Mont Pèlerin’s success in spreading market ideas fatally undermined its own moderated vision

Evidence

The rise of Milton Friedman represents both the realization of Hayek’s dream of inspiring broad popu lar support for the benefi ts free markets have to offer, and the fi nal failure of his ambition to create a new social philosophy that would moderate the excesses of prior modes of market advocacy. The irony of the Mont Pèlerin Society is that it achieved its goal of generating social change at the expense of the new philosophy that its members had assumed any such change would require. Friedman served as both the society’s greatest engine of infl uence and its most forceful exponent of an uncompromising adherence to the market mechanism. To Hayek and the other found ers of the Mont Pèlerin Society, Friedman’s ascent within its orbit refl ected the collapse of its attempt to integrate a restrained defense of free markets into a traditionalist worldview. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 468

Categorization

• XREF: This is the classic ‘irony of unintended consequences in intellectual movements’ pattern, echoing the reader’s broader interest in how austerity ideas were transmitted. — connects to: Bitter internal factionalism nearly destroyed the Mont Pèlerin Society. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 345; The Mont Pèlerin Society’s growth threatened its philosophical unity — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 325; Founding Mont Pèlerin members became alienated by the society’s later trajectory — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 562 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: did Hayek’s own later ‘constitution of liberty’ position actually differ as much from Friedman’s as portrayed here?

Broader Connections

• Founding Mont Pèlerin members became alienated by the society’s later trajectory #corroborates (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 562