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Jennifer Burns, Quinn Slobodian. Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 5, December 2018, Pages 1615–1617, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhy207
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Quinn Slobodian begins his stimulating new book, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, with a claim that will not surprise scholars of the subject but that bears repeating for a nonspecialist audience. Although neoliberalism is often taken as a synonym for laissez-faire, Slobodian writes, “the foundational neoliberal insight is comparable to that of John Maynard Keynes and Karl Polanyi: the market does not and cannot take care of itself” (2). Neoliberalism is “a form or variety of regulation rather than its radical Other” (3). From there, Slobodian offers a nuanced analysis of a “neglected” strain of neoliberalism, the Geneva School. Essentially an intellectual history of the arc from the Habsburg Empire to the World Trade Organization (WTO), his book follows a shifting set of allied European thinkers who sought to design supranational institutions to “insulate” global markets from economic nationalism, social disorder, and popular decision making. Although Slobodian could have better contextualized the Geneva School as one of many forces that undergirded the emergence of supranational institutions after World War II—one thinks of the erstwhile Stalinist Alexandre Kojève’s work on behalf of the European Economic Community (EEC)—he has uncovered a significant genealogy of globalism. Conversant in high theory yet grounded in archival research, Slobodian’s book represents a step forward in scholarship on neoliberalism. It deserves to be widely read not merely by historians interested in the twentieth century, but by anyone looking for more depth and broader context on the populist uprisings reshaping global relations today. Many ambitious historians aspire to knit together disconnected scholarship, write a new narrative, and restore lost context, but Slobodian is among the few who can justifiably claim to have done all three.
