The Mont Pèlerin Society was the first lasting institution of the postwar liberal revival

Evidence

In the de cade after the publication of the book, this developing movement culture manifested itself in a variety of institutional forms. The fi rst international gathering to discuss “neoliberal” ideas was held in Paris in August 1938, in celebration of the publication of a French translation of Lippmann’s book. In subsequent years the Centre International d’Études pour la Rénovation du Libéralisme was founded in Paris; the Free Market Study was established in association with the Economics Department at the University of Chicago; Wilhelm Röpke worked from Geneva, ultimately without success, to raise money to support an international journal of liberal ideas; and Friedrich Hayek prepared the groundwork for the fi rst meeting of what became the Mont Pèlerin Society in Switzerland in 1947. … Many of these attempts were to varying degrees uncertain, lurching, and transient, and until the establishment of the Mont Pèlerin Society none of the institutions managed to fulfi ll their original mandates or to become established on a permanent basis. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 145

Categorization

• XREF: This maps the institutional prehistory of the MPS, the central subject of this book and the reader’s stated focus on the Mont Pèlerin milieu. — connects to: Hayek founded the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947 to rebuild market advocacy networks. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 30
• QUESTION: The Paris 1938 Lippmann colloquium is claimed as the ‘first international gathering’ on neoliberal ideas — worth verifying whether any earlier gatherings existed.