Hayek designed the Mont Pèlerin Society as a closed ideological academy

Evidence

In 1946, as he toured the United States attempting to drum up support for his new society, he explicitly stipulated that he was “using the term Academy in its original sense of a closed society [my emphasis] whose members would be bound together by common convictions and try to both develop this common philosophy and to spread its understanding.” This evocation of Plato’s Academy was not harmless, as he doubtless understood; it has been the recourse of other MPS members whenever the closed, secret nature of the society has been raised. Hayek managed to have his way in this regard—from the start, recruitment, participation, and membership in the NTC has always been strictly controlled from within—but this starkly raises the issue of whether the MPS could practice what it nominally preached. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 193

Categorization

• DEFINE: NTC is used as shorthand for a ‘neoliberal thought collective’ — the closed-society design is definitional to how the network operated.
• XREF: connects to: Friedman quietly redirected the Mont Pèlerin society away from Hayek’s original project. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 537; Hayek deliberately designed the society as closed and conviction-bound, neither scholarly nor political. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 242; Hayek insisted the Mont Pèlerin Society stay private and philosophical, not engage in propaganda — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 333 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Hayek founded a closed society to repair classical liberalism’s conceptual flaws #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 120
• The Mont Pèlerin Society’s intellectual mission deliberately avoided propaganda roles #contradicts (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1450
• Hayek’s academy aimed to build shared belief rather than only disseminate finished scholarship #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 85
• Hayek functioned as the intellectual bridge linking ordoliberalism to the wider neoliberal network #expands (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 616
• The Mont Pèlerin Society emerged from doctrinal purification of the 1938 agenda #complicates (0.70) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 405