Early Mont Pèlerin Society activity depended on small ideological think tanks for funding

Evidence

In the early years of the MPS, funds were a perennial source of anxiety. Efforts to raise money to fund travel to conferences frequently failed, leaving the Society dependent on the contributions of small think tanks like the Volker Fund. The conservative businessmen who bankrolled many of the initial think tanks—Lewis Brown of Johns-Mansville, a major roofing and insulation corporation, who founded the American Enterprise Association, and B. E. Hutchinson, a Chrysler executive and NAM regular who gave generously to organizations like FEE—were not interested in the Mont Pèlerin Society. Many conservatives in the business community shared Crane’s chariness about giving money to European intellectuals to do nothing in particular except meet and talk to one another. The Rockefeller Foundation declined to make money available to the Society, on the grounds that it would create a precedent for funding requests from “Communist and dirigiste” organizations. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1454

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s prior knowledge of the Volker Fund (from earlier MPS chapters) and to general scholarship on think-tank funding of the neoliberal network (e.g. Phillips-Fein’s work on corporate conservatism). — connects to: The Mont Pèlerin Society shifted from elite academia toward business interests — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 374; Mont Pèlerin entrepreneurship scholarship was co-financed and steered by corporate interests. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 281; At least 136 Mont Pèlerin members staffed affiliated think tanks — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 197 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: The Rockefeller Foundation refusing funding on ‘Communist and dirigiste’ precedent grounds shows how foundation-granting logic shaped which ideas got institutional support — relevant background for the reader’s writing on infrastructure and organizational sponsorship.