The road from Mont Pèlerin: the making of the neoliberal thought collective

478 Pages·2015·1.618 MB·English

by  Société du Mont Pèlerin.;Mirowski, Philip;Plehwe, Dieter

the road from mont pèlerin

the road from
mont pèlerin
The Making of the
Neoliberal Thought Collective
edited by
Philip Mirowski
Dieter Plehwe
harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
2009
Copyright © 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The road from Mont Pèlerin : the making of the neoliberal thought collective /
edited by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe.
p. cm.
Includes index.
isbn978-0-674-03318-4 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Neoliberalism. 2. Neoliberalism—Case studies. I. Mirowski, Philip,
1951– II. Plehwe, Dieter.
JC574.R63 2009
320.51—dc22 2008039929
Contents
Introduction 1
Dieter Plehwe
part one
Origins of National Traditions
1 French Neoliberalism and Its Divisions: From the
Colloque Walter Lippmann to the Fifth Republic 45
François Denord
2 Liberalism and Neoliberalism in Britain,
1930–1980 68
Keith Tribe
3 Neoliberalism in Germany:
Revisiting the Ordoliberal Foundations of the
Social Market Economy 98
Ralf Ptak
4 The Rise of the Chicago School of Economics
and the Birth of Neoliberalism 139
Rob Van Horn and Philip Mirowski
contents
vi
part two
Arguing Out Strategies on Targeted Topics
5 The Neoliberals Confront the Trade Unions 181
Yves Steiner
6 Reinventing Monopoly and the Role of Corporations:
The Roots of Chicago Law and Economics 204
Rob Van Horn
7 The Origins of the Neoliberal Economic Development
Discourse 238
Dieter Plehwe
8 Business Conservatives and the Mont Pèlerin
Society 280
Kim Phillips-Fein
part three
Mobilization for Action
9 The Influence of Neoliberals in Chile before,
during, and after Pinochet 305
Karin Fischer
10 Taking Aim at the New International
Economic Order 347
Jennifer Bair
11 How Neoliberalism Makes Its World:
The Urban Property Rights Project in Peru 386
Timothy Mitchell
Postface: Defining Neoliberalism 417
Philip Mirowski
List of Contributors 457
Index 459
the road from mont pèlerin

Introduction
dieter plehwe
N
eoliberalism is anything but a succinct, clearly defined political philoso-
phy. Both friends and foes have done their share to simplify, if not popularize,
neoliberal worldviews. Paradoxically, Margaret Thatcher’s “TINA” (there is no
alternative) corresponds with the left-wing critique, which posits that neoliber-
alism is best understood as an economic pensée unique(a concept popularized
by Pierre Bourdieu). Growing self-confidence on the right coincided with an
increasingly frustrated (old) left during the upheavals of the 1980s and 1990s,
with both sides eventually converging on a perspective of a neoliberal one-
dimensional man. In terms of academic disciplines, the neoliberal continues to
be stereotypically imagined as a neoclassical economist (Harvey 2005, 20). This
ignores the fact that interdisciplinary Austrian and ordoliberal (German/Swiss)
reservoirs of neoliberal thought have been clearly at odds with neoclassical or-
thodoxy, as are more recent variations of (rational-choice–based) neo-institu-
tionalism. It is curious to note how many pivotal historical contributions to
neoliberalism are not recognized by subsequent generations. In Germany, for
example, most scholars will raise their eyebrows if ordoliberal inspirations of
the social market economy are vilified as neoliberal. But contrary to many who
readily identify neoliberalism with Austrian economics, Foucault (2004, 112f.)