The Libertarian Case for Postmodernism

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What if one of the sharpest critics of centralized power, bureaucratic surveillance, and top-down social control wasn't a libertarian economist but a French postmodernist? And what if one of the economists most vilified by the left wasn't a cold-hearted market fundamentalist but a thinker obsessed with the limits of knowledge and the dangers of planning?

Today's guest is King's College London political economist Mark Pennington, author of the new book Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge and Freedom. A self-declared postmodernist libertarian, Pennington explores the common ground between Michel Foucault and Friedrich Hayek. He talks with Nick Gillespie about how Foucault's critiques of expert rule, scientism, and the construction of subjectivity can bolster the classical liberal fight for freedom—and how Hayek's warnings about the pretense of knowledge might offer the left a way to resist domination without defaulting to centralized authority.

If you're a libertarian who thinks Foucault is just woke nonsense—or a progressive who sees Hayek as a neoliberal villain—this conversation will blow your mind in the best way possible.

0:00 – Intro
1:20 – What is a postmodern Austrian political economist?
5:07 – Scientism and Hayek
10:45 – The limits of postmodernism
17:46 – The intersection of Foucault and Hayek
30:12 – Systems of control and surveillance
37:39 – Foucault's warnings on government authority
49:57 – Creating a postmodern liberal political economy
1:01:29 – Foucault and the Iranian Revolution
1:08:21 – Have we learned anything from Foucault and Hayek?

Upcoming Events:

The Soho Forum Debate: Glenn Greenwald vs. Anna Gorisch, August 12

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Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: Mark Pennington, thank you for talking to Reason.

Mark Pennington: Thank you. It's great to be here Nick.

So let's start, you know, before we get into a discussion of your book Foucault and Liberal Political Economy—the new book, which is absolutely fascinating, and I think anybody interested in libertarian politics or in Foucault—and I think there's you, me, and about five other people that are in that intersection, but everybody should be.

But I want to read your Twitter bio and have you explain it a little bit to me. You are a "Professor of Political Economy at King's College London." OK, I understand. Everybody gets that. And then you say: "Post-modern Austrian political economist, Foucault Fan, Hayek Fan, classical liberal individualist."

And, you know, as somebody who's—I've been working at Reason since 1993. I went to grad school for literary and cultural studies from 1988 to 1993. And when I see "Post-modern Austrian political economist, Foucault Fan, Hayek Fan, classical liberal individualist," I just see all of the people that I went to school with—my professors and students and colleagues, classmates—their heads kind of exploding. This is an interesting mix.

Let's start first with the idea of: What does it mean to be a postmodern Austria

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Published on 1 month ago