Re-Inventing Western Civilisation
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Re-Inventing Western Civilisation Re-Inventing Western Civilisation: Transnational Reconstructions of Liberalism in Europe in the Twentieth Century Edited by Hagen Schulz-Forberg and Niklas Olsen Re-Inventing Western Civilisation: Transnational Reconstructions of Liberalism in Europe in the Twentieth Century, Edited by Hagen Schulz-Forberg and Niklas Olsen This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Hagen Schulz-Forberg, Niklas Olsen and contributors The Chapter by Ben Jackson previously appeared in Making Thatcher’s Britain, (2012), © Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9781107012387, “The think-tank archipelago: Thatcherism and neo-liberalism”, pp. 43-61. All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6049-2, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6049-9 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii List of Tables .............................................................................................. ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Preface ...................................................................................................... xiii The Place of Liberal Thought and Practice in Post-War European Politics Jan-Werner Müller Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Actors and Networks in Transnational and National Spaces: Towards a New History of Liberalism in Europe Hagen Schulz-Forberg and Niklas Olsen Part I Chapter One ............................................................................................... 13 Laying the Groundwork: The Semantics of Neoliberalism in the 1930s Hagen Schulz-Forberg Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 41 In the Shadows of Hayek and Friedman: Quantitative Analysis as an Exploratory Instrument in Socio-Historic Network Research Dieter Plehwe with Katja Walther Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 69 The Moral Order of Classical Liberalism Antonio Masala Part II Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 95 Wilhelm Röpke as a Key Actor of Transnational Neoliberalism after 1945 Jean Solchany vi Table of Contents Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 117 Luigi Einaudi and Italian Liberalism, 1940-1960 Fabio Masini Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 137 A Second-Hand Dealer in Ideas: Christian Gandil and Scandinavian Configurations of European Neoliberalism, 1945-1970 Niklas Olsen Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 169 From Contesting Democracy to Liberal Commitments: On Hungarian Christian Politics after 1945 Ferenc Laczó Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 189 The Think-Tank Archipelago: Thatcherism and Neoliberalism Ben Jackson Bibliography ............................................................................................ 213 Contributors ............................................................................................. 237 Index ........................................................................................................ 239 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The front cover shows the multiple reflections of the Palais Royal in Paris, where neoliberalism was coined in 1938 and evolved in multiple variations until today. Illustration 2-1: Individuals present at 13 MPS conferences or more ........ 50 Illustration 2-2: Individuals present at ten conferences, 1947-62 .............. 53 Illustration 2-3: Individuals present attending 10 conferences or more ..... 59 LIST OF TABLES Table 2-1: Key functionaries of the Mont Pelerin Society ........................ 46 Table 2-2: Persons who were often or very often present but seldom took on functions ................................................................................. 55 Table 2-3: Persons who were often present and often displayed heightened activity ............................................................................... 56 Table 2-4: Sponsors of guests at three MPS conferences .......................... 57 Table 2-5: Individuals very often present who relatively seldom took on functions, 1964-86 .................................................................. 60 Table 2-6: Individuals often present and often displaying heightened activity, 1964-86 .................................................................................. 61 Table 2-7: Sponsors of guests at three MPS conferences .......................... 63 Table 2-8: MPS members who frequently participated in and spoke at conferences, but did not occupy elected functions in the organization ............................................................................... 64 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book emerged from something which, with tongue in cheek, may be called spontaneous order. By mid-2011, it had dawned on us that we shared many common research interests and were in the lucky position of sharing a similar methodological mind-set on top of it. “Doing something together” was the natural reaction. Niklas had built a new individual research project, which took his work on Reinhart Koselleck and conceptual history as a point of departure for the study of liberalism in Scandinavia and Germany since the 1970s. Hagen had developed a larger research project on European economists as normative actors in the twentieth century. The concept of liberalism united our interest. The very contestation of it astonished us; to this day, any two people would have no problem in coming up with at least three different definitions for the concept. As we have known since 2008, and should have known since the 1920s, so-called spontaneous order does not unfold in spaces of total negative freedom. Some institutions, regulations, politics, etc. are quite necessary. We were both lucky in having supportive home departments covering our backs, the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Humanities and the Department of Culture and Society at Aarhus University’s Faculty of Arts. This backing allowed us to turn the idea of “doing something together” into this common book project. While we had the freedom to pursue our research interests within our departments, we would not have been able to bring this book to the printer without further financial and intellectual support. The Danish Council of Independent Research, the VELUX Foundation and the Center for Modern European Studies (CEMES) at the University of Copenhagen supported an international workshop we were able to host in October 2012 as well as the editorial work needed. We each worked on the individual articles until the summer of 2013 and began editing and fine-tuning this volume over the following autumn. Fanny Fröhlich had written an official conference report, which gave our effort some public exposure. Benedikt Backhaus compiled the index for this volume. Søren Friis copy-edited each chapter carefully, bringing quite some intellectual added value to the whole book. Both of us have been very pleased to act as editors. All our authors are leading experts in the field and we have enjoyed our collaboration with xii Acknowledgements them tremendously. The project sparked the wish to continue working on the subject at hand within an even larger group of scholars. We will surely all “do something together” again, sooner rather than later. —Hagen Schulz-Forberg and Niklas Olsen Aarhus and Copenhagen, April 2014 PREFACE THE PLACE OF LIBERAL THOUGHT AND PRACTICE IN POST-WAR EUROPEAN POLITICS1 JAN-WERNER MÜLLER There are indeed well-known and very important issues about the social and political stability of liberalism and of the outlooks historically associated with it. It is from concrete discussion of those issues, rather than from debate about logical possibilities, that the weaknesses of liberalism … are likely to emerge. Equally, it is from social and historical reality that we are likely to be instructed in liberalism’s strengths, and to be reminded of the brutal and fraudulent simplifications which, as a matter of fact, are the usual offerings of its actual enemies. —Isaiah Berlin and Bernard Williams Introduction In 1955, Isaiah Berlin wrote to a correspondent: “Am I the only follower of John Stuart Mill left alive? Russell and I? Can you think of any 1 This short essay draws on my “Fear and Freedom: On “Cold War Liberalism””, in European Journal of Political Theory, 7, 2008, pp. 45-64; “The Triumph of What (if Anything)? Political Ideologies and Political Institutions in Twentieth- Century Europe”, in Journal of Political Ideologies, 14, 2009, pp. 211-26; “Value Pluralism in Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Thought”, in Mark Bevir (ed.), Modern Pluralism: