0426

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Damien Cahill

Damien Cahill is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. His research examines the dynamics of neoliberalism as well as theories of capitalism as a socially embedded system of value production. His publications include: The End of Laissez-Faire? On the Durability of Embedded Neoliberalism (Edward Elgar 2014) and Neoliberalism with Martijn Konings (Polity Press, 2017).

Elizabeth Humphrys

Elizabeth Humphrys is a political economist at the University of Technology Sydney. Her research focuses on work and labour, and the relationship between economic change and anti-politics. Her first book, How Labour Built Neoliberalism (2019), was recently published in the Brill Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series. Elizabeth is an Associate of the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute.