996013 The Transnational History of Neoliberalism (S) (WiSe 2016/2017)

http://pure.au.dk/portal/en/hishsf@hum.au.dk

The Transnational History of Neoliberalism

PhD Course held at Bielefeld Graduate School of History and Sociology, 3. – 4. November 2016

Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Aarhus University

Today, neoliberalism appears to be everywhere, a global concept of all-encompassing powers. When markets fail, they were simply not perfect enough – and neoliberalism's free market creed is amplified rather than modified. Simultaneously, it has become global practice to blame others for being neoliberals. Historically, the emergence of neoliberalism is mainly located in the 1970s and 1980s when neoliberal policies has their breakthrough during the Thatcher and Reagan administrations in the UK and the US. In historiography, mainly two narratives prevail: that of a handful of intellectuals who managed to change the global economic paradigm and that of their seemingly secret society, the Mont Pèlerin Society, founded by Friedrich August Hayek in 1947.

Can a handful of intellectuals really be that influential? And can the concept of neoliberalism really be confined to the narrow confines of one association of economists and philosophers? In this course we address these questions and locate neoliberalism in a wider institutional, intellectual and historical landscape. By looking at actors, concepts and institutions, the view on neoliberalism is broadened. As a result, neoliberalism appears as a middle ground doctrine that embraces both the price mechanism and the role of the state in the economy. Furthermore, it emerged within a multi-lingual transnational institutional landscape and much of its content was not the result of some spontaneous thinking among a handful of economists, but really was an outcome of policy-making practices based on scientific expertise.

To get into the thickets of this transnational history of neoliberalism we will look at a combination of recent scholarship and primary material. What emerges, are varieties of neoliberalism within a complex transnational policy-making network that addressed nothing less than the rebuilding of the West.

The course follows current approaches to the study of neoliberalism, its early and contemporary form and its semantics. It furthermore looks at elements within neoliberal thought that have often been neglected due to the focus on free market radicalism. In their great overhaul of Western thought and statehood, neoliberals drew up designs of global order as well as their own interpretation of history.

Thursday 3 November

Session 1: 10:30 am–noon: A Chosen Few, A Hidden Many, or An Outcome of Transnational Agency? Approaching Neoliberalism

Peck, Jamie. 2010. 'Neoliberal Worlds', Chapter 1 in idem, Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-38.

Plehwe, Dieter. 2009. 'Introduction', in P. Mirowski and idem (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1-42.

Schulz-Forberg, Hagen. 2016. 'Institutional and Intellectual Roots of Neoliberalism', paper held at Bielefeld University on 4 November. Please do not quote or circulate. Will be presented as the introductory lecture.

Session 2: 1:30–3:00 pm: Liberalism, What Liberalism?

Keynes, John Maynard. 1925. 'Am I a Liberal?', reprint in idem, Essays in Persuasion. New York: Norton, 1963, 323-338.

Keynes, John Maynard. 1926. 'The End of Laissez-Faire', reprint in idem, Essays in Persuasion. New York: Norton, 1963, 312-322.

Jackson, Ben. 2012. 'Socialism and the New Liberalism', in idem and M. Stears (eds.), Liberalism as Ideology. Essays in Honour of Michael Freeden. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 34-52.

The State and Economic Life, First and Second Study Group Meeting of the Fifth Session of the Conference of Institutions for the Scientific Study of International Relations, Milan, 23-27 May 1932, published by the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, Paris, 1932, 7-55.

Session 3: 3:30–5:00 pm: Neoliberalism, What Neoliberalism?

Schulz-Forberg, Hagen. 2014. 'Laying the Groundwork: The Semantics of Neoliberalism in the 1930s', in idem and N. Olsen (eds.), Re-Inventing Western Civilisation: Transnational Reconstructions of Liberalism in Europe in the Twentieth Century. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 13-39.

Jackson, Ben. 2010. 'At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930-1947', in The Historical Journal, Vol. 53, No. 1, 129-51.

Marlio, Louis. 1939. 'Le Néo-libéralisme', in Les Essais: Numero Special – Tendences Modernes du Libéralisme Economique, 2 Vols., Vol. 2, 1961, 36-43

Walter Lippmann. 1937. 'On Designing a New Society', chapter in: An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 362-68.

Friday 4 November

Session 4: 09:30 am – 11:00 am: Neoliberalism's Global Order

Hayek, Friedrich A. 1939. 'The Economic Conditions of Inter-State Federalism', in The New Commonwealth Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (September), 131-49.

Robbins, Lionel. 1940. Economic Aspects of Federation', in M. Chaning-Pearce (ed.), Federal Union. A Symposium, London: Jonathan Cape, 167-86. (Copy from the 1941 Reprint).

Röpke, Wilhelm. 1959. International Order and Economic Integration. Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing. 'Preface to the English Language Edition', 'False and True Internationalism' (12-20), 'Nation, Sovereignty, and the Community of Nations' and 'Europe as a Community' (43-56), 'The Theory of International Order and the Solution of the Problem in a Liberal Age' (72-79), 'European Free Trade – The Great Divide' (259-269).

Session 5: 11:30 am – 1:00 pm—Graduate Student Presentations

Session 6: 2:00 – 3:30 pm: Neoliberals and (their kind of) History

Mont Pelerin Society. 1947. 'Statement of Aims'. URL: https://www.montpelerin.org/statement-of-aims/

Popper, Karl. 1945. The Open Society and Its Enemies. 'Historicism and the Myth of Destiny'; 'Has History any Meaning?'

Hayek, Friedrich A. 1954. 'History and Politics', in Ibid. (ed.), Capitalism and the Historians. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 3-29.

Jouvenel, Betrand de. 1954. 'The Treatment of Capitalism by Continental Intellectuals', in F. A. Hayek (ed.), Capitalism and the Historians. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 91-121.

Bibliography

see above