The seminar will explore the conservative core of neoliberalism, tracing its global intellectual history from its European genesis (1930s-1950s) to its the transatlantic transmission in the Americas (1950s-1980s). The seminar will, therefore, investigate how neoliberal theories historically deployed a conservative framework, particularly through the concepts of «hierarchy», «family», «community», «tradition» and «authority», to legitimize the coming of a market order against the egalitarian demands of social movements.
By analyzing the thought of Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992), the first two sessions will focus on Europe between the 1930s and the late 1950s, with particular emphasis on Austria, Germany, and England, where neoliberal doctrines emerged as responses to the Great Depression, the rise of mass society, the spread of socialist and communist parties, and the affirmation of interventionist and welfare state policies.
Crossing the Atlantic, the third session will discuss the works of the «godfather» of U.S. neoconservatism, Irving Kristol (1920-2009), shedding light on his restoration of conservative concepts and institutions to renew the legitimacy and stability of the liberal market order, increasingly challenged between the 1960s and 1980s by feminist, African American, student, and anti-war movements.
The final session will focus on Argentina, examining the political and economic thought of Álvaro Alsogaray (1913-2005) in order to explore the theoretical and institutional encounter between European-derived neoliberalism and the Argentine dictatorial regimes between the 1950s and the 1980s. Through the Argentine case it will be possible to show how, in opposing collectivist and dirigiste political models like Peronism, Argentine neoliberal intellectuals not only used conservative theoretical tools, but went as far as identifying the dictatorship as the political condition for establishing the market order.