James E. Block is professor of political science at DePaul University. His books include A Nation of Agents: The American Path to a Modern Self and Society and The Crucible of Consent: American Child Rearing and the Forging of a Modern Nation. This essay is taken from the forthcoming book, The Agonies of American Ascendancy: The Crisis of Liberalism in the Organizational Age.
Neoliberalism rejected the assessment that the absence of constraints on desire undermined systemic viability.