Labor, Creation, Hubris: Reading the Austrian Neoliberals with Arendt

  • Georgiy Vanunts
Keywords: Hannah Arendt, Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Alois Schumpeter, labor, action, creation, entrepreneurial action, ataxia, energy, hubris

Abstract

Hannah Arendt’s phenomenological analysis of action in her critique of both the Marxist utopia of labor society and the liberal understanding of consumer society can help us to grasp a subtle yet important difference in early neoliberal discourse. Preeminent neoliberal thinkers such as Ludwig Mises and Joseph A. Schumpeter wrote their major works a decade before Arendt. Bringing the cornerstone concept of entrepreneurial action into the Arendtian framework shows us how these two Austrian sources of modern neoliberal theory effectively proposed two antithetical hypotheses of entrepreneurial action.

Author Biography

Georgiy Vanunts

Research Associate,
Center for Contemporary Political Studies,
Institute of Social Sciences, RANEPA,
Vernadsky Lane 82, apt. 2, Moscow, Russia
E-mail: g.vanunts@gmail.com

References

Arendt, Hannah (1998). The Human Condition [1958]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Arendt, Hannah (2002).“Karl Marx and the Tradition of Western Political Thought.”Social Research 69, No. 2 (2002): 273–319.
Bourdieu, Pierre (2017). Anthropologie économique. Cours au Collège de France (1992–1993) [Economic Anthropology. Lecture Course at the Collège de France (1992– 1993)]. Paris: Raisons d’agir, Seuil.
Brown, Wendy (2019). In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West. New York: Columbia University Press.
Brökling, Ulrich (2016). The Entrepreneurial Self. Fabricating a New Type of Subject. London: Sage.
Davies, William (2014). The Limits of Neoliberalism. London: Sage.
Ferreira, Manuel Portugal, Reis, Nuno Rosa, Pinto, Claudia Sofia Frias (2017). “Schumpeter’s (1934) Influence on Entrepreneurship (and Management) Research.” Revista de Empreendedorismo e Gestão de Pequenas Empresas [Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management] 6, N 2 (2017): 4–39.
Foucault, Michel (2011). Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France (1977–78). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Locke, John (1894). An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 2 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Mazzucato, Mariana (2018). The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy. London: Allen Lane; Penguin Random House UK.
Mises, Ludvig (1963). Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. San Francisco: Fox & Wilkes.
Schumpeter, Joseph Alois (1976). Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. London: Routledge.
Schumpeter, Joseph Alois (1934). The Theory of Economic Development. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Published
2022-11-07
How to Cite
Vanunts, G. (2022). Labor, Creation, Hubris: Reading the Austrian Neoliberals with Arendt. Stasis, 13(1), 101-117. Retrieved from https://stasisjournal.net/index.php/journal/article/view/214