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Neoliberalism and Race
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14 October 2025

Lars Cornelissen argues that the category of race constitutes an organizing principle of neoliberal ideology. Using the methods of intellectual history and drawing on insights from critical race studies, Cornelissen explores the various racial constructs that structure neoliberal ideology, some of which are explicit, while others are more coded. Beginning in the interwar period and running through to recent developments, Neoliberalism and Race shows that racial themes have always pervaded neoliberal thinking. The book's key argument is that neoliberal thought is constitutively racialized—its racial motifs cannot be extracted from neoliberalism without rendering it theoretically and politically incoherent. The book aptly explores a wide variety of racial constructs through the structure of neoliberal ideology, deconstructing the conceptualizations in the works of landmark thinkers such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Peter Bauer, Thomas Sowell, Charles Murray, and others from the early twentieth century to the present. In this original—perhaps controversial—critique, Cornelissen asserts that neoliberal thinkers were not just the passive recipients of racial discourse, but also directly impacted it.
"Cornelissen's Neoliberalism and Race is a game-changer. In its pages, we find early neoliberals working for the British Colonial Office and their successors wrestling with the twilight of empire. Cornelissen's brilliant and relentless analysis will convince you that even when they claim to be race-blind, neoliberals are always talking about race." —Melinda Cooper, author of Family Values
"Historians are called upon to identify how and why a biologically rooted-language of race has reemerged in this political moment. Moreover, why has this racialized language reappeared at the very moment when the neoliberal order is said to be over? Cornelissen's Neoliberalism and Race offers a provocation for historians to get to the root of these questions." —Whitney McIntosh, Society for U.S. Intellectual History
Introduction
1. Liberalism or Barbarism
2. A Listless and Dejected Mass
3. Born Empire Builders
4. Race Is History
5. A Wonderfully Secret Code
Conclusion
Notes
Index