Abstract
Innset provides a brief overview of the literature on neoliberalism and distinguishes his approach from both the Marxist and the “policy” approach. Innset’s methodology is a non-normative rational reconstruction, which builds on the brand of intellectual history developed by the Cambridge School, but seeks to innovate this approach by using the tools of microhistory in a close study of the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947. Innset outlines his concept of “the dual argument ” as a foundational element of early neoliberalism, and thus explains at the outset that neoliberalism was explicitly new since the dual argument entailed attacks on both liberalisms available at the time: laissez-faire and social liberalism , respectively.
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Notes
- 1.
In the following, I will mainly use the aristocratic “von” only the first time I refer to European thinkers with that or other aristocratic prepositions in their surnames. Hayek himself used his name both with and without the “von” interchangeably after leaving Austria.
- 2.
The place in Switzerland is spelt with an accent over the first “e”, but the organization uses an Americanized version when referring to itself. Consequently, I will be writing of The Mont Pelerin Society which had its first meeting at Mont Pèlerin.
- 3.
In the introduction to The Road To Mont Pélerin, Plehwe describes “the MPS network of organized neoliberal intellectuals … as a litmus test for identifying the relevant actors” (Mirowski and Plehwe 2009, 4).
- 4.
One striking example is the Irish famine of (1845–1852), in which the population of this British colony sank by 25%. At the time, British politicians and administrators used the dogma of laissez-faire both to deny helping the Irish in any way, and even refrained from banning the ongoing export of much needed food from Ireland to England (Ross 2002, 224; Coogan 2012).
- 5.
My use of the concept of duality is thus different from how it is used in mathematics, where it refers to a form of mirrored symmetry. Instead, my use refers to its meaning within theology and philosophy, where a duality indicates two parts of a whole which are almost opposites, yet are equally important for the totality. It has also been used in history, for instance, in reference to the economic dualism between the north and south of Italy. See, for instance, Riall (2009, 100–104).
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Innset, O. (2020). Introduction. In: Reinventing Liberalism. Springer Studies in the History of Economic Thought. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38885-0_1
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