According to the agenda of neoliberalism agreed on in 1938, the normative “good society” comprised five elements, most of which concerned the role of the state. Beyond its responsibility to, first, protect the price mechanism, the state must, second, put in place and guarantee a legal order to safeguard the market’s development and legally justify any intervention. Third, political liberalism must embrace law as the cornerstone of legitimacy, and the codification of law must be based on representative debates capable of establishing general norms. Fourth, such a legal regime constitutes the liberal method to “control the social”; and fifth, a liberal state is responsible for continuously providing society with five essential elements, for which taxes could be imposed: national defence, social insurance, social services, education, and scientific research.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 353