Neoliberalism's Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital

by Adam Kotsko

“Adam Kotsko’s premise—that the devil and the neoliberal subject can only ever choose their own damnation—is as original as it is breathtaking.” —James Martel, author of Anarchist Prophets   By both its supporters and detractors, neoliberalism is usually considered an economic policy agenda. Neoliberalism’s Demons argues that it is much more than a complete worldview, neoliberalism presents the competitive marketplace as the model for true human flourishing. And it has enjoyed great from the struggle for “global competitiveness” on the world stage down to our individual practices of self-branding and social networking, neoliberalism has transformed every aspect of our shared social life.    The book explores the sources of neoliberalism’s remarkable success and the roots of its current decline. Neoliberalism’s appeal is its promise of freedom in the form of unfettered free choice. But that freedom is a we have just enough freedom to be accountable for our failings, but not enough to create genuine change. If we choose rightly, we ratify our own exploitation. And if we choose wrongly, we are consigned to the outer darkness—and then demonized as the cause of social ills. By tracing the political and theological roots of the neoliberal concept of freedom, Adam Kotsko offers a fresh perspective, one that emphasizes the dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality. More than that, he accounts for the rise of right-wing populism, arguing that, far from breaking with the neoliberal model, it actually doubles down on neoliberalism’s most destructive features.  “One of the most compelling critical analyses of neoliberalism I’ve yet encountered, understood holistically as an economic agenda, a moral vision, and a state mission.” —Peter Hallward, author of Badiou

Genres: Politics, Economics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theology, Theory, Religion

178 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Adam Kotsko (b. 1980) is an American writer on theology, philosophy and popular culture, also known for his contributions to the blogosphere. His printed works include Why We Love Sociopaths (2012), Awkwardness (2010), and the authoritative Žižek and Theology (2008). Kotsko joined the faculty of Shimer College in Chicago in 2011, teaching the humanities component of Shimer's Great Books curriculum. Kotsko earned his BA at Olivet Nazarene University, and his MA and Ph.D. at the Chicago Theological Seminary. (from Shimer College Wiki)

Reviews

[Ryan Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

03/02/2024
Second time through this one. I think it’s one of the most important books I’ve ever read in terms of understanding the current state of the world. I will read it again and again.

26/01/2021
I’m new to political theology, so this one was tough for me. But it helped me to understand why neoliberalism is such an entrenched system despite the massive harms it perpetrates on so many people. Kotsko's thesis is that rather than being a political system or order, neoliberalism is built on the moral foundation of agency. Specifically, this agency has been twisted to mean the freedom of individuals to compete for economic gains. This entrenched ideal has enshrined competition as the highest virtue, with the invisible hand of the market playing God and deciding the winners and losers, with the winners lionized for their success, and the losers blamed for their failure. Kotsko's analysis is dense, thoughtful, and refreshingly original, and offers some hard truths about how we got into the neoliberal hellscape, and how we might escape.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Another Review I'm phoning in.

Kotsko is a sane breeze in an insane time when most commentators about these times just can't seem to break through the ice of their neoliberal subject position. Some of us (still) have seen and experienced that there are other possibilities.

Here's a review from Sojouners ::

"Neoliberalism Demonizes All of Us"
By Jon Greenaway
https://sojo.net/articles/neoliberali...


and too you should be reading his blog ::
https://itself.blog/

[Luke Echo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unsatisfying.

I was curious about Kotsko's work since he has done a few of the recent translations of Agamben's work. And he is quite prolific it seems. But there was something just a little unsatisfying with Kotsko's rearticulation of a more general method of 'political theology'. In the process it seemed to be watered down and emptied of its particularity. All we are left with is a kind of lose connection between 'demonisation' in neo-liberalism and theological demons, in that both are legitimating doctrines for a particular Weltanschauung.

I agree with his critique of Arendt and the shortcoming of Wendy Brown's book - which I also found rather weak when I read it a few years ago. However, I also found Kotsko's thesis only barely supported. It was more like an outline, or gesture of a thesis, with some indicative hints at its proof, than a philosophically robust argument. It was all just a bit too vague. Where is the real work?

I was expecting something much more substantiated, in the vein of Carl Schmitt's 'Dictatorship'. A text that really works through the sources, rather than gestures vaguely at the level of secondary discourse, which is what Kotsko largely does. Its an interesting idea but not properly supported.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took my a while to get going with this one, since it's written for a field, political theology, with which I was not previously familiar, and engages heavily with a number of works of which I have only read one (Polyani's The Great Transformation). Once I got over the hurdles, though, I found it very interesting. The central idea is a definition of 'demonization' lifted from Christian theology, where Satan etc. are said to have had free will which was used in order to rebel, establishing their blameworthiness. A similar idea exists in the neoliberal idea of economic freedom, where negative outcomes are blamed not on systemic issues, but on the nominally free decisions of individuals. What is important is that freedom under neoliberalism exists, not to uplift humanity, but to establish that each individual is nominally free to make economic choices and, thus, blameworthy for their own economic circumstances.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another marvelous and provocative work from Kotsko. This can be read alone, but is especially rich when considered alongside its predecessor The Prince of This World.

This book, though, feels so timely. Kotsko is making a bold suggestion of how political theology should henceforward be viewed and practiced. To then argue, first by showing the dead ends of previous modes (many hamstrung by what Kotsko calls Arendt’s axiom, the clear delineation of the economic and the political) and then by fruitfully deploying his new mode in an analysis of our own absurd, dark, and chaotic moment, is quite persuasive.

That he somehow manages to offer some glimmers of hope and even inspiration in the closing pages was a welcome surprise.

Great stuff. Highly recommended.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didnt care much for the chapters relating to the development of his brand of Political Theology framework which ended up meaning the book is short enough to read in an afternoon over a cup of coffee

It is still an immensely interesting perspective on the symbolic and ritualist analogies between the forms of life that predated liberal democracy and our current state of affairs

The inherent demonization of the working class is ofc the books most salient point and it definitely provides tough questions for even the most well-meaning "nudge" inclined neoliberal to answer, a challenge that I have sincerely struggled to meet

that said Im taking out 1 star cuz Adam unfollowed me on twitter after our argument over Afghanistan and I still maintain I was completely in the right

[Rui Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

A versão de teologia política que o Kotsko apresenta é-me bem apelativa.

Also, este livro para mim apresenta uma crítica da meritocracia (como legitimação do processo de demonização) bem mais interessante que a do Sandel

[Ben Thurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating stuff. In this slim, tightly argued work, Kotsko mounts a case against neoliberalism as "a political theological paradigm that governs every sphere of social life", extending his theological analysis through the concept of "demonization". He mounts, too, what to my mind is a very productive rescue of political theology from unhelpful binaries which stand the "political" and the "economic" in opposition, and which privilege the political. He refers to this as the "Arendt axiom", rightly arguing that this dichotomy is false, noting helpfully the ways in which every political theological paradigm "reconfigures that binary for its own ends." In so doing, he makes a strong argument for a new kind of political theology; one that is able to move beyond an overwhelming focus on the state and sovereignty that has so characterised the discipline.

Kotsko defines neoliberalism, after a brief survey of other approaches, as a system claiming legitimacy and meaning based on a distinct vision of "freedom" as the highest human calling and expression. According to the logic of neoliberalism, market competition, rendered in deeply individualistic terms, is the the foundation of and goal for human flourishing by which right judgements and distinctions between persons, groups, and nations may be made. And this is not, he argues, a matter of placing the "economic" above the "political", or reducing persons to mere economic units with no political agency. Neoliberalism is not, as Wendy Brown might argue, a purely economic antipolitics. Kotsko argues that neoliberalism governs the both the economy and the state, reaching deep into every aspect of human life – family structure, religion, sexual practice, gender relations and racialization – via "demonization".

This is Kotsko's most significant move linking his assessment of neoliberalism and his recasting of political theological concerns. "Whereas most political theological accounts focus on the parallel between God and his earthly counterpart, [he argues] that is the parallel between God's demonic foes and the social order's subjugated populations that is most decisive for our understanding of neoliberalism." Kotsko's definition of "demonization" (which he reaches by a particular theological account of the existence of evil and the creation of the "demonic" for God's ultimate glory, is "to set someone up to fall, providing them with just the barest sliver of agency necessary to render them blameworthy". This dynamic, he argues, applies just as necessarily to the "secularized providence of the self-regulating market."

This is so because both the openly theological and ostensibly secular version of providence depend precisely on drawing good out of our negative inclinations: in theological terms our sinfulness and lust of the flesh, in secular terms our selfish and base material desires. The virtue of the invisible hand is that it is able to take our specifically self-interested choices and harmonize them into social good.

Yet, the providential hand of the market, like its divine model, is not content simply to wait around for us to make selfish decisions. It must force us to be selfish in the particular way it demands, which means seeking open-ended material gain. Any impulse to seek the social good directly, apart from the grace of the market, must be stifled. For the wealthy, ideological discourse is often sufficient, while for the workers themselves, a more powerful form of persuasion is required - namely, the ever-present threat of starvation.

In this neoliberal strategy we are all blameworthy victims, whose fates are our own fault. But Kotsko highlights ways that demonized others are particularly vulnerable to the brutal and implacable logic of scapegoating and blame, neoliberal disciplining and the punishment meted out by the carceral state – particularly low-wage workers and the unemployed, ethnic minorities, single mothers, and those in Trump's "shithole countries" plundered through colonialism and through the post-colonial era of "structural adjustment". Neoliberalism generates distinctly neoliberal forms of racism, misogony and homophobia as it mobilises and directs resentment and hostility against target groups and communities.

In the face of the abundant evidence of normative neoliberalism's harmful effects, Kotsko offers some signs of hope and sketches of a strategy for resisting and overthrowing its sway. The contradictions and unsustainbility of neoliberalism, he claims, are bringing it to a point of crisis, but it will take a consistent and determined struggle at multiple levels to both "with draw consent from the neoliberal order by developing a new and more meaningful conception of freedom" and to construct a mode of political and economic decision-making that does not rely on any "invisible hand" but which consciously and collectively directs production and distribution of fundamental economic goods and which nurtures inclusion of many voices, particularly those silenced in the neoliberal order.

We can only hope that we are up to the task and work towards making it a reality.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent in its own right, but I found this especially interesting for the context it gives to other works about neoliberalism, such as David Harvey and Wendy Brown's books. It also spurred me to go out and get Polanyi's The Great Transformation.

[Iqra Shagufta Cheema · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the smartest books I’ve read recently. The writer makes brilliant observations, provides pithy analyses, but still manages to keep it very accessible. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this.

[Joseph Sverker · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many ways a very a/theological political theology in that a main point in Kotsko's book is the argument for humanity's coming of age independent of gods, whether it be the neoliberal or medieval kind. Kotsko's rewriting of political theology as a question of legitimacy is very interesting though and a welcome step away from the long, long, long shadow of Schmitt. Kotsko makes clear in the beginning that he sees similarities with neoliberalism and medieval theology. This could be stressed more clearly in some parts of the book though where it seems as if Kotsko presents a "mainstream" Christian theology and relates that to neoliberalism.

The main point about demonization is well argued though. Due to the stress on the individual's choice, the individual will also bear the brunt of failure in every case. You need to choose, but you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't, Kotsko seems to argue - unless you belong to the 1%. In that way the human being under neoliberalism is in many ways under the same condition as the demon in Christian theology - as the demon is portrayed in medieval Catholic theology that is.

[Mason Wyss · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but it really could have been an article or should have focused more on its thesis than justifying the analytical framework that surrounded it. And Kotsko spent way too much time saying what he has done and will do in the book. Really annoying to do that after the introduction, and he does it in every chapter several times.

The introduction says that some readers may find themselves wanting to skip the first two chapters which focus on the history of political theology and other interpretations of neoliberalism, but that they should stick it out. The thing is, that history could have been one paragraph and I’d have been on board with his wider definition of political theology than is classically defined. I found that all very unrewarding in justifying his method.

Secondly, I found that the later chapters did not spend as much time as I would have liked explaining and cataloging demonization under neoliberalism. Or maybe they spent enough time but were not written clearly enough.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not even sure I can put my feelings into words and articulate how I feel about this book.

Adam Kotsko does a great job at laying out his methodology in the first two chapters, which provide really useful insights into Christian theology, as well as laying the groundwork for his analysis in the later two chapters.

I'd easily say this is a necessary reading for anyone looking for the tools to understand the complex issues facing the globe and the constraints on looking for solutions to those problems.

The book was very well written, and I really enjoyed it while learning a ton!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not going to lie, I wanted a bit more demon-talk . . . but the strength is in not forcing or sensationalizing that divide and only slightly shifting the perspective through political theology in order to see more clearly and broadly what is stake in our current order of establishing value and legitimacy.

[Alexander Pyles · Rating 3 out of 5]

*review pending*

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Terrifically generative and insightful, but it feels rushed or unfinished, as if he could grab only the most obvious examples or the ones most familiar to him.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great political imagination, and provocative connections.

[Jeremy]

Politics and economics still goes over my head but slowly gaining more understanding. I think the gap is more history...anyways this was a generally helpful read.