Even Chicago-school free-market economists conceded laissez-faire was impossible by 1933

Evidence

The letters of the University of Chicago economist Frank Knight are a testament to the depths to which laissezfaire had fallen. “We cannot go back to laissez faire in economics even in this country,” he wrote to a colleague in the summer of 1933. “Now it seems to me inevitable that we must go over to a controlled system,” he wrote later that year, adding that his only question was “whether any sort of liberty, especially freedom of consumption and intellectual freedom, can be maintained to a signifi - cant extent.” The 1930s were an era when even many of the economics profession’s most strident advocates of marketplace freedoms accepted that they would need to be curtailed to a substantial degree. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 18

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Mont Pèlerin story — Frank Knight as free-market voice accepting a controlled system sets the baseline the later neoliberal turn reacts against. — connects to: Even Chicago free-market economists accepted state control by 1933; Chicago economists deny the crisis falsified their core theories — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 718; Chicago-school economists broke with classical liberalism by defending some price fixing. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1149 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Even Chicago free-market economists accepted state control by 1933 #corroborates (0.95)
• In the 1930s pro-business thinkers themselves rejected free markets and laissez-faire. #corroborates (0.82) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 66
• Chicago economists deny the crisis falsified their core theories #complicates (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 718
• Early Chicago economists favored regulated capitalism out of skepticism, not market faith. #expands (0.80) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 108
• Chicago-school economists broke with classical liberalism by defending some price fixing. #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1149
• Chicago economists led opposition to the New Deal and Keynesian doctrine #qualifies (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 88
• Early free-market economists legitimized some government intervention; later ones did not #qualifies (0.72) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 375