The Sovereign Consumer: A New Intellectual History of Neoliberalism

316 Pages·2019·2.555 MB·English

by  Niklas Olsen

CONSUMPTION AND PUBLIC LIFE
THE SOVEREIGN CONSUMER
A New Intellectual History
of Neoliberalism

NIKLAS OLSEN
Consumption and Public Life
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Birkeck College
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Indiana University
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Niklas Olsen
The Sovereign
Consumer
A New Intellectual History of
Neoliberalism
Niklas Olsen
SAXO-Institute
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark
Consumption and Public Life
ISBN 978-3-319-89583-3 ISBN 978-3-319-89584-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89584-0
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Acknowledgments
This book was long underway. It has its origins in a project on the politi-
cal roots of the current financial crisis that I initiated in 2010, when I
became a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen. Soon this
project led me to explore the history of liberalism and neoliberalism as
political ideologies since the interwar era, which eventually opened my
eyes to the key theme of this book, namely, the role of the figure of the
sovereign consumer in neoliberalism. Although I decided to write a book
on the topic and found my case studies soon after, further conceptualiz-
ing and finalizing the project was no easy task. Indeed, it was only pos-
sible due to the immense support and encouragement that I received
from several institutions, colleagues, and friends.
First, I must thank the two institutions I have been associated with
since 2010—the Saxo-Institute and the Center of Modern European
Studies at the University of Copenhagen—for supporting my research.
Most importantly, many of the ideas in this book derive from courses,
seminars, and talks related to consumers and consumption that I was
given the opportunity to organize within these institutions. Thanks also
to Hagen Schulz-Forberg for inviting me join the project on “The Good
Society,” funded by Velux and based at Aarhus University. I have profited
greatly from presenting different parts of my project to the helpful group
of scholars in this forum.
v
vi Acknowledgments
I also thank those scholars who kindly invited me to present my work
in their departments and at their workshops, thus enabling exchanges
and dialogues that were vital to authoring this book. Thanks especially to
Duncan Kelly, Balázs Trencsényi, and Milinda Banerjee, who invited me
to give talks at the University of Cambridge, the Central European
University, and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, respec-
tively, as well as to Mario Wimmer and Christian Fleck, who invited me
to present my research in their workshop at Berkeley, and to Roger
Backhouse and Philippe Fontaine, who invited me to present in their
workshop at the London School of Economics. Moreover, I thank Magrit
Pernau, Jan Ifversen, Jani Marjanen, and Martin J. Burke for the stimu-
lating academic conversations (and social gatherings) we have had each
August in Helsinki, ever since they invited me to co-teach at the
Conceptual History Summer School in 2011. These conversations
undoubtedly contributed to my thinking about how intellectual and
conceptual history might be fruitfully combined.
Moreover, I must acknowledge all the gifted and generous scholars
who provided feedback on chapter drafts, as well as guidance and encour-
agement, during the writing process: Gunvor Simonsen, Jesper Vestermark
Køber, Stefan Schwarzkopf, Haakon Ikonomou, Dieter Plehwe, Eddie
Nik-Khah, David Singh Grewal, Stefan Gaardsmand Jacobsen, Christian
Olaf Christiansen, Joshua Rahtz, Mikkel Thorup, Casper Sylvest, Jeppe
Nevers, Frank Trentmann, Ilya Afanasyev, and Alexander Blake Ewing.
Thanks also to Eduardo F. Canedo and Stephanie L. Mudge for sharing
their unpublished work with me.
I am also grateful to the two (anonymous) peer reviewers from Modern
Intellectual History who provided excellent comments on the article
“From Choice to Welfare: The Concept of the Consumer in the Chicago
School of Economics,” which appeared in the journal (volume 14, issue
2, August 2017, 507–535) and is included in this book. And thanks to
Cambridge University Press for permission to reproduce this article here.
I must also thank Sharon Rhodes for her meticulous copy editing of the
manuscript.
Finally, I express special gratitude to Jacob Jensen, who is currently
completing his PhD dissertation on Visions of Politics as Economics at
Aarhus University. While working on his own project over the past three
Acknowledgmen ts vii
years, Jacob has acted as a vital intellectual interlocutor through his tire-
less readings of chapter drafts and discussions of interpretations, concep-
tualizations, and questions of detail. Jacob’s input has been a crucial
motor in this project, and I do regard much of the book as a collaborative
effort that emerged out of and was shaped by our ongoing intellectual
dialogs. Needless to say, the responsibility for any errors is entirely my
own.
Finally, and most importantly, I thank the members of our little
consumer- cooperative on the Northwestern outskirts of Copenhagen:
Nina, Martin, and Simon. About Nina, I can only repeat what I have said
before: In the most convincing of ways, she has at the same time managed
to back up my academic projects and to remind me that the most impor-
tant dimensions of the human Miteinandersein and Miteinandersprechen
lie outside of academia. Martin and Simon: thanks for inhabiting and
expanding our non-academic social space in the most amazing of ways.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Birth of the Neoliberal Sovereign Consumer 19
3 Liberating the Consumer: Ludwig Erhard and the Making
of the Federal Republic 65
4 From Choice to Welfare: The Concept of the Consumer
in the Chicago School of Economics 105
5 The Emergence of the Sovereign Consumer in Post-war
Economics 141
6 Sovereign Consumers Enter the Scandinavian Welfare
State: The Case of Denmark 185
ix
x Contents
7 Neoliberalism Without Neoliberals 227
8 Epilogue 259
Bibliography 267
Index 295