Neoliberal backers believed a canonical text was a precondition for movement success

Evidence

This was not simply a personal mission for him; rather, he felt that it was of the deepest political significance. Ideological incoherence, he thought, was one of the greatest obstacles faced by opponents of liberalism. As Crane wrote to a friend in 1945, he had been deeply impressed by another friend’s idea that “Christianity made little progress until in the Second Century it had the writings of the New Testament; Communism got nowhere until Marx wrote Das Kapital (read by very few people at first but gradually gaining enormous influence); National Socialism needed Mein Kampf to be effective.” Crane was looking, as he put it, for the “New Testament of capitalism,” the “‘bible’ of free enterprise.” — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1447

Categorization

• XREF: This directly gives the chapter its title and sets up the anthology that became the Freiburg meeting’s ‘bible of free enterprise’ product. — connects to: A single popular book could crystallize a scattered intellectual network into a movement — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 166; Revisionist-believing subjects demanded the full text believing it supported their view; Intellectual movements succeed through diversified long-horizon patronage — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 442
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that a movement needs a sacred founding text — a bible — before it can spread is a provocative framework for understanding ideological diffusion generally.

Broader Connections

• Revisionist-believing subjects demanded the full text believing it supported their view #corroborates (0.78)
• Intellectual movements succeed through diversified long-horizon patronage #expands (0.72) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 442