The French Reception of American Neoliberalism in the Late 1970s

Abstract

The “new economists” are much less remembered than the anti-totalitarian “new philosophers.” But although they have received very little scholarly attention, the new economists had a profound impact on France’s intellectual and ideological landscape in the late 1970s. For it was through them that American and Austrian “neoliberalism” were finally introduced to France. Curiously, however, despite the fact that this current of economic thought had long been marginalized in the Hexagon, France is sometimes considered to be the birthplace of a “neoliberal” movement. For it was in Paris in 1938 that the Colloque Walter Lippmann was held on the occasion of the translation into French of the famous American columnist’s book The Good Society. Organized by the philosopher Louis Rougier, this international gathering was attended by key liberal figures such as Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek, and Wilhelm Ropke. Its French delegation included, among others, Jacques Rueff, Louis Baudin, and Louis Marlio. It was at this event, which gave birth in 1939 to the short-lived Centre International pour la Renovation du Liberalisme (CIERL), that the term “neo-liberalism” was coined.1 This concept was not, however, unambiguous. Formulated as if in symmetry with contemporaneous French “neo-socialism,” it expressed a desire to renovate liberal doctrine in response to the Depression by making it more socially and economically interventionist, defining a sort of “third way” between the old “laissez-faire” liberalism of the “Manchester school” and contemporary dirigiste and planiste economics.