Early Mont Pèlerin Society fractured as it narrowed from polymathic liberalism toward economics

Evidence

The first decades of the Mont Pèlerin Society can be seen retrospectively as the impossible attempt to reconcile these diverging views. Many of the polymaths, including Polanyi, left the Society during the first decade of its existence as it relinquished its role as a multidisciplinary intellectual center for the growth of an alternative theory of liberalism venturing beyond economic freedom. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 91

Categorization

  • XREF: Polanyi departing the Society as it narrowed is a useful concrete marker against the caricature that MPS was monolithic from the start. — connects to: By 1972 the Mont Pèlerin Society had hardened into technical economics and pure libertarianism — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 528

Broader Connections