Hayek and the Restoration of Classical Liberalism: Rethinking Neoliberalism

The purpose of this paper is to reconsider F. A. Hayek's liberalism not primarily as a form of neoliberalism, but as an attempt to revive classical liberalism. Recent advances in neoliberalism studies have increasingly clarified Hayek's role within the personal and institutional networks of neoliberalism, as well as the affinities between Hayek and neoliberalism in their affirmation of a positive role for the state in maintaining a competitive order and their criticism of classical liberalism understood as laissez-faire. At the same time, however, Hayek proposed naming the Mont Pèlerin Society after Lord Acton or Alexis de Tocqueville, both of whom he regarded as leading representatives of the classical liberal tradition. Moreover, during the very period in which the Walter Lippmann Colloquium and the Mont Pèlerin Society marked the emergence and consolidation of neoliberalism, Hayek was actively engaged in rereading and reinterpreting classical liberalism. This suggests that the central aim of Hayek's project for the revival of liberalism should be understood not as the reconstruction of classical liberalism, but as its recovery and restatement under modern conditions. This paper develops this argument from three perspectives: Hayek's sustained interest in the history of British thought since the 1920s; the fact that, while sharing with neoliberals a concern with the competitive order and the positive role of the state, he traced the intellectual foundations of these ideas back to classical liberal thinkers; and his strategic use of Whig historiography as part of a broader intellectual project aimed at reviving liberalism.