Corporate funding made the first Mont Pèlerin meeting financially possible

Evidence

With the conclusion of the war, many forces conspired to bring the neoliberals together once more to try and organize the movement. Under the leadership of Albert Hunold and Friedrich August von Hayek, a number of loosely connected neoliberal intellectuals in Europe and the United States assembled in Mont Pèlerin, a village close to Lake Geneva. From Tuesday, April 1, to Thursday, April 10, 1947, the first gathering took place at the Hôtel du Parc. The internationalist outlook and organizational effort were made possible through some timely corporate/institutional support. The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, which employed Ludwig von Mises, and the William Volker Fund based in Kansas City, provided subsidies. The Volker Fund was led by future MPS member Harold Luhnow, and it provided travel funds for the U.S. participants in the meeting. The Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (today known as Credit Swiss) paid 93 percent of the total conference costs—18,062.08 Swiss francs (Steiner 2007; Walpen 2004b). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 117

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in the origins of the neoliberal network—the corporate backing (Volker Fund, FEE) foreshadows later business-funded think tanks. — connects to: A private donor’s veto shaped the Mont Pèlerin Society’s founding membership — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 259; Mont Pèlerin entrepreneurship scholarship was co-financed and steered by corporate interests. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 281; Corporate and family money funded the Mont Pelerin Society’s American meeting — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1464 (+3 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: why did Swiss banks fund this? What did Credit Swiss expect from an academic gathering in 1947?
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 117

Broader Connections

• Corporate and family money funded the Mont Pelerin Society’s American meeting #corroborates (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1464
• Big-business funders backing anticommunist causes also funded the Mont Pèlerin Society #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 972
• Corporate money shaped Mont Pèlerin debates by steering theory toward practical business problems #qualifies (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 955