First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Liberalism generally holds that legitimate political power is limited and is to be impartially exercised, only for the public good. Liberals accordingly assign political priority to maintaining certain basic liberties and equality of opportunities; they advocate an essential role for markets in economic activity, and they recognize government's crucial role in correcting market breakdowns and providing public goods. Classical liberalism and what I call “the high liberal tradition” are two main branches of liberalism. Classical liberalism evolved from the works of (...) Adam Smith and the classical utilitarian economists; its major 20th century representatives include Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The high liberal tradition developed from John Stuart Mill's works, and its major philosophical representatives in the 20th century are John Dewey and, later, John Rawls. This paper discusses the main distinguishing features of the classical and the high liberal traditions and their respective positions regarding capitalism as an economic and social system. Classical liberals, unlike high liberals, regard economic liberties and rights of private property in productive resources to be nearly as important as basic liberties. They conceive of equality of opportunity in more formal terms, and regard capitalist markets and the price system as essential not only to the allocation of production resources, but also as the fundamental criterion for the just distribution of income, wealth, and economic powers. High liberals, by contrast, regard the economic liberties as subordinate to the exercise of personal and civic liberties. They are prepared to regulate and restrict economic liberties to achieve greater equality of opportunities, reduce inequalities of economic powers, and promote a broader conception of the public good. And while high liberals endorse markets and the price system as essential to allocation of productive resources, they do not regard markets as the fundamental criterion for assessing just distributions of income, wealth, and economic powers and positions of responsibility. The paper concludes with some reflections upon the essential role that dissimilar conceptions of persons and society play in grounding the different positions on economic justice that classical and high liberals advocate. (shrink)

This book is an introduction to and translation of the 1938 Walter Lippmann Colloquium held in Paris, which became known as the intellectual birthplace of “neo-liberalism.” Although the Lippmann Colloquium has been the subject of significant recent interest, this book makes this crucial primary source available to a wide, English-speaking audience for the first time. The Colloquium features important—often passionate—debates involving well-known intellectual figures such as Walter Lippmann, Louis Rougier, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Michael Polanyi, Jacques Rueff, Alexander Rüstow (...) and Wilhelm Röpke. Many of the topics addressed at the Colloquium, such as the proper methods of economic intervention, the relationship between the market economy and democracy, and the relationship between economic liberalism and political liberalism are issues that still vie for our attention in the aftermath of the Great Recession. (shrink)

SummaryThis article deals with laissez faire arguments as distinguishable in Europe between the final decades of the nineteenth century and 1914. The focus is on Herbert Spencer and the British ‘Individualists’, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto, and the Frenchman Paul Leroy-Beaulieu. Analysis concentrates on the relationship between laissez faire formulations and democracy, the latter amounting to the impact of the extension of the franchise on representative government. All the mentioned authors blamed the mechanisms of democratic government for the contemporary growth in (...) state functions. While Spencer focused on the threat of a new class legislation after the demise of aristocratic power, Pareto and Leroy-Beaulieu viewed the pressure of lobbies and parties as the chief cause of the extension of state interventions. This article also aims to detect similarities and differences with more recent formulations. It is argued that Friedrich Hayek's achievement was to reconcile, against earlier perspectives, laissez faire with democracy. The reconciliation rested on a conceptualisation of democracy as a valuable method or procedure, onto which no values should be grafted. (shrink)

There is something extreme about Ludwig von Mises’s methodological apriorism, namely, his epistemological justification of the a priori element of economic theory. His critics have long recognized and attacked the extremeness of Mises’s epistemology of a priori knowledge. However, several of his defenders have neglected what is extreme about Mises’s apriorism. Thus, the argument is directed less against Mises than against those contributions to the secondary literature that assert his methodological moderation while overlooking what the most prominent critics have found (...) extreme about Mises’s apriorism. Defending Mises as a merely moderate apriorist because he held only a narrow part of the foundation of economics to be a priori is a straw-man defense against criticisms of his apriorism as epistemologically extreme. (shrink)

De gustibus non est disputandum. This maxim reflects a fundamental problem both for the study of markets and for the concern with morals. The problem is the intractability of tastes coupled with their indispensability for both positive and normative economics. Tastes are indispensable in positive microeconomic theory because, under the label ‘preferences,’ they, together with expectations, determine choice and behavior. Tastes are equally indispensable to welfare economics' conception of morally permissible arrangements, because these arrangements must reflect compromises between competing and (...) conflicting preferences. (shrink)

This book examines the effects of the moral rhetoric of the market concept of justice on our understanding of justice. The shift in elevating commutative justice is traced through the moral rhetoric of praise and blame in the political economy of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman.

Having emerged in the 1930s and 1940s as the German variety of neoliberalism, the ordoliberal perspective on economics provides an intriguing set of politicoeconomic problems and solutions. While its impact on postwar German economic policy is commonly recognized, more light needs to be shed on the role of ordoliberal ideas within scientific discourses. Embedded in the intellectual climate during the formative years, the essentials of Walter Eucken’s and Wilhelm Röpke’s paradigms regarding the theory of orders and order-based policy are presented (...) in comparative perspective. Possible mutual gains from trade between Freiburg and Vienna are explored in two steps. Historically, the particular proximity of Friedrich Hayek’s early social philosophy to ordoliberal reasoning and to its notion of the competitive order deserves attention. Conceptually, clarity from widespread misinterpretations and higher awareness of existing and potential substantive commonalities can generate crucial impulses for a better understanding of liberty and its prerequisites. (shrink)