Freedom for Capital, Not People The Mont Pèlerin Society and the Origins of the Neoliberal Monetary Order

The definitive history of how neoliberalism came to shape the contemporary monetary order

Both a rigorous intellectual history of neoliberalism and an innovative account of the economic transformations that shook the post-war period, Freedom for Capital Not People charts the theoretical developments responsible for reshaping today’s world economy, unleashing capital against democracy. Matthias Schmelzer narrates this transition by way of the Mont Pèlerin Society, a group of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders, which charted its course from fervent support for the gold standard to an embrace of free-floating exchange rates. The resulting debates were not merely of academic interest.

By the turn of the 1970s, this controversy found expression at the highest levels of international monetary policy, with world-historical consequences. This is the definitive account of the interests, priorities, and political imperatives driving the intellectual figures whose influence has dominated the past half-century of global capitalism.

Matthias Schmelzer is an economic historian and social theorist based in Berlin. He is the author of the award-winning The Hegemony of Growth and co-author of The Future Is Degrowth.