The neoliberals sought to rescue capitalism from the charge that it led to war and violence. Imperialism, they argued, was a product of politics and the pursuit of national glory, not of capitalism. As early as 1919, the Austrian School economist Joseph Schumpeter (a participant in Mises's private seminar) rejected Marxist arguments, defining imperialism as an atavistic remnant of absolutist autocracy. Inverting the sweetness-of-commerce thesis, Schumpeter argued that the beneficial effects of capitalism had been inhibited by the persistence of pre-capitalist institutions and attitudes. Capitalism, Schumpeter argued, directs the productive energies once spent on wars of conquest into productive labour, and a 'purely capitalist world therefore can offer no fertile soil to imperialist impulses'. The more capitalist social relations penetrated the economy and the mind, he argued, the more anti-imperialism and pacifism would thrive. The problem was not capitalism itself, but the fact that it had not been strong enough to alter decisively the social structure or mentality of the pre-capitalist age, with its 'disaster-bound addiction to heroic antics'.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 255