Rightwing ideological funding organizations were almost nonexistent in the postwar period

Evidence

Examining how Hayek approached the problem of funding provides some insights into the status of fi nancial support for conservative po litical ideas in the late 1940s. Today we live in a world with a vast array of rightwing ideological funding organizations, but in the immediate postwar period advocacy organizations with an explicit po liti cal agenda were unusual, and those with a freemarket orientation were rarer still. The existing policy institutes, such as the Brookings Institution, were largely Progressiveera enterprises designed to provide “objective” advice on making government more rational and effi cient. Although these organizations were by no means unfriendly to business— Brookings, in par tic u lar, was known for its critical response to the New Deal— Hayek believed that they were much more forthcoming to moderate and leftleaning intellectuals than to market advocates like himself. “While I see daily how for the international contacts of the leftish groups, and particularly the Communists, almost unlimited means seem to be available and in consequence the closest coordination of their systematic efforts possible,” he complained to a potential funder, Jasper Crane of DuPont, in 1949, “I have so far failed to obtain any funds to speak of for similar endeavours on the liberal side.” — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 250

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant context for both graft/tree infrastructure and immodesty pieces? No — more relevant to a broader austerity/neoliberalism arc, but it establishes the funding asymmetry theme that underpins my Mont Pèlerin research.
• XREF: Connects to my Mont Pèlerin milieu research and to the broader story of how think-tank infrastructure (Heritage, Cato, AEI) was later built — the gap Hayek describes here is what later conservative philanthropy filled. — connects to: Wealthy businessmen funded the postwar right out of ideological conviction, not self-interest — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1475; The postwar Keynesian consensus silenced rightwing academic criticism of planning — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 377; Conservative foundations funded unorthodox ideas decades before the think tank boom — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 322 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Wealthy businessmen funded the postwar right out of ideological conviction, not self-interest #responds-to (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1475
• Conservative foundations funded unorthodox ideas decades before the think tank boom #contradicts (0.85) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 322
• The postwar Keynesian consensus silenced rightwing academic criticism of planning #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 377