Chicago-school economists broke with classical liberalism by defending some price fixing.

Evidence

Moreover, the fact that Director and Levi justified collusion in the form of price fixing in some instances is a violation of classical liberalism, which argued that prices must adjust freely to reach a competitive equilibrium and reflect underlying social scarcities. A threat to freely adjusting prices was thenceforth treated as tantamount to a threat to freedom. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1149

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the classical-liberal price theory premise that the Mont Pèlerin network claimed to inherit yet departed from on antitrust.
• XREF: connects to: Chicago liberal economists by 1951 consciously saw themselves as reformulating liberalism. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1106; Chicago School neoliberalism departed from classical and German liberalism over corporate concentration — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 158; Neoliberalism reversed classical liberalism’s suspicion of monopoly and corporate power. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2133 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Chicago School neoliberalism departed from classical and German liberalism over corporate concentration #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 158
• Neoliberalism reversed classical liberalism’s suspicion of monopoly and corporate power. #corroborates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2133
• Friedman reversed the classical liberal claim that monopoly suppresses competition #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1118
• Early free-market economists legitimized some government intervention; later ones did not #qualifies (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 375