Neoliberal theorists could recast imperialism as a civilizing expansion of legal order.

Evidence

The 1957 conference report in Neue Zürcher Zeitung was written by Helmut Schoeck, the MPS’s chief theorist of envy. The Atlanta-based sociologist (Emory University) went beyond the other speakers at the conference in positively defining imperialism as the geographic expansion of a system of order (rule of law, etc.) (Schoeck 1957, 7). He praised colonialism for having brought “about everything” to those areas with regard to political organization and the rule of law. Schoeck subjected Rüstow to harsh criticism, pointing out that Rüstow did not concentrate on the colonial crimes committed by Russian settlers and military. He considered Rüstow’s emphasis on Western colonial crimes as possibly more damaging than known declarations against the testing of atomic weapons (Schoeck 1957, 7). According to Schoeck, foreign aid amounted to nothing but misallocation of resources. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1307

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to debates on whether early MPS figures endorsed or contested colonial legacies, and to Bauer’s later anti-developmentalism. — connects to: Some neoliberals explicitly embraced empire as a model for global economic order. — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 858; Neoliberals redefined imperialism as an effect of politicising the economy, not of capitalist expansion. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 231
• SEED: Angle: how the ‘rule of law’ frame was mobilized to retroactively justify colonialism within the founding neoliberal network.