In order to realize the agenda of liberalism, early neoliberalism rejected the notion of laissez-faire as the preferred means to serve the human individual. Rather, the competitive order, a man-made moral and legal framework within which markets would be as free as possible, was identified as the new means to the end. In addition, early neoliberalism was conscious of social concerns and tasked the state with social responsibilities as well as the protection of the free market order. As the WLC participants argued in a discussion following the agreement on the five essential points of the agenda of liberalism, “maximum utility is a social good, but is not necessarily the only one that must be sought.” Admitting that the economy was shaped to build a society of a certain kind, early neoliberals were engaged in the conscious construction of a state to safeguard the so-called competitive order in both its internal setup and its relations to other states. This competitive order could well be run according to certain social goals and based on certain social convictions, but the operationalization needed to be carried out according to a liberal script. Any state agency had to be based on liberal interventionism, avoiding arbitrary political decisions and case-by-case action. The call was for principled legal and market-conforming intervention that would not endanger the price mechanism.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 365