The draft creed tied individual freedom to competitive markets and private property.

Evidence

1. Individual freedom can be preserved only in a society in which an effective competitive market is the main agency for the direction of economic activity. Only the decentralization of control through private property in the means of production can prevent those concentrations of power which threaten individual freedom. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 130

Categorization

• DEFINE: Early statement of what distinguished the neoliberal position from both laissez-faire and socialist planning — freedom achieved through market competition, not merely property.
• SEED: Angle: the ‘concentrations of power’ framing — positing markets as diffusers of power against the state — prefigures the entire rhetoric of neoliberal anti-monopolism. An essay tracing how this single sentence became the movement’s core claim.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 130
• XREF: connects to: The Thirteenth Amendment freedom extends to equal property and market rights; US business groups framed free enterprise as an indispensable pillar of freedom. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 485; Within neoliberalism, one’s theory of markets determines one’s definition of freedom — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 167

Broader Connections

• Within neoliberalism, one’s theory of markets determines one’s definition of freedom #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 167
• US business groups framed free enterprise as an indispensable pillar of freedom. #exemplifies (0.78) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 485
• The Thirteenth Amendment freedom extends to equal property and market rights #corroborates (0.72)