Since the Thacher-Reagan-Nakasone Era of the 1980s, the liberal economic ideas of the 'Austrian School' have been on the tongues of politicians all over the world. For a deep understanding of this intellectual tradition, however, we must bear in mind that it has a history of more than one hundred years since Carl Menger published his seminal work, Grundsatze der Volkswirtshaftslehre. After a very short discussion on the methodology of intellectual history (Section 1), I explore the school's origins in the old Austria under the Habsburg Monarchy. I find that the most important development in this tradition was the emergence of a fundamental liberalism during the turbulent years after 1918 (Section 2). Ludwig von Mises was the sole innovator of this tradition. I examine Mises' position in Austrian post-war economic policy in Section 3, using evidence from his contemporaries as well as financial statistics. In Section 4, I summarize his criticism of socialism and defense of liberalism. In the last section, I conclude that Mises' fundamental liberalism was the expression of the dissipation of the social basis for a viable political liberalism in the unstable Austrian Republics. However, the purification performed by Mises provided the liberal ideas of the 'Austrians' with a new vigor that enabled them to migrate to the United States.

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Hayek did not treat of technology as such. However, we can infer his views on technology through many key passages on trade cycles, critique of socialism, and competition. Hayek regards technology as the "results of accumulation of knowledge". This idea of technology is one of the basic factors forming his analysis and critique of socialism, because it permits the idea of distinguishing knowledge that can be centralised from that which cannot be. Knowledge on commerce or trade that is particular to a certain time and space cannot be centralised. Here, we cannot substitute this type of knowledge for the other type of knowledge on science or technology that can be centralised. Hayek argues that the centrally planned economy does not work because it supposes this impossible substitution to be possible. It is true that Hayek's idea of technology effectively functions for his analysis of the socialist planned economy. But it also shows many failures in his hypothetical analysis of socialism in general and engineers in general. First, Hayek asserts, Marx's philosophy of history regards everything to be regulated knowledge of technology, so that Marx's philosophy of history is not materialist but idealist in nature, because it views history as circumscribed by knowledge. However, this opinion is far from the truth. Second, Hayek regards engineers as people who disregard economic calculation and misallocate natural resources. However, it is the military, not engineers, that are principally to blame for ignorance of economic calculation. Nor is there any reason for denying that businessmen's misallocations of natural resources are bigger than engineers'. Hayek views scientists and engineers as similar to priests or monks, because both types accumulate knowledge. But scientists and engineers do not only accumulate forms of knowledge but also destroy them. This is not the case with priests. Further, Hayek denies the tendency of industry toward centralization. He thinks that consumers and firms can choose technology and avoid monopolistic normalization, which functions as a counterforce against centralization. But generally speaking, economic agencies cannot choose technologies as if they were forms of knowledge. Technologies appear as economic forces which are unavoidable. It may appear that Hayek's thought has gained credibility, since information technologies are similar to the essential character of technology posited by Hayek. Software is something like an accumulation of knowledge, so there seems to be a dispersal of economic power, and every person can trade his commodity or his ability without any organization like a trade union. However, this is an illusion. Information is one thing but knowledge is another. And Hayek' idea of technology has serious defects which lead to erroneous thories, some of which we have shown in this article.

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Social reform and imperialism were the greatest political questions in Britain at the turn of the century. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the difference between the new liberalism and Fabianism of the time by comparing how J.A. Hobson and the Webbs understood the relations between them. In this paper, I point out that the difference between Hobson and the Webbs derives from their respective methods of study. Hobson's method was based on deduction while the Webbs' method was based on induction, and this led to the different ways in which they evaluated social policy. Since Hobson evaluated individual policies from the standpoint of deduction, he showed little attachment to implementing any particular policy. On the other hand, the Webbs conceptualized the notion of the National Minimum on the basis of how to guarantee a minimum standard of living for the workers in the context of trade unionism. The Webbs propagated the philosophy and policy of the National Minimum based on their faith that this method, the newest to appear in history, was the most effective policy for the future. On the other hand, although this has been neglected in the past, there are many points in common between Hobson and the Webbs. First, they had a common awareness of the need to address the social problems that had become apparent at the end of the nineteenth century. Second, they believed that specific social problems were the "diseases" of capitalism or social institutions. Third, they had a shared aspiration to an economics which emphasized the consumer. Finally, since Hobson opposed the Anglo Boer War while the Webbs supported the war, it may seem that they held different views of imperialism. However, a close reading of Hobson's Imperialism and the Fabian Society's Fabianism and the Empire reveals a common "racist" stance. In other words, both parties opposed self government by "lower races" or "colored natives".

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Ordo-liberalism as a social thought criticized thoughts in the age of Nazism and Bolshevism. And it was a critical thought of modernity. It argued problems of secularization and productions of substitute of religion, enormously urbanizing process, and especially social problems of proletarizing and popularizing of people. Ordo-liberalists had an outline design of future society that covered the establishment of an economic order of competition and price mechanism, governmental direction and securing the framework of a free competitive market economy, based on the major premise of preventing-monopoly, and a formation of state and society based on the social principles of Christianity, such as respect for personality, social solidarity and subsidiary principle. What, then is the contemporary significance of their thought, which was formed in the process of confronting totalitarianism? Two issues should be pointed out. First, in the economic dimension, ordo-liberalist theory was capable of predicting the crisis of ever-lasting stagnation in contemporary economy. It saw that the contemporary economy would inevitably face serious difficulties after satisfying the fundamental material desires of each member of society : that the mass production and mass consumption system would eventually fall in to a kind of deadlock. It further proposed a new economic system of low economic growth based on the consumers' point of view. Second, in society and political fields, ordo-liberalists warned against locating absolute value in formal democracy, and showed the importance of restructuring state and society by introducing the subsidiary principle. They called on citizens to enrich the autonomy of intermediate organizations in society, but they also called for the enforcement of a stable social order by state power where problems arose from the enrichment of autonomy. They inherited the positive elements of modern natural law, while reminding people of the significance of religious origins which modern natural law dismissed in the process of secularization. They also tried to associate themselves with common European values inherited from the ancient world. We may conclude that ordo-liberalism as a school of thought attempted to renovate liberalism by relativizing the modern era dominated by enlightenment rationality and regenerating the "traditional natural law" of older periods.

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Tanzan Ishibashi insisted on "the Principle of Little Japan", advocating the abandonment of colonies, and criticized imperialism from the Taisho era. This has some researchers to insist that "the Principle of Little Japan" on which Ishibashi insisted is a theory of diplomacy. In contrast, this paper agues that "the Principle of Little Japan" was a theory covering not only diplomacy but also economics. How would a "little Japan" live on after abandoning colonies? Ishibashi angned that Japan should "depend on human wisdom and labor", and not on territory and resources. This was an essential and original aspect of Ishibashi thinking. Ishibashi basic approach includes the "philosophy of controlling personal desires" that he leaded from his teacher Odo Tanaka, and the principle of pragmatism, which puts much value on the function of social life. Ishibashi added the Neo-liberalism of L.T. Hobhouse to this basic thinking and came to propose ideas of fair distribution and of social policy and welfare, aiming at the conquest of laissez-faire, from about 1915. In his early economic thought, Ishibashi gave particular stress to capitalism fair distribution, but after the post-World Warpanic and the Kanto Earthquake in 1923, he shifted his emphasis to the development of productivity. The aim of reforming capitalism was not changed, but, facing crises in the structure of capitalism, he put much more stress on productivity than on fair distribution of relief measures. Ishibashi came close to a Keynsian theory of national intervention and currency management from the latter half of the 1920's, and advocated positive financing by depending mainly on the issuance of deficit covering bonds in order to increase employment in the early 1930s. On the other hand he also divides of public debts into the public debt to productive (civilian demand) and unproductive (military demand), his argument in this respect differed from those of J.M. Keynes' and Korekiyo Takahashi, Japan's Minister of Finance at the fine. Keynes and Takahashi saw a role for military spending while Ishibashi clearly aimed at peace. In wartime, Ishibashi objected to the theory of Block Economy and resisted the theory of was as an aid to the militaristic economy, insisting rather on the reed to firmly maintain the world economy and free trade system. We should not forget that "the Principle of Little Japan" advocated by Ishibashi offered a basic for the revival of the Japan economy after World War. His is a realist approach, not affected by any theories. It was characteristic of Ishibashi that he selected a policy on the underlying principle of streng theiring the stability of social life.

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Neo liberalism has developed in Japan since the latter half of the 1970 s and to clarify its distinctive features from a critical viewpoint. I examine the notion of "Neo-liberalism", the development of economic policies based upon Neo-liberalism, their economic background and two particular policies as a case study (the resort development policy and the nursing care insurance system). These studies indicate that Neo-liberalism in the 1990s was quite different from that in the 1980s. The 1980s version called for "rethinking the public and private sector", but had still remained immature. By contrast, the 1990s version has developed on a full scale during the 1990s, prompted by the multinationalization of leading Japanese enterprises after the Plaza accord. In conclusion, (1) recent Neo liberalism is not founded on the notion of "socio-liberalism", which requires complete freedom of thought, but on that of "economic liberalism", which attaches great importance to a public order based upon "efficiency" ; (2) it is a naive "market fundamentalism" or "libertarianism" which will not take into account the work of J. Rawls, R. Nozick, A. Sen and other liberalists ; (3) in the field of regional development policy Neo-liberalism has induced "rent seeking" and has increased expenditures on public works, but has also had a tendency to release the public sector from its responsibilities for welfare services.

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Major developments in recent decades have radically changed the political and ideological context of the welfare state. Among these developments are the collapse of East European and Soviet socialism, and the globalization not only of the economy but of also social politics, with the result that Neoliberalists repeatedly proclaim that "there is no alternative". This article is concerned with specific features of Neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s and their implications for the welfare state. It concludes that the existing welfare state has to radically transform itself in many ways, so that it may resist and survive the criticisms raised by Neoliberalists as well as "third way" politics and new social movements.

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