Neoliberalism: Its Roots, Development, and Legitimation

Abstract

This chapter illustrates salient socio-economic conditions that allowed the implementation of neoliberalism and reviews basic aspects of early theories of neoliberalismNeoliberalism. It opens with an illustration of the transition from FordismFordismto neoliberalism and the developmentDevelopmentof neoliberal globalizationNeoliberal Globalization. It underscores the creation of global networks of production and consumptionGlobal Consumptionand the emergence of the current global working classGlobal Working Classand global capitalist classGlobal Capitalist Class. It further stresses the importance of the crisis of the leftLeftvis-à-vis discourses that discredited the negotiated solutions of the contradictionsContradictionsof capitalism and supported the impartiality and desirability of the functioning of the marketMarket. The fundamental ideological components of neoliberalism are illustrated through a review of relevant ideas of Ludwig vonMises Ludwig vonMises and Friedrich von Hayek and the debate and events surrounding the evolution of neoliberalism from the creation of the Mont Pelerin SocietySocietyto the first adoption of neoliberal ideas by the ordoliberals in the post-World War II West GermanyGermany. The chapter concludes by stressing the importance of the related concepts of the impartiality of the market and the “end of politics.”