Masters of the Universe

Abstract

Based on archival research and interviews with leading participants in the movement, this book traces the ascendancy of neoliberalism from the academy of interwar Europe to supremacy under Reagan and Thatcher and in the decades since. The book argues that there was nothing inevitable about the victory of free-market politics. Far from being the story of the simple triumph of right-wing ideas, the neoliberal breakthrough was contingent on the economic crises of the 1970s and the acceptance of the need for new policies by the political left. This edition includes a new foreword which addresses the relationship between intellectual history and the history of politics and policy. Fascinating, important, and timely, this is a book for anyone who wants to understand the history behind the Anglo-American love affair with the free market, as well as the origins of the current economic crisis.

Neoliberalism as concept

“…Until the 1970s, neoliberalism was used primarily to signify a category of economic ideas that arose in the 1930s--60s, associated with the Freiburg Ordoliberalism school, the Mont Pelerin Society, the work of Friedrich Hayek, and the counter--Keynesian economics of the Chicago school. Some elements of this 'proto'--neoliberalism were influential in the making of the wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle of West Germany's post--war 'social market economy' attributed to its Minister for Economics, Ludwig Erhard, (Mirowski and Plehwe 2009, Stedman--Jones 2012, Peck 2008, Turner 2008. By the early 1980s, neoliberalism was used in a very different way, as it came to describe the wave of market deregulation, privatization, and welfare--state withdrawal that swept the first, second, and third worlds.…”

‘Progressive’ Turns in Post-1945 Conservative Social Policy

“…Although neo‐liberal Conservatives had been forced to take a back seat as progressive one nation conservatism took hold within the party from the 1950s to the early 1970s, they were far from inactive, not least because of the efforts of sympathetic organisations and think tanks such as the Mont Pelerin Society and the Institute of Economic Affairs (see Cockett, : Stedman Jones, 2012a). Arguably, however, it was Keith Joseph's defection from the progressive one nation cause following the Conservatives' defeat in the February 1974 general election that proved to be the pivotal moment in the renaissance of neo‐liberal conservatism.…”