The neoliberal enterprise: From the spontaneous order to the moral order

Abstract

The vocabulary of psychosocial risks is used to describe new forms of suffering in the workplace: whereas in the 19th century, violence against the body affected souls, today's pressures exerted on the minds hit the bodies. This terminology, which has become common in the managerial language, is however doubleedged, since it leads to the individualization and depoliticization of problems. This negation of politics is at the heart of the neoliberal project. Therefore, we propose to analyze the ideological coherence of this doctrine before examining how the managerial devices in large companies have perhaps, at least partly, incorporated a vision of human action without ends, without will and without pleasure.