Hayek drew his critique of liberal jurisprudence from Carl Schmitt, a Nazi jurist

Evidence

Perhaps the greatest incongruity of the neoliberal thought collective has been that the avatars of freedom drew one of their most telling innovations from the critique of liberalism that had been mounted by totalitarian German and Italian political thinkers from the interwar period. Although a fair number of such writers were important for the European MPS members, the one that comes up time and again in their footnotes was the figure whom Hayek called, “Adolf Hitler’s crown jurist Carl Schmitt, who consistently advocated the replacement of the ‘normative’ thinking of liberal law by a conception of law which regards as its purpose ‘concrete order formation’” (1967, 169). It is a watchword among those familiar with the German literature (Christi 1984, 532; Scheuerman 1999, chapter 8) that Hayek reprises much of Schmitt’s thesis that liberalism and democracy should be regarded as antithetical: Liberalism and democracy, although compatible, are not the same . — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2143

Categorization

• XREF: Bears directly on the reader’s core historical interest in the neoliberalism network’s origins — the intellectual filiation to interwar fascist legal theory is a key origin story. — connects to: Carl Schmitt had anticipated Hayek’s liberal-competition argument decades earlier — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2163; Hayek’s political solution resembled Schmitt’s total state despite his liberal self-image — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2146; Early neoliberalism crystallized partly in intellectual dialogue with Carl Schmitt’s anti-liberalism — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 358
• SHARE: A striking, conversation-worthy detail for anyone interested in the hidden lineage of free-market thought: freedom’s avatars borrowed from Hitler’s crown jurist.

Broader Connections

• Early neoliberalism crystallized partly in intellectual dialogue with Carl Schmitt’s anti-liberalism #expands (0.90) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 358
• Carl Schmitt had anticipated Hayek’s liberal-competition argument decades earlier #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2163
• Hayek’s political solution resembled Schmitt’s total state despite his liberal self-image #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2146