Bretton Woods institutionalized the monetary nationalism Hayek had attacked since the 1930s

Evidence

Alongside capital controls, Bretton Woods established an international framework for the domestic interventionist policies of the Fordist regime of “embedded liberalism.” One could argue that this was the international institutionalization of what Hayek had criticized as “monetary nationalism” since the 1930s—the idea that an autonomous and democratic monetary policy was possible within the boundaries of nation-states. Keynesianism and monetary nationalism were “built into the international postwar order,” Hayek claimed in his only publication on these questions during the Bretton Woods era. In the view of Hayek and many of his colleagues from the MPS, the Bretton Woods system practically forced governments on a path of inflationary and expansionist monetary policy, which in turn leads to an expansion of the state apparatus and increases the danger of collectivist and totalitarian developments. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 424

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s map of neoliberal varieties: this inverts the common picture of Hayek as a free-marketeer opposing all internationalism — here he objects to Bretton Woods precisely because it enables national monetary autonomy. — connects to: Central banks were treasury financing agents everywhere but Germany until the Keynesian era ended. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 420; Neoliberals were ready accomplices in Bretton Woods’ collapse — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 412; The Bretton Woods consensus prioritized domestic full employment over capital mobility — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 416 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• The US imposed the dollar at Bretton Woods, killing Keynes’s clearing union #exemplifies (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 1016