Free-market ideology converged with right-wing religious conservatism at Mont Pèlerin

Evidence

Grede, who was invited to the Princeton MPS meeting in an attempt to build stronger links between its members and US business, was representative of a broader convergence between free enterprise and right-wing religious conservatism. Grede argued that the superior economic development of the United States was due to its moral and religious foundations and its Bill of Rights, which protected individual freedom from government and, more importantly, from the masses. In contrast, he argued that cradle-to-grave welfare usurped individual responsibility and weakened the ‘moral fibre’ of a free society. By freedom, he clarified, he did not mean licence; on the contrary, a free society relied on the ‘moral pressures of people with deep religious convictions’. Grede charged the welfare state with weakening such pressure; ‘with loose morality comes loose law enforcement’, he argued, and consequently the breakdown of freedom. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 207

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s human-rights discourse reading: the claimed convergence between market freedom and religious moral pressure challenges the secular-liberal image of neoliberalism. — connects to: Mont Pèlerin’s economic focus attracted libertarian over traditionalist members — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 529; Mont Pèlerin members shared respect for prices but held fundamentally incompatible worldviews — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 277; Hayek and fellow Mont Pèlerin founders viewed Christianity as indispensable to liberal revival — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 122
• QUESTION: How did the Mont Pèlerin Society reconcile this religious-conservative moralism with later libertarian market rhetoric? Worth tracing the tension.