Funders sought to shape MPS program and membership through their money

Evidence

Yet Crane’s new level of participation, which Hayek had so long sought, was not without its complications. As Crane grew more active as a fundraiser, he also began to try to intervene more directly in the internal life of the Society—leading to a set of conflicts that are entirely absent from the official history of the MPS. Because Crane was raising money, he sought at many points leading up to the meeting to influence the program and even the membership of the group. Commenting on a draft of the program, Crane wrote, “I only hope there is no slip-up by which any compromisers with basic principles would get on the program. That sort of thing seemed to me to be very regrettable at St. Moritz, but using the program that you have laid out it is not to be anticipated at Princeton.” He was especially concerned with the chairmen that Hayek would select, writing that he hoped they would be “men of extraordinary competence and soundness.” After reading an essay by Wilhelm Röpke, Crane wrote Hayek an anxious letter, expressing fears that Röpke would “attack laissez faire in the American meeting,” and urging Hayek to think about how to have the “maximum degree of prevention of attacks on free enterprise in the American meeting.” — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1465

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to donor influence on think tanks and intellectual organizations — parallels later opaqueness of neoliberal network funding described elsewhere in the book and in literature on philanthropic capture. — connects to: The Volker Fund replaced its support for the MPS with its own conference program. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 321; Grant competitions let funders steer think-tank agendas more than direct persuasion did — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 578; Big donors could dictate the MPS agenda and displace Hayek’s intellectual leadership — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 973 (+2 more)
• SEED: Angle: how private funders’ informal interventions shape intellectual agenda-setting, distinct from formal board control — the ‘soft veto’ donors hold over program and membership.

Broader Connections

• MPS members resisted donor interference in program decisions #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1466