The Origins of Neoliberalism Between Soviet Socialism and Western Capitalism:A Galaxy Without Borders (original) (raw)
Related papers
Střed. Časopis pro mezioborová studia Střední Evropy 19. a 20. století 6, 1 (2014), 193-200.
Research about "neoliberalism" -a term that is as commonplace as it is ill-defined -has expanded in recent years, not least because of the apparent pressure on this free-market ideology in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. 1 This included scholarly investigations into as well as openly partisan accounts of the historical origins, development and diffusion of neoliberal ideology and politics. 2 Post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe has been of particular interest in this context, as it is perceived as one of the regions where neoliberal ideology celebrated one of its most important triumphs, following the collapse of communist regimes in 1989. 3
Introduction: Neoliberalism as Struggle from Political Economy to Political Action
This chapter aims to outline the overall focus of the thesis: to combat contemporary discourse which uses "neoliberalism" as a vague, ideologically and politically pejorative term claimed by no one but used against those who favor a broad array of global free market reform policies. "Neoliberalism" first emerged as a term to describe a collection of scholars at the Walter Lippmann Colloquium of 1938 in Paris who were concerned with salvaging European civilization from political and economic collapse against the Great Depression as well as totalitarianism. During the 19th and early 20th centuries political economy had largely diverged into two tracks: those who followed Smith and argued that the economy and state were inextricably bound and that any reform had to encompass both (e.g. Ricardo, Hodgkin, and Marx), and those who followed Mills in arguing for individualism and the separation of the state and society (e.g. Walras, Marshall, the Marginal Revolution, Neoclassical economics). These two traditions were largely in conflict with each other and grew by critiquing each other as evidenced by Austro-Marxism and the Austrian school criticizing each other as well as neoclassical economic theory. However, by the 1930s it had become obvious that both programs had been a historical failure. In his work "the Good Society" Walter Lippmann explored a wide variety of political economic traditions and largely combined the two traditions by arguing for neither state nor economy, but a larger context of a "good society". This inspired the Walter Lippmann Colloquium where those dissatisfied with historic liberalism, fearful of totalitarianism, and skeptical of economic planning gathered to "reconstruct" liberalism. The paper looks specifically at three specific periods of history, each anchored around an intellectual biography of a political economic thinker vital to the neoliberal synthesis at the Walter Lippmann Colloquium. First, 1896-1910: Rudolf Hilferding's defense of Marx against Bohm-Bawerk was actually a "critique of a critique" that transposed Marxism from classical to neoclassical economics, concluding with Hilferding's own "Finance Capital". Second: 1910-1929: Socialism in Austria and Austro-Marxism became more interested in colonizing the state through parliamentary politics than revolutionary politics, and became more concerned with neoclassical economies of planning. Ludwig von Mises engaged with Marxists, socialists, and neoclassical economics in the socialist calculation debate, but the need for moderate democratic politics against totalitarians forced a convergence of socialists, Austrian economists, and liberals together. Lastly, 1929 to 1938: both liberal and social democracy collapsed in the wake of the Great Depression and totalitarianism. Walter Lippmann's "the Good Society" was a call to arms for liberals and socialists to work together and a motley crew of intellectuals descended on Paris in 1938 to form a tenuous and diverse group, the "neoliberals".
The historical roots of neoliberalism: origin and meaning
Brazilian Journal of Political Economy
Neoliberalism has succeeded in reaching unprecedented levels of power and domination. Despite this, the literature shows that many aspects of the history of neoliberalism remain unclear. In this regard, this article discusses two notable aspects. The first is that neoliberalism lacks a clear definition and is often confused with many other concepts. The second aspect relates to the origins of neoliberalism, which are often reduced to a particular version that does not necessarily reflect the deep roots of neoliberal thought. This article argues that subjecting the history of neoliberal thought to scrutiny contributes to removing many of the ambiguities associated with these two aspects. On the one hand, it allows identifying the different interpretations of neoliberalism, and on the other hand, it shows the fact that neoliberalism emerged in the midst of the crisis of classical liberalism and as a reaction to the expansion of collectivism.
Introduction: The Untold Story of Left Economics
2019
Since the middle years of the 1960s there has been within American economics a vibrant (and numerous) community of scholars who self-identify as radicals. "Radical" was a term dear to the New Left, a movement animated by University-based intellectuals that campaigned on such issues as civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam war. "Radical" had for them a double meaning. It signified boldness in demanding a major departure from the prevailing social order and a commitment to "get to the root" of power relations (an allusion to the etymology of the term). Fifty years ago that radical vocation found an institutional embodiment in a Union for Radical Political Economics (henceforth URPE) first assembled at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in September 1968. This collection appears at the pretext of that half-century landmark. This collection is however not narrowly about URPE. While the circumstances of the Union's founding are well-documented and understood (see for instance Wachtel 2008 and Mata 2009), historical and sociological study of the values, practices and careers of radical economists is sparse. When radicals earn a mention in the historical literature often times it is as ancillary to a debate about the architecture of contemporary economics, notably the secular persistence of a mainstream, a tightly knit, like-minded elite, that is beset by a motley crew of dissenters with their alternative methodologies. In this literature, attention to radical economics is subsidiary to the task of unraveling the fundamental antinomy between orthodoxy
Early Neoliberalism, or how to rescue the dismal science of liberalism
While neoliberalism and its history constitutes now a contested yet ever-expanding field of research, little remains known about the origins of neoliberalism before WWII. Too often, the Mont-Pèlerin Society first meeting in 1947 serves as a departure point, with a reference to the Walter-Lippmann Colloquium of 1938 thrown in for good measure. This event however, already constituted an achievement to materialize and institutionalize the convergent lines of thought early neoliberals had been developing since the beginning of the decade. Far from laying in self-proclaimed isolation, they were well-acquainted with each other while being supported by international funding agencies. More importantly, the set of problems and issues they delineated through their publications, correspondence, and meetings, covered different grounds than those developed within neoliberalism after the war. In many ways, early neoliberalism was a child of the Interwar, while the later neoliberalism was a reaction to the post-WWII settlement. Going from one to another implied a much larger shift in terms of values, arguments, and personnel than has been noted before. Many early neoliberals were or became " epistemologists: " Lippmann, etc. who thought that proper social thought derived from sound epistemological premises, and attributed the failures of liberalism to its obsolete scientific premises. In various ways, they all granted that questions of how to acquire, distribute and reflect knowledge were essential elements of any scientific, economic or social theory. This article aims to give a first comprehensive account of the period of early neoliberalism, running from 1931 to 1945. It will present both the historiographical need for such an inquiry as well as organizing its findings around four main themes: 1. the institutional network in place; 2. The political project of modernizing liberalism through law; 3. The moral necessity to tackle the social question; 4. The urgency to update the science of liberalism. We conclude that early neoliberalism converged around a strong preoccupation for science and the scientific method as a critical wedge against ideological opponents (collectivism), and, equally, as a mean to recode the obsolete 19th century liberalism (laissez-faire) according to the epistemological and scientific advances of the 20th century (conventionalism).