嵌入式自由主义

Embedded liberalism refers to the economic system which dominated worldwide from the end of the WW2 to the 1970S. The term itself is credited to John Ruggie.

At the end of the World War Two, the primary objective was to develop an economic plan that would not lead to a repeat of the Great Depression.

To ensure domestic peace and tranquility, some sort of class compromise between capital and labor had to be constructed. The thinking at the time is perhaps best represented by an influential text by two eminent social scientists, Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom, published in 1953. Both capitalism and communism in their raw forms had failed, they argued. The only way ahead was to construct the right blend of state, market, and democratic institutions to guarantee peace, inclusion, well-being, and stability.

This new system free trade was regulated "under a system of fixed exchange rates anchored by the US dollar's convertibility into gold at a fixed price. Fixed exchange rates were incompatible with free flows of capital. This new system came to be referred to as "embedded liberalism" in order to "signal how market processes and entrepreneurial and corporate activities were surrounded by a web of social and political constraints and a regulatory environment that sometimes restrained but in other instances led the way in economic and industrial strategy.

While embedded liberalism led to the surge of economic prosperity which came to define the 1950s and 1960s, the system began to crack beginning in the late sixties.The 1970s were defined by an increased accumulation of capital, unemployment, inflation (or stagflation as it was dubbed), and a variety of fiscal crises.

A number of theories concerning new systems began to develop, which led to extensive debate between those who advocated "social democracy and central planning on the one hand" and those "concerned with liberating corporate and business power and re-establishing market freedoms on the other. Harvey notes that by 1980, the latter group had emerged as the leader, advocating and creating a global economic system that would become known as neoliberalism.

（David Harvey）