Neoliberal thinkers worried wartime controls would accustom publics to permanent authoritarianism

Evidence

Director frequently commiserated with Hayek over politics from his own perch in wartime Washington: “In a future war we must give some consideration to economizing the use of authoritarian control, this not so much because it has alternative uses but because the supply of good controlled is very limited, and because its utilization may accustom us to accept it after the war is over” (1940, 360). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 733

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with the later neoliberal concern that wartime state planning, accepted as emergency necessity, normalizes peacetime control. — connects to: Neoliberal intellectuals framed the wartime era as a moral and spiritual crisis requiring diagnosis — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 204
• SEED: The ‘economizing of authoritarian control’ idea is a usable angle for an essay on the wartime genealogy of distrust of the state.