Classical liberals lacked the disposition to organize political movements for liberty

Evidence

The classical liberalism of the eighteenth-century philosophers was a theory of natural tendencies in human nature, which might have been stifled or misdirected by misguided understandings of the natural order. It took as its benchmark the “obvious and simple system of natural liberty [which] establishes itself of its own accord,” as Adam Smith put it in Book IV of his Wealth of Nations. It was this conception of liberty that Friedman cited as the prior “creed”: a political doctrine so transparent and robust that one did not need either to organize special cadres to argue out its core tenets or to forge cabals to encourage its practice. The previous theorists of classical liberalism had exhibited a tendency to be either such inveterate optimists that they would perceive no need for concerted political and social organization in the interests of liberty, or else curmudgeonly elitists who would feel soiled by participation in actual political activity. The building of political movements and the innovation of lasting institutions for the purpose of spreading liberal doctrines was not a natural part of the heritage of either wing of the tradition. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 774

Categorization

• XREF: Sets up the contrast with Hayek’s constructivist turn and connects to Friedman’s self-image; also relevant to the book’s earlier chapters on Mont Pèlerin’s founding. — connects to: Early liberals shared an unresolved ambivalence about the state that seeded austerity — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 269; Neoliberalism broke sharply with prewar classical liberalism rather than continuing it — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 778; The negative liberty idea was forged by opponents, not supporters, of the American Revolution — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 119

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism broke sharply with prewar classical liberalism rather than continuing it #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 778