For the neoliberals, this attempt to politicise the postcolonial economic order was a threat to the world market and international peace. They argued that this postcolonial economic project was the inheritance of mid-century colonialism, which had abandoned the free-trade policies of the earlier British Empire in favour of economic planning. Faced with rising anticolonialism, the neoliberals sought to change the terms of the debate over imperialism and colonialism. They argued that imperialism was not the 'highest stage of capitalism', as Vladimir Lenin had argued, but the result of the politicisation of the economy.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 231