The Difference Between New Liberalism and Neo-Liberalism
January 2006
Author Li Xiaoke is a professor in the economic philosophy dept of Wuhan University
[Abstract] In English political literature, New Liberalism and Neo-Liberalism represent two schools of thought with completely different propositions and demands, and they originally belong to two different disciplinary contexts, political philosophy and economics. “New liberalism” mainly refers to modern liberalism founded by Mill, Green, and Hobhouse and we know that Keynes, Rawls and Dworkin are usually regarded as the spokespersons of new liberalism in the 20th century their suggestions have led to Roosevelt’s New Deal and Keynesian policies. Compared with classical liberalism, it is a “new type” of liberalism. On the other hand “Neo-liberalism”, which mainly refers to the new liberalism (neo-classical liberalism) founded by Hayek, Friedman, and others has become dominant revival trend after end of 1970s.
[Keywords] liberalism, classical liberalism, neoliberalism, neoclassical liberalism
Over the past year or so, various newspapers and periodicals in mainland China have published a large number of articles and works criticizing neoliberalism. As for articles, a search for “neoliberalism” conducted by the author using the CNKI digital library at the end of April this year showed that among the various critical articles publicly published in mainland China from 2003 to 2004, there were 117 articles with the title “neoliberalism”, of which 92 were published in 2004; there were 97 articles discussing “neoliberalism” as a keyword, of which 62 were published in 2004. During this period, critical works published included “A Review of Neoliberalism” (Social Literature Publishing House, 2004), “New Liberal Thought” (Higher Education Press, 2004), and “Globalization and Neoliberalism” (Guangxi Normal University Press, 2003). Precisely because of this, some scholars call 2004 the “year of criticism of neoliberalism” in mainland China.
The coordinated criticism of “neoliberalism” by authoritative experts and the media has left a deep impression on many people. However, when we criticize our own understanding of neoliberalism, many people do not seem to have given much thought to the other meaning of the Chinese word “neoliberalism”. Because New Liberalism and Neo-Liberalism (also spelled as Neoliberalism) in English are often translated as “neoliberalism” [1-p53], but in fact these two “isms” happen to refer to two different schools of thought with opposite demands that coexisted and contended in Western society in the 20th century. What’s more, some studies are completely based on the Chinese translation, and are not clear about the distinction between New Liberalism and Neo-Liberalism, so that the neoliberalism in the sense of Neoliberalism that they criticize is labeled “New Liberalism” [2-p11]1.
In addition, when using the term “neoliberalism”, related articles previously published in the authoritative domestic philosophy journals “Philosophical Research” and “Philosophical Dynamics” did not pay much attention to the subdivision and difference between the two.
They listed Rawls and Dworkin, who originally belonged to the New Liberalism trend, and Hayek, Friedman, Nozick, etc., who belonged to the Neo-Liberalism trend, as neoliberalism without any subdivision [3-p40-43] [4-p42-44] [5-p75, p81].
In order to enable readers to have a clearer and more comprehensive understanding of the content implied by “neoliberalism”, this article attempts to avoid the comments on the many criticisms mentioned above as much as possible, and instead makes some necessary explanations and clarifications from the professional field of the history of Western political philosophy, in order to let more readers know that the “neoliberalism” (Neo-Liberalism) that we are currently criticizing is actually a “hijacking” of another kind of neoliberalism (New Liberalism) that has long existed in the history of Western political philosophy.
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