The privatisation of the struggle: anti-racism in the age of enterprise

Neoliberalism – to the surprise of some – has seemingly been able to accommodate multiculturalism, diversity and even forms of anti-racism: as Paul Gilroy has written, ‘[e]ven if racism remains intractable elsewhere, it seems that neoliberal capitalism is ready to free itself from the fetters placed upon it by the historic commitment to pigmentocracy’.¹ Quinn Slobodian’s work illuminates how neoliberal theorists approached ‘race’ and racism. He finds that explicit racism was ‘not the norm’ for neoliberals; like most white political theorists after the Second World War, they rejected scientific racism.² The key concern of thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek and