“Neoliberal ideology, so accurate in discerning the factors that hinder or promote economic development, is mistaken in suggesting that the “downsizing” of the state—its withdrawal from “inappropriate” activities—is automatically and obviously associated with a promise of greater freedom for citizens. For it is not only through the exercise of inappropriate and incidental activities that the state oppresses people, but also — and above all — through those that are most essential and proper to it: taxation, policing, justice, and public education. And these, rather than retreating in the new neoliberal framework, tend instead to grow disproportionately. There are two reasons for this: first, it was precisely in order to expand them that the state withdrew from the economy; second, as it unloads its economic burden, the state seeks new roles for itself that justify its existence, and ends up meddling in all sectors of human life previously left to private discretion.” OppressionIdeologyPrivate LifePolitical PhilosophyPublic LifeStateNeoliberalism Book:O Jardim das Aflições Source: O Jardim das Aflições
“One of the most serious consequences of the expansion of the supervisory gaze of the state (and the intelligentsia) into the private sphere is the reduction of the difference between the moral and the legal — a difference that, by protecting vital areas of human behavior from official interference, has always been one of the basic guarantees of civil liberty. [...] The state uses individuals' demands for autonomy — demands that are particularly strong among young people, women, the discriminated, and the resentful of all kinds — as bait to trap them in the worst kind of tyranny. By “freeing” men from their ties to family, parish, and neighborhood, protecting them under the immense network of public services that frees them from the need to resort to the help of relatives and friends, offering them the lure of legal protection against the prejudices, antipathies, feelings, and even glances of their peers—legal protection against life, in short— the state actually divides, isolates, and weakens them, cultivating the neurotic susceptibilities that infantilize them, making it impossible for them, on the one hand, to create true bonds with each other and, on the other hand, to survive without state support.” Political PhilosophyModernitySocial CommentaryLegalityTirannyThe State Author:Olavo de Carvalho
