The global market and the war: Origins,development,and effectiveness of marginalist irenicism

Abstract

The current crisis of the liberal world order manifested, primarily in the outbreak of new wars of global significance, can be read and diagnosed in many ways. One is identifying it by radically questioning the view that the globalized market can produce international order and peace. The article reconstructs and investigates the main theoretical assumptions of this view, tracing them, especially to the marginalist tradition, whose historical-conceptual trajectory and main effects it analyzes, from the scientific disputes of Eugen Böhm-Bawerk’s Privatseminar to the theoretical and militant activity of Friedrich August von Hayek. Finally, the article turns to the main effects of marginalism on global history, arriving at the thesis of its, at least momentary, historic failure.