39

This article analyzes the rise and fall of an endeavor that is emblem-atic of US liberalism: the Social Indicators Movement. The latter opposes economic indicators such as GDP, while adhering to the liberal project of directing public policy using statistical indicators. In the mid 1960’s, several anti-Marxist intellectuals thus focused on the “culture” of individuals rather than on the economic indicators inherited from the “New Deal” that defined liberalism. By doing so, they invented a new way of being liberal, a way that is critical of L. Johnson’s “Great Society” social programs and compatible with the administrations of Nixon and Carter, and which would come to be termed neoliberalism.