The Geneva connection, a liberal world order, and the Austrian economists
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The Geneva connection, a liberal world order, and the Austrian economists Richard M. Ebeling 1
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (2018), attempts to draw a picture of the interwar and postwar periods of the 20th century that sees neoliberalism as a political and economic idea meant to preserve the power of private Bcapital^ over democratic Blabor^ for the exploitation of the latter by the former. In doing so, he sees a group of economists associated with the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland as central players in designing a new order for capitalist oppression. This article challenges both the facts and the interpretation offered by Dr. Slobodian, by analyzing the purpose behind and the scholars associated with the Graduate Institute in, especially, the 1930s, with particular attention to his criticisms of the Austrian economists, Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek. It is shown that his story is far more fiction than fact. Keywords Liberalism . Austrian economics . International economic order . Economic
nationaism . Ludwig von Mises . Friedrich A. Hayek
On September 16, 1939, barely more than two weeks after the beginning of the Second World War in Europe with the German invasion of Poland on September 1st, British economist, Lionel Robbins, finished the preface to his short book, The Economic Causes of War. The five chapters making up the 125-page volume had originally been delivered as a series of lectures at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva Switzerland in the spring of 1939. With a new World War now threatening to, once again, place political and military barriers in the way of relatively easy travel for the exchange of goods and ideas across the European continent, Robbins wistfully paid homage to that institution and what he considered its significance in the interwar period:
* Richard M. Ebeling [email protected]; [email protected]
1
Baker School of Business, The Citadel: Military College of South Carolina, 171 Moultree Street, Charleston, SC 29409, USA
R. Ebeling
BHow much all of all that was most stimulating and inspiring in the period between the two wars is typified in their lovely college by the lake. Long may it flourish, an oasis of sanity in a mad world, to preserve and advance the great principles of international citizenship for which it conspicuously stands.^(Robbins 1939, p. 9) Since the Graduate Institute and the liberal economists associated with it in the interwar era play such a central role in Quinn Slobodian’s, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, is seems worthwhile to take some time to appreciate the role and place the Institute played in the 1930s in a way that the author does not.
1 The graduate Institute’s purpose and Mission The classical liberal economist and political scientist, William E. Rappard, and the economic historian, Paul Mantoux, founded the Graduate Institut
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