The Road From Mont P Lerin

What exactly is neoliberalism, and where did it come from? This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. Now with a new preface.

What exactly is neoliberalism, and where did it come from? This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. Now with a new preface.

What exactly is neoliberalism, and where did it come from? This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. The Road from Mont Pèlerin presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, in 1947, this volume presents for the first time the original transcripts from this landmark event. The society was created by Friedrich Hayek as a forum for leading economists and intellectuals to discuss and debate classical liberal values in the face of a rapidly changing world and political trends toward socialism. Bruce Caldwell, a major scholar of Hayek, provides an informative introduction and explanatory notes to the source documents, drawn from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, where they have been available to scholars. Now accessible to all, the transcripts reveal what was said on a wide range of topics, including free markets, monetary reform, wage policy, taxation, agricultural policy, the future of Germany, Christianity and liberalism, and more. They provide insights into the thinking of men such as Hayek, Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, Frank Knight, Walter Eucken, Karl Popper, and other leading figures in the classical liberalism movement, illuminating not only their ideas but also their distinctive personalities. A photo section shows rarely seen images from the meeting.

Just as economists struggle today to justify the free market after the global economic crisis, an earlier generation revisited their worldview after the Great Depression. In this intellectual history of that project, Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider the most basic assumptions of a market-centered world.

A number of distinguished dissidents voice their opinions on the intervention by NATO in the former Yugoslavia. The collection also provides background historical information on the conflict in the Balkans.

Untangling the long history of neoliberalism Neoliberalism is dead. Again. Yet the philosophy of the free market and the strong state has an uncanny capacity to survive, and even thrive, in times of crisis. Understanding neoliberalism’s longevity and its latest permutation requires a more detailed understanding of its origins and development. This volume breaks with the caricature of neoliberalism as a simple, unvariegated belief in market fundamentalism and homo economicus. It shows how neoliberal thinkers perceived institutions from the family to the university, disagreed over issues from intellectual property rights and human behavior to social complexity and monetary order, and sought to win consent for their project through the creation of new honors, disciples, and networks. Far from a monolith, neoliberal thought is fractured and, occasionally, even at war with itself. We can begin to make sense of neoliberalism’s nine lives only by understanding its own tangled and complex history.

This book places economic debates in their historical context and outlines how economic ideas have influenced swings in policy.