The geographical and ethical origins of neoliberalism: The Walter Lippmann Colloquium and the foundations of a new geopolitical order

A step further towards a neoliberal regionalism: Creating larger regions in contemporary France

“…The label ‘neoliberalism’ has been used in a range of contradictory ways, leading an increasing number of commentators to question its relevance and substance (Birch, 2015; Boas and Gans-Morse, 2009; Jackson, 2010). However, its initial meaning, born in France in the wake of the Lippmann Colloquium in 1938, has substantial heuristic value for discussing the multiscalar organisation of political authority that took shape on both sides of the North Atlantic from 1945 onwards (Brennetot, 2015a). Taken in its original sense, the neoliberal rationality rests on certain basic principles: promoting world peace by integrating nations into a system of reciprocal material advantages; a system founded on self-limiting sovereignty and on respecting both multilateralism and the free circulation of people, products, capital and information.…”

Making the world open again. The US State Department's thwarted first steps towards global neoliberalization during the Great Depression and World War II

“…On an ontological level, this narrative considers neoliberalism as a new political regime resulting from the recomposition of the international division of labour during the 1970s and the emergence of a new post-Fordist mode of accumulation in the Western world. This prevents us from seeing how neoliberalism is a broader and deeper political phenomenon, initially resulting from the will of part of the Western liberal elite to address the global crisis of the 1930s through a project of geopolitical refoundation based on the economic opening of state spaces and their reciprocal integration within a fluid and globalized market (Brennetot, 2015, Masini, 2012, Masala and Mingardi, 2021, Slobodian, 2018. Far from being confined to a small group of economists, neoliberal ideas were indeed the subjects of policy agendas implemented by various institutions prior to the 1970s, particularly in Europe and the United States (Brennetot, 2022, Cebul et al, 2019Denord and Schwartz, 2009, Dardot and Laval, 2014, Foucault, 1978, François-Poncet, 1969, Mellink, 2021, Moretti, 2014, Nicholls, 1994, Peacock and Willgerodt, 1989, Posner, 1977, Sassoon, 1986.…”

“…In this context, powerful states were tempted to use force and violence to expand their resources, including through discriminatory agreements, unequal treaties and territorial conquests, ultimately leading to a deterioration of international relations and war. According to them, the only remedy possible lay in restoring an open global economy, in which states collectively commit themselves to enforce the discipline necessary for the functioning of a free, competitive and transnational market (Brennetot, 2015), which some analysts today call 'ordoglobalism' (Slobodian, 2018).…”

“…Although he never had any direct connection with neoliberal theorists, Hull then found himself in an intellectual position close to theirs: while the world seemed to be tipping over into an exacerbated economic nationalism, unprecedented since the nineteenth century, Hull and the neoliberals considered renouncing the liberal promises of free-trade pacifism was a remedy worse than the evil it was supposed to cure. Like editorialist Walter Lippmann, also an ardent promoter of Wilsonian internationalism and author of The Good Society (1937), which founded the colloquium of the neoliberal academic network in 1938 (Audier, 2018; Brennetot, 2015), Hull had every reason to be concerned about the isolationism towards which the Roosevelt administration's economic policy leaned in its initial months. Hull shared with neoliberal economists the conviction that protectionist measures taken worldwide were likely to lead to shortages and war, and that a return to an open world economy was the only way to regain collective prosperity and stability.…”

Introduction

“…It is interesting to note that up until this time -that is the 1980s -the term "neoliberalism" was largely used by so-called neoliberals to define themselves (Friedman 1951;Friedrich 1955;Boas and Gans-Morse 2009;Brennetot 2014Brennetot , 2015, although by no means universally, and that this usage reversed as it became a pejorative term in the 1980s (Boas and Gans-Morse 2009). After the 1938 Colloque, for example, a number of French intellectuals used the term néoliberalisme as a way "to designate the intellectual movement launched on the occasion of the Lippmann Colloquium" (Brennetot 2014: 6).…”