The recently published “Globalists:The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism” by Quinn Slobodian charts the
history of neoliberalism from its rather humble origins (in terms of
intellectual importance, not in terms of income level of its main participants)
in Vienna and Geneva to its ascent to a very important if not dominant position
in economics, both in theory and economic policy. It is a very well researched
book that, I believe, brings even to those who know the essentials of the Mont
Pèlerin society, ordoliberalism and Hayekiana lots of new
factual information and fresh insights into opinions and, at times, unusual
political positions or unexpected bed-fellows of various neoliberal luminaries.
The title puts the emphasis on the global
nature of neoliberal thinking. Having, after the end of the Great War, reconciled
themselves to the political impossibility of a single worldwide empire that
would ensure freedom of commerce, and free movements of labor and capital (a
thing which Pax Britannica in the last decades of the 19th century
provided), neoliberals’ ideal world consisted of a “double government”. On the
surface, national borders would remain and, with them, all the national
symbolism: flags, coats of arms, national language, newspapers etc.; but at a
deeper level, there would be no national sovereignty in economic policy-making at
all. The world would remain “flat” for the movement of capital, labor, goods
and services. Capital especially will have a privileged position: it will be
protected against nationalization and abuse by international rules, enjoying to
a large degree extraterritoriality as it did in the colonized or semi-colonized
countries in Asia in the latter part of the 19th century.
It its scope and generality neoliberal
vision is breathtaking. But it ran into
many problems, particularly after World War II when African and Asian nations became
independent, numerically dominant in the United Nations, and keen to extend
their newly-won political sovereignty into the economic arena. The clash
between the neoliberal ideals and the dominant development paradigms that
influenced not only the “new” nations but, through Keynesianism, also the
United States, was inevitable. This clash led many neoliberals, especially so Wilhelm
Röpke who plays a very important role in the book, but also (to
a lesser extent) Mises, Hayek and Friedman to support racist regimes, apartheid,
military coups, and to openly stand against one-person one-vote democracy whenever
“inferior” classes or races threatened to use it to come to power.
Slobodian shows how, ironically, an
ideology that was, in the beginning, general and very abstract (treating in
principle every individual the same) and whose many key proponents opposed
Nazism and fled Germany, came, in the 1960s
and 1970s, to an almost explicit reactionary, and at times even racist,
position. Thus, the support for Pinochet in 1973 was not an oddity, but represented
a consistent choice, driven by neoliberals’ increasing rejection of democracy
and quasi-religious emphasis on free markets.
The book truly comes to life
from Chapter 3 onwards, that is, from the end of the Second World War. In these
parts it is a real page-turner. It tackles there the early post-War period and
decolonization, the split of the neoliberal camp regarding the desirability of
the European Economic Community, neoliberals’ rearguard action against the New
International Economic Order and the Group of 77.
The first part (Chapters 1 and 2) deals
with the beginning of the movement until the outbreak of the Second World War. I
found that part weaker because it concentrates exclusively on neoliberals without
situating them in a broader intellectual context. We learn enormous amount
about the early evolution of neoliberalism, including most interestingly its
close political and financial connection, principally through Mises, to national
(and later International) Chambers of Commerce as well as about its short flirtation
with economic statistics and empiricism. But we do not see neoliberals’ relationship
with other strands of thought: classical Marshallian economics, Keynesians,
Marxists, Fascists. We never get the proper measure of neoliberals’ importance
nor of their intellectual interaction with the rest of the world.
This is unfortunate because the period
was remarkably intellectually fertile and contentious. Neoliberals, though, at
that time, represented a tiny, and rather uninfluential, faction—even in their
own Vienna “headquarters” where social-democrats, communists and fascists all commanded
much greater support. It is thus rather unfortunate that Mises’ debate with
Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner about the (im)possibility of economic calculation
in a socialist economy does not get even a mention. And yet it was not only an important
event in the history of neoliberalism (and indirectly, socialism), but presaged
many of neoliberals’ later positions, including Hayek’s seminal work on the
nature of economic information. (On that last point, Slobodian leaves the
reader in a bit of a quandary as to who was the real innovator there. Walter
Lippman’s book An Inquiry into the
Principles of the Good Society published in 1937, from which Slobodian quotes
several passages, seems to contain key insights—dispersal of economic
knowledge, state with a very narrow but powerful role focused on the rule of law—that Hayek formulated
in the later years. It would have been nice to have learned a bit more about intellectual
precedence on this and several other matters.)
Another part where the book does not,
I think, duly account for the interaction (cross-fertilization) between
neoliberals and others ideologies is in the discussion of neoliberals’ model of
federalism. As mentioned, it consisted
of a “double government” or differently put, “imperium”, that dealt with political,
cultural and symbolic matters and was fully autonomous, and “dominium” which was
internationally-controlled and dealt with economics. But the idea of a political
federation that allows full cultural autonomy is something that goes back to
Austro-Marxists who, prior to the First World War, grappled with precisely the same
problem but looked at it from a different angle: how to organize a social-democratic
federation in a multiethnic state (like the Habsburg Empire). Both Austro-Marxists and neoliberals came to
advocate an essentially identical federal design compatible with cultural and religious
freedoms-but, of course, they diverged on the
“dominium” part. For Austro-Marxists it included a strong state involvement in
the economy, and for neoliberals none at all—except for the rule of law. It
would have been useful to find out more about the mutual influences of the two
groups, as well as about the role of others like Schumpeter who straddled the space
between neoliberals and Marxists.
The quality of writing is uneven.
There are parts of the book that are engagingly written, and cover historical developments
very closely. But there are also parts, especially in Chapter 7 which provides a
“lengthy exegesis” (to quote Slobodian himself) of Hayek’s writings which are repetitive,
boring, and at times even odd. These parts resemble a doctoral dissertation
where an eager students shows to have mastered hundreds of quotes from the
authors he reviews (probably more than they themselves could remember) but which
have very little do to with the subject at hand. One would have liked to learn more
about Hayek’s influence in the Thatcher revolution (that goes unmentioned) than
on Hayek’s ruminations on epistemology, law, psychology, cybernetics, system
theory, brain neurology and the like, complete with his many Greek neologisms and innumerable metaphors
(is the human society more like a flock of geese, or like a school of fish, or
like “iron fillings magnetized by a magnet under the sheet of paper on which we
have poured them”).
This is an excellent book but if it
were shorter, more focused and at times less concerned about providing all the
rights citations, it would have gained, in my opinion, in readability and
probably in influence.