新自由主義の歴史的起源と戦後フランス資本主義(1938-73年)

抄録

With the spread of deregulation in the business world beginning in the 1980s, the concept of "neo-liberalism" has attracted the interest of more and more people. Our understanding of this idea, as well as the movements or practices based on it, however, is still very limited. In fact, scholarly literature hardly mentions it, and we have no authoritative definition which fulfills both the needs of historical studies and those of economic theory studies. Based on French public archives, and private French archives recently opened to the public, this study demonstrates three points concerning neo-liberalism. First, neo-liberalism has its "official" roots in the "Walter Lippmann Symposium" held in Paris in 1938, in which such famous liberal economists as F. Hayek, L. Mises, W. Ropke, and J. Rueff participated. Second, at this symposium, discussants reached the conclusion that (neo-)liberalism should be based on two key conceptual foundations: that the price mechanism (not the pursuit of maximum utility) should be considered the "fundamental postulate" of liberalism; and that state intervention should not always be eliminated, as some types of state intervention are compatible with the price mechanism, and are therefore acceptable. Third, after the end of World War II, Germany was the first to carry out an economic and social policy involving neo-liberalism, which was called a "Social Market Economy." As early as 1958 France followed, and the successive Gaullist governments, following the recommendations of J. Rueff, the founder of the French School of neo-liberalism, began to grapple with a large-scale "structural reform" in three fields of finances, economy and credit. Therefore, neo-liberalism did not originate in the Anglo-Saxon World as is commonly believed, but in continental Europe.