In this book, the joint effort of an economist and a philosopher offers a theoretical overview of both neoliberalism's genesis within economic theory and social studies as well as its development outside academia. Tracing the sources of neoliberalism within the history of economic thought, the book explores the differences between neoliberalism and classical liberalism.

Contents

List of tables

Introduction: The counter-revolution of neoliberalism

This book's contents

1 Foucault and beyond

1.1 Foucault's distinction between liberalism and neoliberalism

1.2 The neo-Marxist conception of neoliberalism

1.3 The relationship between state action and economy

1.4 Neoliberalism and the question of systemic complexity

2 The building of economics as a science

2.1 The revolution of marginalism: how political economy became economics

2.2 General economic equilibrium and econometrics in the 1930s: from Vienna to Chicago

2.3 The Americanization of the discipline: building mainstream economics

2.4 The rise of neoliberalism in Chicago: the hegemonic role of both neoliberalism and neoclassical economics

3 The building of individuals as rational agents

3.1 Economic rationality and homo oeconomicus: from Vienna and Lausanne to Chicago

3.2 The theoretical and methodological distance between Vienna and Chicago

3.3 Karl Polanyi's critique of neoliberalism

4 Turning the world into a firm

4.1 Neoliberalism and the political role of the firm

4.2 The neoliberal theory of organizations

4.3 Institutions, evolution and the frame of individual choices: or, farewell from the neoclassic nuts and bolts

Postscript: A new ethics for a new liberalism?

Index

Giandomenica Becchio is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Turin, Italy.

Giovanni Leghissa is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy.