Neoliberals tamed many of the contending contradictory conceptions by trying to have it both ways: to warn of the perils of expanding the purview of state activity while simultaneously imagining the strong state of their liking rendered harmless through some instrumentality of “natural” regulation; to posit the free market as an ideal generator and a conveyor belt of information while simultaneously prosecuting a “war of ideas” on the ground strenuously and ruthlessly (Blundell 2003); asserting that their program would lead to unfettered economic growth and enhanced human welfare while simultaneously suggesting that no human mind could ever really know any such thing, and therefore that it was illegitimate to justify their program by its consequences (Shearmur 1996); to portray the market as the ne plus ultra of all human institutions, while simultaneously suggesting that the market is in itself insufficient to attain and nourish the transeconomic values of a political, social, religious and cultural character (Megay 1970). “Neoliberal writings on allocation shift back and forth between libertarian and utilitarian vocabularies, with the two sometimes appearing interchangeably within a paper or chapter” (Oliver 1960).

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 2142