Friday, July 25, 2014

Brad DeLong — Karl Polanyi, Classical Liberalism, and the Varieties of "Neoliberalism"

Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation is certainly the right place to start in thinking about "neoliberalism" and its global spread. But you are right to notice and do need to keep thinking that Polanyi is talking about pre-World War II classical liberalism, and that modern post-1980 neoliberalism is somewhat different.  
First, as I, at least, see it, there are three strands of thought that together make up the current of ideas and policies that people call "neoliberalism":
  1. The revived and restored classical liberals, via the Mont Pelerin society and so forth—-and they do indeed have an attachment to the gold standard. 
  2. The Milton Friedman neoliberals—-who believe that the gold standard was a disaster and the government needed to guarantee full employment (and low inflation) via activist monetary policy. But, they go on, attempts by the government to do more than simply maintain full employment and price stability would inevitably come to grief. Government policies would be turned to enrich the politically powerful rather than to enhance social welfare, and so almost always do more harm than good. (Why he thought that activist monetary policy was different—-why Milton Friedman believed government could be successful there while it could not be successful anywhere else—-was never something that he could explain very well.)
  3. The Washington Monthly neoliberals, who argued that 1945-1980 had demonstrated that central planning of all kinds had grave deficiencies, and the governments that wanted to achieve social democratic ends were more often than not better off doing so through market means and market incentives than with bureaucracy. 
There are also differences with respect to the value put on democracy and liberty. The classical liberals wanted limited and representative government, which is a very different thing than modern political democracy, and were as likely or not to approve of traditional deference traditional social authority structures. Washington Monthly neoliberals are social liberals, and are democrats first and neoliberals second. Milton Friedman neoliberals tend to be true libertarians--social liberals--and want democracy constrained to preserve both social and economic liberties. Mont Pelerin neoliberals tend to be social conservatives, and to at least play with endorsing fascist and authoritarian dictators like Mussolini and Pinochet.…
You probably want to read the rest, too.
I have always thought of myself as a Washington Monthly neoliberal, and I am trying to resist the transformation into a Milton Friedman neoliberal.…
Grasping Reality
Karl Polanyi, Classical Liberalism, and the Varieties of "Neoliberalism"
J. Bradford DeLong | Pofessor of Economics and chair of the Political Economy major at the University of California, Berkeley

1 comment:

Matt Franko said...

Sounds to me like they are not 'liberals' they are rather all 'libertarians'....

These are just 3 flavors of libertarians arguing with each other...

rsp,