Shared ideological critique did not yet imply a clear program of positive policy

Evidence

The perception that a unique opportunity was at hand inspired the pivotal question of how best to take advantage of it. Hayek, Röpke, and their peers faced the fundamental challenge of attempting to transform a felt consonance of opinion among a small network of individuals— in some cases separated, as Röpke noted in his letter to Stanford economist Karl Brandt, by “a continent and an ocean”— into a coherent movement. This was further complicated by per sis tent ambiguities about what the goals of such a community would be. As the reviews of Lippmann’s The Good Society had revealed, dual criticisms of laissezfaire and creeping collectivism had yet to yield a clear repre sen ta tion of what fi scal and social policies one could advocate. And as a community consisting primarily of academics, they remained committed to ideological change but deeply uncertain about how to transform their isolated theoretical ideas into effective po liti cal praxis. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 167

Categorization

• XREF: This maps onto the broader literature on how ideology translates into policy praxis; connects to the Law Merchant/private-ordering institutional literature in my notes about how shared norms need institutions to become operative. — connects to: Ideological coherence is experienced, not logically necessary; Organizational rupture with old socialism did not require ideological rupture too — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 95; Cultural affinity now outweighs shared ideology as a political glue — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 44 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Someone can hold a strong ideological identity while lacking its policy contents. #expands (0.88) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1892
• Organizational rupture with old socialism did not require ideological rupture too #exemplifies (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 95
• Ideological coherence is experienced, not logically necessary #expands (0.78)
• Cultural affinity now outweighs shared ideology as a political glue #qualifies (0.70) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 44