The Rothbardian Revolution Against Neoliberalism | Tho Bishop

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The Rothbardian Revolution Against Neoliberalism | Tho Bishop

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Summary

Bishop argues that neoliberalism is a real and coherent bipartisan ideology rather than a meaningless slur, defining it as belief in a regulated free market economy paired with technocratically managed socialized money, and tracing it from the Mont Pelerin Society’s split between Hayek’s Austrians and the interventionist wing through Milton Friedman’s 1951 essay endorsing antitrust and state control of money. He contends Friedman never abandoned central banking — citing his 2006 article conceding that Greenspan’s discretion outperformed strict money rules, and his earlier endorsement of quantitative easing for the Bank of Japan that became Bernanke’s playbook — making Friedmanite thought directly complicit in the wealth extraction from younger generations now driving them toward socialism. His conclusion is that neoliberalism is the guiding ideology of most free-market advocacy organizations, that libertarians therefore deserve “a healthy dose of the blame” for capitalism’s declining appeal, and that “you cannot challenge Mamdani with Friedman” — only the Rothbardian tradition offers a genuine alternative.

Top 5 Key Topics

• The Mont Pelerin Society’s internal split: Drawing on Guido Hülsmann’s work, Bishop describes the society as an “ecumenical” project pairing classical liberals with interventionist neoliberals, organizationally divided between Hayek and first secretary Albert Hunold, who supplied Swiss money alongside American funders like the Volker Fund. When both men left leadership, the resulting power vacuum was filled not by Austrians but by the Chicago school.
• Mises’s contempt for Ludwig Erhard and the social market economy: Bishop cites Grove City Archives correspondence in which Hans Hellwig writes that men like Erhard had little to do with classical liberalism and would have been called social democrats, with Mises agreeing he had “no illusions about the true character” of social market economy politicians. Erhard’s success, per Hülsmann, swept into Mont Pelerin the very themes Mises wanted excluded — antitrust and the supposed virtues of credit expansion.
• Friedman’s 1951 neoliberalism essay and its Chicago roots: In “Neo-Liberalism and Its Prospects,” Friedman substituted a “competitive order” requiring government regulation for the 19th-century goal of laissez-faire, defended the Sherman Antitrust Act, and argued the provision of money is properly a function of the state. Bishop traces this to Henry Simons’ 1934 “A Positive Program for Laissez Faire,” which called for government to regulate money and banking, prevent monopolies, and provide minimum income for the destitute — the “positive” signaling ample intervention.
• Mises’s 1958 warning on captured language: In one of his last Mont Pelerin addresses, Mises argued the Nazi party’s rise was enabled by the population’s acceptance of a terminology that baked in policy concepts, and warned the society had not freed itself from the language of the American Economic Association or the Committee for Economic Development, which favored “a little bit of credit expansion and a little bit of inflation.” Bishop notes the Institute has a transcript, supplied via Pedro Jorge of Mises Portugal, that has not yet been published.
• Rothbard’s movement critique and the populist reckoning: Quoting Rothbard’s 1977 “A Theory of Libertarian Social Change,” Bishop notes classical liberals once led genuine mass movements against the aristocratic old order before retreating into utilitarian, ad hoc cost-benefit analysis — Friedman and followers like Becker, Peltzman, and Alchian operating on efficiency grounds rather than moral principle, making neoliberalism “cost-benefit progressivism.” He warns that JD Vance’s rejection of Friedman moves toward Hamiltonian European conservatism rather than Rothbard, and credits Lew Rockwell — institution builder, Ron Paul chief of staff, and a focus of Quinn Slobodian’s Hayek’s Bastards — as the indispensable opposition figure, citing Rockwell’s argument that the Wall Street Journal celebrates the free economy but never condemns the unfree one because war profits accrue to publicly traded stocks.