Hayek’s ethical-reconstruction ambition failed within the Mont Pèlerin Society

Evidence

Hayek’s ambition-to rebuild a modernized Neoliberalism on ethical foundations other than simple individualism-would go nowhere in the MPS … Outside the economics profession, it was invisible. The MPS was no more influential inside the economics profession … Burgin thinks that the MPS had served the purpose of providing a sort of institutional home for the cultivation of neoliberal ideology. I am skeptical … (Solow 2012)6 The complaints of historians and anthropologists that neoliberalism somehow doesn’t really exist seem to us to display a curious naïveté about the interaction of ideas and political movements in general. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 23

Categorization

• QUESTION: Solow’s skepticism that the MPS merely ‘cultivated ideology’ invites chasing what the Society actually accomplished if not simple ideological cultivation.
• XREF: Hayek’s attempt to rebuild liberalism on non-individualist ethical foundations resonates with the reader’s deep interest in the philosophical diversity inside the neoliberal network versus its later lockstep image. — connects to: Hayek founded the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947 to rebuild market advocacy networks. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 30; Mont Pèlerin Society’s first decade failed to reconcile its competing scientific and ideological visions — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 91; Hayek founded a closed society to repair classical liberalism’s conceptual flaws — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 120 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The Property and Freedom Society split from Mont Pèlerin over perceived compromise with socialism #complicates (0.78) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 8