174/YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!leaders continued to identify with liberal ideas in spite of the pre
eminence of Keynesian and proto-socialist policies. A number of them
had been sharpening their theoretical wits over a long period of time,
during their long ideological battle with Keynesian ideas in the
North, 'developmentalist' ideas in the South (personified by such
people as CEP AL head Raul Prebisch), and with socialist and Marxist
ideas in general in various parts of the world.
THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATION OF THE DIFFERENT
NEO-LIBERAL CURRENTS
Methodologically speaking, it is not easy to define the main tenets of
neo-liberal thought. The same goes for Keynesian and Marxist
thought. Each one of these schools of thought has many different
currents. There are profound differences between the different
currents of liberalism, just as there are within Keynesianism and
Marxism. There have also been attempts to synthesise liberal and
post-Keynesian ideas, on the one hand, and liberal and post-Marxist
ideas, on the other.
In general, the liberal (and neo-liberal) school of thought is
grounded in a vast and eclectic body of works - including neoclassi
cal notions such as the quantitative theory of money, Say's law, the
theory of prices based on the interaction of supply and demand, and
the theory of comparative advantages.
Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) and Paul Samuelson are good
examples of why it is so difficult to define clearly the parameters of
neo-liberalism. Hayek currently enjoys enormous popularity as an
ultra-liberal, yet he rejects many key hypotheses of neoclassical
thought. Samuelson does not belong to the liberal school, yet in the
1950s pushed for a synthesis of neoclassical thought.
THE NEO-LIBERALS' PREDECESSORS
Adam Smith
Smith (An Inquiry in to the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of
Nations, 1776) carried out a synthesis of the contributions of a
number of schools of economic thought, including that of the French
physiocrats. He opposed mercantilism, which had been responsible
over two centuries for protectionism and state intervention. The