The 1938 neoliberal agenda assigned the state a large welfare role

Evidence

According to the agenda of neoliberalism agreed on in 1938, the normative “good society” comprised five elements, most of which concerned the role of the state. Beyond its responsibility to, first, protect the price mechanism, the state must, second, put in place and guarantee a legal order to safeguard the market’s development and legally justify any intervention. Third, political liberalism must embrace law as the cornerstone of legitimacy, and the codification of law must be based on representative debates capable of establishing general norms. Fourth, such a legal regime constitutes the liberal method to “control the social”; and fifth, a liberal state is responsible for continuously providing society with five essential elements, for which taxes could be imposed: national defence, social insurance, social services, education, and scientific research. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 353

Categorization

• XREF: Directly contradicts the crude stereotype that neoliberalism = minimal state; echoes Michel Foucault’s reading of Ordoliberalism in Birth of Biopolitics (state as market-sustaining regulator), and connects to the reader’s stated goal of fracturing the caricature. — connects to: Neoliberal states redefined their mandate from welfare to securitization and control; Neoliberals sought minimal welfare that avoided legitimizing the welfare state — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 206; The term ‘neoliberalism’ was coined at the 1938 Colloque Walter Lippmann — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 775
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the five-point 1938 agenda’ as the original, state-heavy blueprint that later McChesney/Harvey-style accounts erased — reconstructing what the early self-described neoliberals actually wanted from the state.
• ADDENDUM: This state-centered welfare agenda complicates and could extend the ‘Grafting & Growth’ infrastructure essay’s claim that markets and states are never purely opposed — the 1938 agenda explicitly mandates state provision of education, research, and social services.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal states redefined their mandate from welfare to securitization and control #contradicts (0.75)
• Neoliberals sought minimal welfare that avoided legitimizing the welfare state #qualifies (0.75) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 206
• The term ‘neoliberalism’ was coined at the 1938 Colloque Walter Lippmann #expands (0.70) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 775