Review of Economic Philosophy

Tag: Neoliberalism

  • Is capitalism an intrinsically violent system? A Benjaminian reading of the concept of primitive accumulation in Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and David Harvey

    Abstract

    Marxist economic theory accounts for the relationship between capitalism and violence by using the concept of primitive accumulation. This article proposes to show how this concept was constructed and developed by analysing three stages: first its initial elaboration by Karl Marx (primitive accumulation as the prehistory of capital), then a first extension by Rosa Luxemburg (primitive accumulation as a current movement of geographical extension of the logic of capital from the centre to the periphery), and finally a second extension by David Harvey (primitive accumulation as a movement of “internal” recolonisation and “accumulation by dispossession”). The article proposes to articulate these three stages on the basis of the dialectic between law and violence as problematized by the philosopher Walter Benjamin (2018).

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    [See the article on Cairn]

  • The Nietzschean Origins of Ambiguities of the Entrepreneur Concept: Schumpeter as a Reader of Nietzsche

    Abstract

    The figure of the entrepreneur is now used in a wide variety of public discourses. This work seeks to trace one of the theoretical sources for the constitution of this figure: Schumpeter’s 1911a, b theory of the entrepreneur. This study shows, by taking into account Schumpeter’s intellectual and theoretical context, that he was led to import a philosophical anthropology in economics, that of Nietzsche, an author widely read in Austria at the beginning of the 20th century. By transposing, within his economic theory, some of the main features of the great Nietzschean creative man into the figure of the entrepreneur, Schumpeter develops an original explanation of the dynamic nature of the market and of economic evolution. Nevertheless, a whole series of ambiguities are also important to Nietzsche, particularly with regard to the origin of the individual exceptionality of the entrepreneur, and more specifically his creative power. A second ambiguity is very widely inherited, which concerns the extension of the individual entrepreneur model: does it constitute a theory of action valid for all individuals or only for a particular type of individual? How can we reconcile the exceptionality of the entrepreneur with the norm of entrepreneurship for all? The last part of this work thus explores these ambiguities, which appear in Schumpeter and his successors, notably Israel Kirzner.

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    JEL Codes: B13, B25, B31, B40

    [Read the review in Cairn]

  • The problem rather than the solution: Democracy in the neoliberal worldview

    Abstract

    Far from being restricted to economic questions, neoliberalism is a global thought, a worldview, an ideology prone to sketching out schemes for the improvement of various aspects of social life and, last but not least, of politics. The writing of many neoliberals, among them a few leading figures, shows an enduring skepticism about democracy, with it being accused of stifling liberty and fostering socialism. This suspicious look at democracy is sometimes coupled with a reflection on possible alternatives and explains the interest expressed for some right-wing authoritarian regimes, the dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chile serving as a particular example here. The neoliberal reflection on democracy unveils a deep-rooted resentment of modern representative systems and the correlative quest for a form of legitimacy not based on the rule of majority but on the rule of a chosen few.

    JEL classification: B20 – B31 – B53 – H10 – P16

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  • Liberalism or democracy? Raymond Aron reading Friedrich Hayek

    Abstract

    This paper studies the critique of Friedrich Hayek’s liberalism delivered by Raymond Aron, on a period that runs from the 1940s to the early 1980s. Through a cross rereading of the main texts of these two twentieth century philosophers, it tries to show that their oppositions—on the place of economic freedom, on the definition of freedom, and on the conception of democracy—reveal the existence of two deeply divergent paths within contemporary neo-liberalism: one that is based on an obsessive attachment to the market and that is accompanied by a pronounced distrust towards democracy; the other that is, on the contrary, built on a trust in democracy, considered as liberalism’s endpoint, which leads to the non- absolutization of the market. Reconsidering this opposition may facilitate a process of moving away from a narrow and caricatural perception of neo-liberalism, which reduces it to a locking of political possibilities.

    JEL Codes: B10 – B31 – N14 – P16

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  • “Neoliberalism” and democracy in the 1930s: Louis Rougier and Louis Marlio

    Abstract

    French “neoliberalism” was born in the 1930s, specifically during the Walter Lippmann Colloquium of 1938 organized by the philosopher Louis Rougier, in the context of the imminence of the war. The aim of this article is to understand how, given the totalitarian threat, the French neoliberal thought of this period conceived democracy. We shall compare to this end the conceptions of two founders of this current: that of Rougier, who preferred to speak about “constructive liberalism” (“libéralisme constructeur”) and that of Louis Marlio, who spoke about “social liberalism” (“libéralisme social”). Are these two expressions equivalent and are they underlain by the same conception of the democracy?

    JEL classification: B20 – B31 – H10 – P16

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  • Neoliberal continental drift: An essay on dynamic typology

    Abstract

    Starting from the observation that there is a great deal of confusion about the notion of “neoliberalism,” this study aims to clarify the meaning and the history of the doctrine. To do so, it first develops an original typology distinguishing four tendencies (ordoliberal, neoclassical, Austrian, and French) and then sheds light on the evolution of the movement over the past eight decades.

    JEL classification: B20 – B31 – B53 – E50 – H10

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