Walter Lippmann deliberately withdrew from the neoliberal movement as it institutionalized

Evidence

One of the fi rst people Röpke contacted when he began developing his plans for a new journal was Walter Lippmann. After learning of Röpke’s proposal, Lippmann elected not to become involved. Hayek also developed “rather the impression that [Lippmann] deliberately avoided meeting me when I was in the States last Spring,” adding that “he has certainly kept very aloof from our other friends in America with whom he used to agree.” Together, he and Röpke concluded that Lippmann was “unpredictable,” subject to “ever more doubts,” and moving in the “wrong direction.” Despite Lippmann’s central role in the movement’s foundational period, he would never again engage directly and purposively with the members of their intellectual community. He extricated himself from the neoliberal movement at the very moment when it began to establish the durable structures that would lay the groundwork for its pop u lar success. This deliberate disengagement has led most histories of neoliberalism to ignore Lippmann, like Rougier. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 216

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader narrative of how Mont Pèlerin Society histories selectively remember founders; Lippmann’s The Good Society anchors the early period chronologically. — connects to: Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems answered Lippmann’s Public Opinion — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 363; Lippmann’s 1937 Good Society launched the neoliberal program against Depression-era orthodoxy — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 105; The Colloque Lippmann was an exclusionary gathering that seeded Europe’s postwar liberal establishment — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 277
• QUESTION: Why exactly did Lippmann disengage — political disagreement, temperament, or career calculation? Worth chasing whether his In-quiry liberalism was fundamentally incompatible with the MPS’s direction.

Broader Connections

• Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems answered Lippmann’s Public Opinion #responds-to (0.75) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 363