Chicago economics converted socialist students into market advocates despite no explicit proselytizing

Evidence

To assert that the early Chicago economists did not perceive themselves to be part of a coherent school, did not espouse a consistent ideological program, and did not even identify one another as peers engaged in a common endeavor is not to argue that they failed to have a decisive impact on their students and the economics profession during its most transformative years. Students’ recollections of their educations at Chicago often take the form of a conversion narrative, even if the missionaries were reluctant and perhaps even unwitting in their roles. Time and again students remember entering Chicago as passionate socialists and departing as ardent advocates of the capitalist order. James Buchanan’s experience is exemplary. After arriving at Chicago with a strong socialist orientation, he enrolled in Frank Knight’s course on price theory. Knight was “not an ideologue, and he made no attempt to convert anybody,” Buchanan recalls, but nevertheless, “within six weeks after enrollment in Frank Knight’s course in price theory, I had been converted into a zealous advocate of the market order.” — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 117

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the thesis that the Chicago School was constructed retrospectively by students rather than self-consciously founded — a theme the reader’s Mont Pèlerin adjacent-history focus will recur on. — connects to: The Chicago faculty instilled price-system conservatism into its graduate students — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 89; Frank Knight’s lectures converted socialists into libertarians, founding the Chicago School — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 92; No coherent left-wing authoritarian ideology emerged from measured student responses — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2883 (+1 more)
• SEED: Angle: the ‘reluctant missionaries’ pattern — how intellectual movements form in students’ minds before their practitioners acknowledge them.

Broader Connections

• No coherent left-wing authoritarian ideology emerged from measured student responses #corroborates (0.70) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2883