Mont Pelerin Society members deny the salience of class in modern economies

Evidence

There are a fair number of books written by MPS members denying any salience to class. For instance, Lord Peter Bauer wrote a pamphlet, Class on the Brain: The Cost of a British Obsession (1997), which asserted, “for about eight centuries Britain has not been a closed society, much less a caste society,” that there have been few class barriers to wealth in Britain, and that to the extent that Britain became less open and flexible in the postwar years, “it needed the reforms of Mrs. Thatcher’s governments to re-open the road of opportunity.” — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1973

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the general theme of the thought collective (MPS) denying structural economic concepts; ties to the reader’s broader reading on how neoliberal intellectuals frame inequality. — connects to: Bourgeois economists avoided totalizing models out of class instinct — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 374; Americans deny class’s relevance by attributing it to foreign societies — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2171; Mont Pelerin Society members accepted that humans must remain slaves to the state — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 118

Broader Connections

• Mont Pelerin Society members accepted that humans must remain slaves to the state #contradicts (0.80) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 118
• Americans deny class’s relevance by attributing it to foreign societies #corroborates (0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2171