---
product_id: 22878916
title: "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown Paperback – April 15, 2014"
brand: "philip mirowski"
price: "€ 30.00"
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url: https://www.desertcart.ie/products/22878916-never-let-a-serious-crisis-go-to-waste-how-neoliberalism
store_origin: IE
region: Ireland
---

# Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown Paperback – April 15, 2014

**Brand:** philip mirowski
**Price:** € 30.00
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- **What is this?** Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown Paperback – April 15, 2014 by philip mirowski
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    An excellent cultural/intellectual history
  

*by P***C on Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2013*

Short review:Mirowski's book is one of the best on the crisis: he mixes the eye of an anthropologist or journalist examining our daily lives and then leaps up to 20,000 feet with ease to provide a wider intellectual and historical context. His take is novel, certainly from the Left, but well informed of debates on the Right. Empirical, but with a theoretical lens as well. If you want to understand not just the economics or politics of what happened, but to situate those events within a wider history of the ideas that played in a role in the Recession, Mirowski has an incredibly erudite account.Long review:Mirowski is a member of the "Institute for New Economic Thinking", an non-profit aimed to correct the orthodoxies of economics, "neoliberal" ideas in particular. He opens this book with a report from one of the first meetings, which happened to feature "bold and original thinkers" like Ken "Excel for Dummies" Rogoff, Larry Summers and Niall Ferguson. The meeting ended with a timid call to add an extra chapter to standard Econ101 textbooks briefly describing the crisis. Mirowski further rightly groans at hand-wringing over "happiness measurements", morality in markets and peevish complaints of "greedy bankers" (as if avarice has only existed in the past ten years.)How did this rigidity come to be? Mirowski answers by suggesting that we must understand neoliberalism as a Russian doll. The innermost doll of experts emerged from the Mont Pelerlin Society, an organization that was by design very hierarchical. He describes, for instance, correspondence between Popper and Hayek. Popper, following his philosophy of open debate suggested that MPS should have at least one respectable socialist. Hayek shut down this idea, insisting that agreement on first principles was a necessary condition for membership. This tightly networked group of intellectuals slowly incubated neoliberalism and developed a political strategy for propagating it.Mirowski further points out that the Neoliberal Thought Collective were excellent sloganeers. Friedman's most famous academic text, for instance, argues that a lack of government intervention caused the Great Depression: a series of rural bank failures caused by an overly tight supply of money. However, when Friedman penned his Newsweek column he claimed with a straight face that the government *caused* the Recession, that is, by a lack of action in expanding the supply of money and reducing interest rates. This is how the Russian doll works: nuance for the insiders, ignorance for the outsiders.There is a further layer to the doll though. Pivoting off of Foucault's final lectures at the College of France, Mirowski argues that there is an everyday neoliberalism that has emerged. Beyond political theory and public policy, neoliberalism is experienced on a quotidian level and it is on that potent terrain that it has survived the crisis. I, right now, am taking time out of my day to write a book review which I will be paid nothing for, which is in the service of the Bezo empire to sell even more books and probably destroy more local bookshops and which will be used to further quantify me into some bits of data in the sky so I can be marketed to even more heavily. But but but: I am individually expressing myself! How free am I! The neoliberal self is a creature coerced into being a "free" entrepreneur. It is the poor un/underemployed soul who thinks himself to be a failure or inadequate because he was not lucky enough to ride the right wave. The old liberal arts dictum to "know thy self" becomes "express thy self, and monetize it too!" This middle chapter here is the most engrossing part of the book. Mirowski delves into a sundry of sources on our culture and then leverages a novel and erudite analysis of Foucault to bring it all into sharp focus.In closing, it is truly ironic that the other review of this book is so gravely concerned that Mirowski might be a socialist. We have a wonderful little anthropological artifact here of the NTC at work: "Whatever this book says, it's got 'Red' in a chapter title. I am a Very Reasonable Person and thus must be suspicious." Let me assure him/her: there are no calls for a violent revolution of the proletariat. On the contrary, Mirowski heads out to the outermost layer of the doll and analyzes why neoliberalism won. In particular, he argues that the NTC provided a powerful account of the market as a natural entity that *cannot* be messed with. Consequently, the Recession had nothing to do with the structure of capitalism itself, it was just a "once in a lifetime" moment akin to a natural disaster. An act of God.Mirowski's careful history here shows that just the opposite is true. There was a concerted effort to propagate a particular ignorance and the Recession itself is by no means removed from that particular effort.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Extraordinary Analysis
  

*by S***R on Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2016*

This is perhaps the most significant work of economic history to emerge about neoliberalism in America since the 2008 crisis. Mirowski’s work escapes the simple causal categories which riddle so much of the fiscal crisis literature—here one finds carefully documented sociological analyses, of not only the economic presuppositions and frameworks that conditioned the neoliberal phase of financial capital, but equally of the political forms by which neoliberals operate. Mirowski argues that neoliberals are effective in managing power (and the crises their power produces) by operating as a “Thought Collective,” with interlocking think tanks, institutions, and diffuse sites of organizational initiative and coordination. In particular, social critics of neoliberalism should attend to his chapter “Everyday Neoliberalism,” which offers extraordinarily detailed, specific analyses of the micro-level conditions of neoliberalism in contemporary American life. Breaking from the Foucauldian literature (with its emphasis on biopolitics), Mirowski adopts and (esoteric/exoteric) distinction modeled on the Schmittian notion of the sovereign exception. Neoliberals, he argues, are not premised on laissez faire, but rather require a strong state to actively intervene in the formation of markets. This is a detailed and truly indispensable work for a critical understanding of the present.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4.0 out of 5 stars







  
  
    Free market irresponsibility
  

*by P***M on Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2015*

This book is extremely enlightening as regards the evolution of neoliberal free market ideology.The main premise of the book  is however that there is a conspiracy of sorts at work with neoliberal doctrine promulgated by and through the Mount Pelerin Society rippling outward to think tanks, universities, media outlets and government policy makers. The spreading of this ideology is assisted by deliberate misinformation designed to keep opponents off balance and absolutely baffle the unwashed masses.Mr. Mirowski's list of villains is extensive and includes not only the usual suspects such as Ayn Rand acolytes but also  opponents of unbridled free markets as Paul Krugman and Joe Stieglitz. Admittedly these latter mentioned economists are indicted more for their complacency regarding the conspiracy than their opinions.Overall this is an excellent and well researched discussion of free market ideology and its ability to deflect criticism even after the 2008disaster which should have resulted in major reform to the banking system but has not.The 'but' which precludes the 5 star rating has to do with the emphasis on conspiracy rather than other factors associated with free market ascendancy.For instance,the end of the cold war and the refocusing of attention to market concerns and globalization which do not reflect consensus opinions among the population is concurrent with the growth of neoliberalism which seamlessly refocused attention from fighting communism by many means including outright warfare and the support of right wing dictatorships to world domination by the free market. Without the collective conscience of community which influenced politicians and populace through the depression and the world war and continued through the cold war we have reverted to the predepression values of the roaring twenties.There need not be a 'conspiracy' for banking institutions unhindered by regulations no longer thought relevant in the modern world and without the constraints of collective action and goals to devise what amount to useless and risky financial instruments such as CDO's, swaps and such for their own gain, as well as the rise of the 'trader' in place of the 'agent', and the substitution of 'speculation' in place of 'investment'. Simple greed explains these actions as it explained the actions of the robber barons at the turn of the 19th century.How can a country who executed the Rosenberg's for treason accept the deliberate dismantling if America's industries and the out sourcing of jobs at the expense of it's own population without complaint and without holding someone responsible? How can these actions resulting inpermanent high rates of unemployment, stagnant wages and economic disasters accumulating at more frequent intervals be of benefit to the long term interest of the United StatesThe fact that those with money act to amass more and more wealth at the expense of the general population is as American as apple pie and has only been resisted effectively following major financial disasters which changed the politics, until memories fade and we do it all overagain.This time around the money interests have successfully avoided responsibility because the safety net worked too well and the disaster wasn't extreme enough to rid congress of its influence. The robber barons of the 19th century at least provided jobs and wages. Today's barons are molding or using the governments of the world for their own gain and nothing else.The economics profession seems helpless, divided between Keynes and Hayek. Why is only one approach the 'right' approach? Why can itnot be seen that at certain circumstances one approach is better than the other? Why is there a 'fundamentalist' view of economics rather than a scientific view? Why? Because the free market disregards the general benefit of the community for an 'every man for himself', 'every man gets what he deserves' rationalization and therefore justifies greed. Without a common enemy for the community to rally around selfish individualism takes center stage.As Warren Buffet said, yes there is a class war and my class won.I highly recommend this book but hesitate to buy in to the conspiracy theory as an unnecessary complication to the actions of people serving a common interest although obviously there is some coordination of action. Perhaps you will disagree with me after reading Mr. Malinowski. Ireadily admit I may be wrong and the conspiracy is real..

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