Early neoliberals depicted civilization as indistinguishably moral, racial and economic

Evidence

This book begins in the late 1940s, with the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society. The early parts of the book explore those strands of neoliberal thought that were particularly focused on the requirements of a ‘civilisation’ that early neoliberals depicted as indistinguishably moral, racial and economic. In the first three chapters, I focus predominantly on early neoliberalism, and on the leading figures associated with the Austrian School of economics and the ordoliberalism of the German Freiburg School. The central characters of these first chapters are Austrian School figures Mises and Hayek, British economist Lionel Robbins, German ordoliberals Wilhelm Röpke and Alexander Rüstow, Swiss diplomat and economist William Rappard, and French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel – though many others make cameo appearances. While not without their significant disagreements with one another, these figures were united by a concern with world order (as Quinn Slobodian has highlighted), and by the conviction that international economic integration presupposed what Röpke called ‘extra-economic integration (social-political-moral-institutional-legal integration)’. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 63

Categorization

• XREF: Invokes Slobodian’s work on the Globalists, a key adjacent text in the reader’s advanced neoliberalism corpus. — connects to: Early neoliberals framed market competition as dependent on prior moral virtues. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 70; Early neoliberal development theory echoed colonial assumptions about non-Western peoples — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1290; Early neoliberals justified the market primarily through political and moral virtues, not efficiency (+2 more)
• QUESTION: The racial dimension of early neoliberal ‘civilisation’ framing is worth chasing — how did racial categories structure the moral-economic program of the Mont Pèlerin Society?

Broader Connections

• Early neoliberals framed market competition as dependent on prior moral virtues. #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 70
• Early neoliberal development theory echoed colonial assumptions about non-Western peoples #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1290
• Early neoliberals justified the market primarily through political and moral virtues, not efficiency #qualifies (0.80)
• Cold War anticommunism and colonial economics stunted early neoliberal development thinking #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1267