Early neoliberals treated public regulation as a greater threat than private monopoly

Evidence

The prospective Free Market Study sought to define the political promise of a new, more economically oriented liberalism: “The free market [is] the most efficient organizer of economic activity—[the Study will] emphasize and explain that the free market is systemic, rational, not chaotic or disorderly—, show how the free market performs some of the more difficult functions, such as allocating resources to their best use and distributing consumption through time.” The project also intended to examine the relationship between the free market and political and personal freedom. For our purposes, however, it is more important to note that under the rubric of “the promise of the free market,” the outline identified both private monopoly and public regulation as “The Menace to the Free Market,” with the latter being deemed more “dangerous.” — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 744

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the larger historiography of how the Mont Pèlerin network framed their enemy as the state rather than concentrated private power — echoes the standard account in Stedman Jones and Burgin. — connects to: Neoliberal restructuring converts collective public goods into individualized risk management — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 266; Neoliberals pushed to make regulatory science itself market-governed. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 157; Neoliberal thinkers warned that excessive privatization could itself block innovation. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 175 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Early Chicago economists saw private monopoly as a lesser evil than public regulation #corroborates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1186
• Early neoliberal thinkers blamed corporations, not government, for regulatory capture #contradicts (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1102
• Neoliberalism inverted classical liberalism by defending monopoly and corporate power #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 175
• Neoliberalism reversed the state’s protective role toward shielding markets #expands (0.75) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 745