1930s crisis drove Hayek, Polanyi, and Lippmann to rethink liberalism’s epistemology.

Evidence

With the exception of Mises, few free market economists on either side of the Atlantic denied that better state controls were needed to rein in the economic crisis. Confronted with the popularity of state controls, F. A. Hayek and Michael Polanyi in England, and Walter Lippmann in the United States, independently reached the same conclusion: the feasibility of economic planning was not solely a technical problem, but called for a much larger understanding of the epistemological foundations of liberalism and its relationship with the market economy. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 66

Categorization

• XREF: Shows the shared problem constellation that produced Lippmann’s colloquium and the founding of the Mont Pelerin Society — key nodes in the reader’s mapping of neoliberal varieties. — connects to: Hayek’s own theory was reshaped by the 1930s planning debate. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 67; Hayek, Polanyi, and Lippmann each reframed planning as an epistemological problem. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 66; Hayek blamed foreign ideas, not democracy itself, for liberalism’s decline. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 381 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek, Polanyi, and Lippmann each reframed planning as an epistemological problem. #expands (0.92) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 66
• Hayek’s own theory was reshaped by the 1930s planning debate. #expands (0.90) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 67
• Interwar neoliberals broke with laissez-faire empiricism to build a conventionalist science of liberalism #expands (0.82) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 52
• Interwar epistemological debates became fused with rival political programs. #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 64
• The early 1930s radicalized governments and isolated free-market economists. #expands (0.78) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 41
• In the 1930s pro-business thinkers themselves rejected free markets and laissez-faire. #expands (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 66
• Hayek’s epistemology drew on the same tacit-embodied model as Polanyi’s science #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2162
• Hayek blamed foreign ideas, not democracy itself, for liberalism’s decline. #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 381
• Rüstow and Röpke linked liberalism’s crisis to economism and totalitarianism #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1354