Neoliberalism’s Freiburg-school origins were anticartel and then mutated in Chile

Evidence

The term “neoliberalism” originated with economists affiliated with the German Freiburg school in the years after World War II. Theorists like Rüstow, Eucken, Röpke, and Müller-Armack sought to decouple from laissez-faire economic policy a classical liberal position, namely that market competition brings prosperity (Tribe, “political Economy of Modernity”). The Freiburg school saw monopolies and cartels as a threat, and advocated humanistic, social values. In other words, “neo” liberals were attempting to make positive improvements to classical liberalism; they saw an unfettered faith in the free market as out of date, and pejoratively classified those who believed in it as “paleo-liberals” (Boas and Gans-Morse, “Neoliberalism”). Economic theories that Progressives would today characterize as neoliberal were taken up by Chilean economists trained according to the Chicago school who admired the “German Miracle” post– World War II. These economists studied under Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, and implemented “rapid and extensive privatization, deregulation, and reductions in trade barriers” when they returned to Chile (Boas and Gans-Morse, “Neoliberalism,” 15). While these practices differed greatly from the original normative ideology advocated by the Freiburg school, they took its name and became the first wave of a major reorganization of governments and political markets that would characterize the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 764

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply corrects the common conflation — original Freiburg ‘neoliberalism’ was anti-laissez-faire, and the label migrated to Chilean Chicago-school privatization.
• XREF: Connects to literature on the intellectual history of ‘neoliberalism’ (e.g., Mirowski, Foucault’s lectures) and why the label so often gets misattributed. — connects to: Freiburg school feared private cartels more than the state, diverging from Anglo-American liberalism — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 360; The term ordoliberalism named a specific Freiburg School circle around Eucken — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 561; Neoliberal reform in Chile depended on propaganda and a coercive military regime — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1585 (+8 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: the original Freiburg neoliberals were anti-monopoly humanists — a genealogy that complicates how progressives use the term today.

Broader Connections

• The term ordoliberalism named a specific Freiburg School circle around Eucken #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 561
• A right-wing Catholic journal introduced the term neo-liberalism into Chile #expands (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 355
• Neoliberals needed Chile’s dictatorship to find the means to depoliticize economies. #expands (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 301
• Neoliberal reform in Chile depended on propaganda and a coercive military regime #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1585
• The CIA-backed coup installed Chicago-school austerity economists in Chile #qualifies (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 356
• Phenomenology shaped the Freiburg jurists’ theory of law #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 625
• Neoliberalism pivoted from the economy to the framework encasing it #expands (0.72) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 88
• Neoliberalism’s core concepts formed in the 1930s through networked institutions #expands (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 352