The double-truth doctrine\u2019s effectiveness depends on what Mirowski dubs \u201ceveryday neoliberalism,\u201d\u009d an ensemble of attitudes and practices that turns all of life into a never-ending market. In the neoliberal imagination, the human person is an \u201centrepreneurial self,\u201d\u009d a package of vendible talents and qualities: \u201ca product to be sold, a walking advertisement…a jumble of assets to be invested…an offsetting inventory of liabilities to be pruned, outsourced, shorted, hedged against, and minimized.\u201d\u009d Promulgating a \u201ccatechism of perpetual metamorphosis,\u201d\u009d neoliberalism denies the existence of a \u201ctrue,\u201d\u009d invariant self, and celebrates the \u201ceminently flexible\u201d\u009d personality always ready and willing to submit to the Market. Averse to solidarity, the neoliberal self erases class from its political lexicon. Inoculated against empathy, it espouses a punitive sado-moralism toward the poor, the weak, and the unsuccessful. (American Idol, The Apprentice, and other \u201creality shows\u201d\u009d are, in Mirowski\u2019s words, \u201can unabashed theater of cruelty,\u201d\u009d reflecting neoliberalism\u2019s unforgiving attitude toward \u201closers.\u201d\u009d)<\/p>\n
Loudly proclaiming its autonomy, the neoliberal self is often cheerfully entrapped in \u201can invisible grid\u201d\u009d of state and corporate gradients. Even its conceits of rebellion are fraudulent: because the line between commodities and everyday life is ever more steadily obscured or erased, dissent or resistance is expressed through purchases that reinforce the authority of consumer culture. Through \u201cmurketing\u201d\u009d\u201d\u201dthe art of convincing consumers that they\u2019re savvier than the marketers who manipulate them\u201d\u201dwe reach the highest stage of what Thomas Frank has called the \u201cconquest of cool,\u201d\u009d where everyday neoliberalism eviscerates the meaning of apostasy, insurrection, or revolution.<\/p>\n
Although Mirowski appears to be a social democrat, his bleak account of neoliberal hegemony suggests that opposition is futile where it isn\u2019t counterfeit. If political discourse has been so thoroughly cleansed of antagonism to the market, and if marketization itself has seeped into every crevice of our lives, then Thatcher\u2019s ominous ukase\u201d\u201d\u201cthere is no alternative\u201d\u009d\u201d\u201dbecomes true by reason of default. Mirowski\u2019s trenchant critique of the Occupy movement concludes with the judgment that \u201cprotest has been murketed.\u201d\u009d In his view, populists such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren are na\u00c3\u00afve\u201d\u201dtoo square to realize the supple and enormous dimensions of neoliberal guile. Mirowski\u2019s harrowing portrayal of everyday neoliberalism implies that, as Slavoj Zi\u00cc\u00aczek often says, it is now easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.<\/p>\n