Early postwar free-market advocates were riddled with internal tensions, not doctrinaire ideologues.

Evidence

An exploration of the rhetoric of the society’s members in its early years reveals a movement far less doctrinaire than the conventional narrative would indicate. What emerges is a growing awareness of a set of complex tensions confronted by market advocates in the postwar era. Early members of the society desired to establish philosophical foundations for marketplace freedoms but expressed deep skepticism toward the intolerance and irrationality of unsubstantiated po liti cal absolutes. They sought to reach out to the religious believers and the eco nom ical ly disadvantaged individuals whom they believed nineteenthcentury market advocates had mistakenly eschewed but demonstrated hostility toward theological dogmatism and the redistributive state. They glorifi ed the achievements of capitalism but at times expressed dismay at its cultural and moral effects. They valorized liberty but maintained the vital need for collective moral traditions. They defended capitalism as a theory of individual choice but expressed deep suspicion of the implications of po liti cal democracy. Their similarities accentuated, rather than elided, the points of difference that drove them apart. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 32

Categorization

• SEED: Copious material here for an essay on how the ‘neoliberal consensus’ was never monolithic — each internal tension (capitalism vs. moral tradition, liberty vs. democracy) is a thread to pull.
• ADDENDUM: The tension between free markets and ‘collective moral traditions’ and religious outreach connects to the reader’s interest in how moral panics and cultural signaling served political projects.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism encompassed bitter internal conflicts, not a unified doctrine. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 20; The Depression-era collapse, not settled doctrine, produced postwar free-market thought. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 33; Neutral intellectual framing and activist positioning were in tension within the early neoliberal movement — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1468 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberalism encompassed bitter internal conflicts, not a unified doctrine. #corroborates (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 20
• Neutral intellectual framing and activist positioning were in tension within the early neoliberal movement #exemplifies (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1468
• The Depression-era collapse, not settled doctrine, produced postwar free-market thought. #expands (0.85) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 33
• Early neoliberals split over whether freedom served dignity or stood alone #exemplifies (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 354
• Early neoliberals attacked economism rather than reducing life to economics. #exemplifies (0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 20