The Chicago School was an intellectual organization run from the University of
Chicago throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of its theorists, the most
prominent being Friedrich Von Hayek and Milton Friedman, were inspired by
Ordo-liberalism but went on to change some of the component parts of the earlier
theories, creating a new form of Neoliberal thought in the process (Venn, 2009).
Following from the Ordo-Liberal school, the Chicago school Neo-liberalism
opposed state interventionism, whilst criticizing the uncontrolled growth of
bureaucratic apparatus and the threats these bring to individual rights (Miller,
1962). Although having many similarities they diverge when it comes to their
concepts of society and their suggested political solutions for these problems. The
majority of the theorists now considered to be core proponents of Chicago school
Neo-liberalism were members of the Mont Pelerin Society. This society was an
international organization, sponsored by businessmen, media elites, millionaires
and private organizations, such as the ford foundation (Plehwe, 2005). The
uniting feature of this group was an affection for Neo-liberalism and a rejection
of state-led market intervention (Mirowski, 2015). The Mont Pelerin Society also
drew lineage from the Colloque Walter Lippmann, a group that was formed
around the previously discussed ideas of Walter Lippmann (Jackson, 2012).
For Ordo-liberals the concept of social policy was heavily based on the premise
of separated social and economic domains, with enterprise functioning as the
intermediary between them. This vital policy and the ambiguous description of
enterprise was one of the main divergence points for the two schools of thought,
with the Chicago School offering different Solutions (Gordon, 1991). The
Chicago School branch of Neo-liberalism was further developed by Milton
Friedman’s monetarism aspect. Friedman offered this as an alternative to the
economic strategy developed by Keynes, who had emphasized that fiscal policy
and expansive money was a route out of economic downturns (Hansen, 1949).
Friedman argued that if a state kept a “steady hand on the monetary tiller, the
worst extremes of economic fluctuation would be evened out” (Jones, 2014).
Following on from Irving Fisher’s ‘quantity theory of money’ (Turvey, 1957),
Friedman argued “the money supply was the most important economic policy
instrument in the establishment and maintenance of the stability of markets”
(Jones, 2014, p.139).
