Interwar Vienna’s labor-capital standoff shaped the birth of neoliberalism
Evidence
Red Vienna shaped the worldview of the Austrians who would form the neoliberal movement, entrenching the idea of an armed standoff between labor and capital. … Mises later described collective bargaining as the “gun under the table.” He might have meant it as a metaphor, but it was not a metaphor in Vienna. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 172
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the reader’s finding elsewhere that elites induce obedience among the armed masses through fear of disorder; Mises actually saw Social Democrat-controlled army as the coercive reality behind bargaining. — connects to: Interwar Vienna produced the extra-academic intellectual networks that seeded neoliberalism — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 101; Neoliberalism emerged from the Great Depression, not from Viennese interwar thought alone — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 101; Neoliberalism’s core concepts formed in the 1930s through networked institutions — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 352 (+2 more)
- DEFINE: Shows why ‘neoliberalism’ must be read against its formative Red Vienna context of feared labor power, not as abstract doctrine.
Broader Connections
- Interwar Vienna produced the extra-academic intellectual networks that seeded neoliberalism
#expands(0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 101 - Neoliberalism emerged from the Great Depression, not from Viennese interwar thought alone
#qualifies(0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 101 - Neoliberalism’s core concepts formed in the 1930s through networked institutions
#qualifies(0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 352 - Cold War anticommunism and colonial economics stunted early neoliberal development thinking
#qualifies(0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1267 - Austerity originated after World War I as a counteroffensive against working-class unrest
#corroborates(0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 28