For the purposes of our project, there are two matters of importance regarding neoliberalism.

Firstly, and most obviously, is the basic question of what is neoliberalism? This will be answered with
an examination of the capitalistic tendencies which made the creation of the neoliberal mode of
governing necessary, drawing primarily from the work of David Harvey on this exact subject. Second is
the question which inevitably follows this investigation: what kind of governed subject does this system
of neoliberalism require in order to reproduce itself? Michel Foucault, who wrote extensively about
this very issue, will be our central theorist used to address this topic. To put it as simply as possible,
neoliberalism will here be understood as a shift in capitalist governmentality from a subjectivity based
upon exchange to one based upon competition. Explaining the reason for this shift will begin by
outlining the historical circumstances which birthed neoliberal economics and ideology.

In the post-World War II era following the economic fallout of the 1930s, we can see a global
capitalism founded heavily on the ideas of John Keynes, which was characterized by an emphasis on
state intervention in market processes and welfare programs. This was implemented under the notion
of a class compromise between capital and labor,1 which was purported to be a solution in response
to what were perceived as the failures of the capitalist and communist projects characterizing the
beginning of the century. Although this strategy allowed for a short term period of economic growth in
capitalist societies, by end of the 1960s into the middle of the 70s, the usual symptoms of capitalism
itself resurfaced: widespread capital inflation and unemployment among the lower classes.2 The cause
for these symptoms was the, as Harvey puts it, rigidity3 of this kind of social democratic Keynesianism,
the interventionist approach of which wasnt capable of competing with newly developing offshore
manufacturing in the Third World, where the social contract with labor was either weakly enforced or
non-existent.4

In other words, the constraints on labor placed on capitalist industry by the state under
Keynesianism, in addition to the popularity at the time of workers movements within the most
prominent capitalist societies, left the top economic 1%, particularly in the United States, in an unstable
position in regards to capital accumulation. Since local labor was so expensive compared to overseas
locations, where restrictions on labor were nearly absent, it was necessary for the capitalist class to
outsource production in order to make a profit, or to extract a surplus-value. This is the most obvious
reason for widespread unemployment in developed capitalist countries, while the spike in inflation is
also explained by the same circumstances: the only tool of flexible response [was] the capacity to
print money at whatever rate appeared necessary to keep the economy stable.5 Harvey uses the term
stagflation for this trend, which signifies a stagnant output of goods and high inflation prices.6 There
was only one possible outcome of such a state of affairs: a traumatically sharp decline in both capital
accumulation as well as the rate of profit, both of which saw a roughly 10% decrease in the years leading
up to 1975.7 Although the reason for these movements within capitalism would be displaced on to other
entities, which will be discussed in detail below, the character of the economic crisis of the 70s may
strike a familiar chord: the law of tendency of the rate of profit to fall outlined by Marx in Capital
Volume III.8 As stated by Andrew Kliman, a professor of economics, Over the [past] six decades there

1
Harvey 10
2
12
3
Pomo Harvey 142
4
Ibid 141
5
Ibid 142
6
Ibid 145
7
pollin
8
Marx
was little long-run change in either the relation between profit and wages or the rate at which money
prices rose in relation to commodities real values employment grew more slowly than capital was
accumulated via investment. The slow growth of employment in relation to capital accumulation
accounts for almost all of the fall in the rate of profit over these six decades. 9 To put this simply, the
series of crises and market instabilities sustained by capitalism over the past several decades happens to
follow a trend, outlined by Marx over a century ago, which is structural to the capitalist mode of
production as such.

We should pause in our timeline to make a point about the causation of neoliberal society which
is crucial for the purposes of this essay. What we have seen is that the conditions which would give birth
to neoliberalism were determined out of economic, material processes, which were of course a direct
result of capitalism itself. The implications of this are anything but minimal if one considers the way
neoliberalism is typically discussed in contemporary society. We can look to a New York Times article
by the 2016 United States presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for an example of this, when he writes
The global economy is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic
elitewe need to fundamentally reject our free trade policies and move to fair trade.10 Sanders is
here repeating a conception of neoliberalism which is common in much of contemporary media:
neoliberalism is a set of trade agreements and policies put in place by an elite group of politicians,
particularly Thatcher and Reagan, in an effort to consolidate wealth and power for the capitalist class.
Whether or not this is the case is beside the point, we should look here to Michael Rechtenwalds notion
of political determinism11 to see the flaw in this logic: as our analysis above has demonstrated, viewing
neoliberalism as only the result of political decisions is to ignore the troubled state capitalism found
itself in which made the creation of neoliberalism as ideology and economics necessary in the first place.
In other words, our essay will be taking a vulgar Marxist approach to neoliberalism: it is an ideology
and mode of governing which arose out of a material and economic base, namely the decrepit state of
late-twentieth century capitalism, and the problems it posed to its society. As such, it is reasonable to
say that the products of neoliberal ideology are rooted in economic realities.

The response to the Keynesian failure to save capitalism from itself did not involve a critical
examination of the functioning of the capitalist system. Rather, we here enter the era of neoliberalism
which has characterized global capitalist society as of late. It is fair to say that neoliberalism could be
theorized on two distinct levels, first as an economic practice, which is to say the way the capitalist
mode of production currently functions, and second as in ideology which produces and favors a certain
kind of subjectivity.

Famously, neoliberal economic practice is most often associated with an emphasis on the
autonomy of the capitalist market, which is typically positioned as being diametrically opposed to any
kind of state interventionism in the internal workings of the market.12 Upon a cursory analysis, this is not
the case. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the ratio of government tax
revenue to GDP across 21 developed countries has been between 35 to 40 percent since at least
1990.13 Taking this into account alongside the numerous anti-union laws implemented by both Thatcher
and Reagan in their respective eras,14 it is clear to see that although the neoliberal economic movement

9
Kliman
10
sanders
11
rechtenwald
12
harman
13
UN thing
14
harman
may position itself as being against any kind of state involvement in the activities of the market, there is
a degree of state participation nearly on par with the Keynesian era, just with a reversal of focus; under
neoliberalism, the state is utilized for the benefit of the capitalist class. As for the worker, their position
is best summarized by neoliberalisms focus on flexibility as described by Harvey: Workers are hired on
contract, and in the neoliberal scheme of things short-term contracts are preferred in order to maximize
flexibility.15 Neoliberalism, in its embrace of the contradiction between labor and capital, has
strategically utilized this idea of a disposable worker,16 detached and individuated from any one
particular employer, in order to avoid the complications an organized labor force (presumably with the
memory of the social democratic, labor-focused movements of the mid-twentieth century in mind) may
pose to a capitalist mode of production which has historically suffered as a result of such forms of labor
organization. This economic necessity for an individualized consciousness laid the groundwork for both a
politico-economic philosophy centered on the interactions between autonomous individuals on the free
market, as well as a demand for a subjectivity characterized by self-regulation and the intentional
selling of ones self. To quote Thatcher herself, under neoliberalism, we are all capitalists.

What makes neoliberalism distinguishable from other forms of ideology is both its historical
context, as a way of rescuing a capitalism in decline, as well as its unrelenting faith in the ability of
unrestrained market competition to mediate societal issues, to mobilize even the basest of human
instincts such as gluttony, greed, and the desire for wealth and power for the benefit of all.17 According
to Harvey, this form of ideology can be traced back to a group of intellectuals headed by Friedrich von
Hayek, a political philosopher notable for his vehement support of the free market and individualism-
centered ethics. Hayek was accompanied by a number of other economists, philosophers, and
historians, notably Ludvig von Mises and Milton Friedman. Harvey appears to characterize this group of
thinkers as the neoliberals proper, or as the theoreticians largely responsible for popularizing the
ideology which is most often associated with neoliberal capitalism.18 It is with this historical/economic
context in mind that we should approach Foucaults conception of the neoliberal subject.

For Foucault, neoliberalism is not just a new ideology, but a transformation of ideology [it] is
generated not from the state, or from a dominant class, but from the quotidian experience of buying
and selling commodities from the market, which is then extended across other social spaces, the
marketplace of ideas, to become an image of society.19 To put it in the framework of another theorist,
what we get in neoliberal subjectivity is an example of Pierre Bourdieus idea of how the doxa of a ruling
class is created, where an established order tends to produce the naturalization of its own
arbitrariness.20 This is especially useful in understanding Foucaults idea of the subject, wherein in
neoliberalism, the subject is intimately tied to the government of the individual, to a particular manner
of living.21 This should be understood in our discussion of neoliberalism as such: although we can trace
the creation of the neoliberal state to a series of economic developments, this does not allow us to
understand how we as governed subjects relate to this new form of domination. In Foucaults view,
neoliberalism presents us with an unprecedented way of how we relate to ourselves as political,
governed subjects. Although there is a relation between the anthropologies of both classical and neo-
liberalism, insofar as they both present an idea of what Foucault calls homo economicus, which is to

15
Harvey 16seven
16
Ibid 16eight
17
Harvey 20
18
ibid
19
Read 26
20
Bourdieu 164
21
Read 2seven
say the conception of the human as an economic subject at the basis of politics,22 a distinct shift
happens under the neoliberal government. What is shared in this anthropology between neo- and
classical liberalisms is an idea of the human as being fundamentally disposed to market practices. The
shift that occurs, for Foucault, in neoliberalism is from the classical liberal subject as an exchanging
creature to a competitive creature, or rather as a creature whose tendency to compete must be
fostered, [which] entails a general shift in the way in which human beings make themselves and are
made subjects.23 In neo-liberalism, Foucault writes, Homo economicus is an entrepreneur, an
entrepreneur of himself.24 What is seen in the creation of neoliberal subjectivity may be understood
then as a process of naturalization; the requirements asked of the governed neoliberal subject are
presented to it as the natural character of human life itself. Both iterations of capitalist subjectivity
mentioned previously share this peculiar trait; however the differences between the two are to be
understood as part of a shift which occurred within capitalism itself. If this is taken into account
alongside some of the most prominent features of neoliberal capitalisms relation to labor described
earlier, a comprehensive picture of what neoliberal subjectivity looks like, and why it exists in the first
place, is created.

Recalling Harveys notion of the disposable worker,25 what we see here is one of the most
observable ways economic necessities within the state of late twentieth century capitalism has in a
sense become human nature. Capitalist industrys preference for an unorganized working class which
does not identify itself with a particular labor position is mirrored in Foucaults characterization of the
neoliberal homo economus as this self-entrepreneur. Of course, by identifying as an entrepreneur, the
neoliberal subject is thus ensnared by the same desire which preoccupies any other capitalist: capital
accumulation, now experienced along individual rather than class lines. Such an imagination of oneself
as a capitalist, regardless of ones actual material position between labor and capital, doubly serves as a
foundation for the other hallmark of neoliberal subjectivity: competition. The global free market image
of unrestrained competition between enterprises is effectively projected onto social relations between
neoliberal subjectivities, which experience both themselves and the other as entities fundamentally at
odds- success for myself could, and very often does, imply that I disregard the implications of my own
success for the other, who simply couldnt compete on the Darwinian stage that is the market.
Considering the economic background which preceded such a state of affairs, what has effectively
happened here becomes clear: faced with a capitalism in decline, capitalist society has responded not
only with an economic mobilization of the political sphere, but with a subjective internalization of its
own inherent logic and ideology. This ideology which we are referring to as neoliberalism is exposed
when subjects represent themselves or are represented as these kinds of atomized corporations,
wherein a successful, fulfilling, or even natural life is depicted as a life lived in congruence with the
logic of the market, which is to say a life centered on an individualistic endeavor towards capital
accumulation, within which a collective engagement with the other is not only irrational, but deeply
counter-productive.

In this sense, what we will be looking for in our analysis is a cultural/subjective expression of
this material reality. That we have found such a link in the institution of American megachurches is not
only a concrete example of how economic developments structure how humans act and create, it also
has implications within the anthropological study of religion itself. The rise of the American megachurch
presents us with a religious movement which gained popularity alongside the rather abrupt entry into

22
Ibid twenty eight
23
Ibid
24
Foucault 226.
25
w/e Harvey page
the neoliberal period. This piece of information is anything but coincidental, as we aim to show with our
analysis: the American megachurch represents a distinctly new form of Protestant doctrine and practice
which is explicitly founded upon the dispositions and desires which characterize neoliberal subjectivity.
What makes this theoretically interesting is that if this is accepted, megachurches would then be
fundamentally unique from other kinds of American Protestantism due to the character of its creation,
since rather than having to integrate new historical changes into a preexisting practical and theological
program, megachurches would stand for an instance where the opposite has occurred; a new form of
economic subjectivity has spontaneously created a distinct form of religion.