Mont Pèlerin members privately conceded the state is unavoidable and only its share matters

Evidence

Among our members, there are some who are able to imagine a viable society without a state… . For most of our members, however, social order without a state is not readily imagined, at least in any normatively preferred sense… . Of necessity, we must look at our relations with the state from several windows, to use the familiar Nietzschean metaphor… . Man is, and must remain, a slave to the state. But it is critically and vitally important to recognize that ten per cent slavery is different from fifty per cent slavery. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 84

Categorization

• SHARE: This internal 1980s concession that MPS members had no vision of society without a state would fascinate a colleague studying the tactical rhetoric of free-market think tanks.
• QUESTION: Which internal document is this quote drawn from, and who wrote it? The author names no source here.
• XREF: connects to: The Mont Pèlerin network forged genuine consensus despite its internal disagreements. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2076; Some Mont Pèlerin members openly rejected majority-rule democracy in private — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2147; Mont Pèlerin founders rejected laissez-faire and libertarian labels as politically unviable — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 306

Broader Connections

• Some Mont Pèlerin members openly rejected majority-rule democracy in private #qualifies (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2147
• Mont Pèlerin founders rejected laissez-faire and libertarian labels as politically unviable #corroborates (0.80) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 306