No other neoliberal defended apartheid in precisely the way Röpke did, and Röpke had resigned from the MPS by the time he made his strongest statements. Yet some other neoliberal thinkers distinguished between apartheid as a comprehensive system of racial segregation and the discrete ­matter of suffrage for the black population. They argued, as Machlup does in the epigraph to this chapter, that democracy might have to be restricted for certain ­peoples in order to preserve stability and prosperity. Restricting po­liti­cal freedom, as commonly understood, was necessary ­under some circumstances to preserve economic freedom. Prominent neoliberals, including Milton Friedman, John Davenport, and Shenfield himself, followed this logic by opposing universal suffrage in Southern Africa.

Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, loc. 500