Burying Mont Pèlerin: Milton Friedman and neoliberal vanguardism

“As you know, I have for years been concerned about the fact that the Mont Pèlerin Society has become a large social gathering rather than the kind of intense intellectual community it once was,” Milton Friedman wrote in 1987 to his friend and comrade-in-arms, Arthur Seldon, founder of the Institute for Economic Affairs, a British pro-market think tank. By the second half of the 1980s, the neoliberal trans-Atlantic alliance between Reagan and Thatcher was on a firm footing. The views and proposals of the Mont Pèlerin Society, once marginal and ridiculed in a world domineered byKeynesianism,were now in alignmentwith the prevailing spirit of the age (Burgin, 2012, pp. 206–207). Thismoment of unexpected success seemed to afford Friedman, one of the Society's founding members and leading luminaries, the opportunity to muse on past trials: “In 1972, I was in favor of having a big twenty-fifth anniversary celebration and closing the Society down,” Friedman wrote, “in the view that it would be better for a new society to emerge which would have fresh vigor andwould be staffed by a new group of people.” Serving as the Society's president between 1970 and 1972, Friedman had come to the belief that theMont Pèlerin Society had been sapped of its original vigor and resolve. It had turned, according to Friedman (1987), into little more than a traveling circus, a gathering of “tourists” and “fellow travelers” in efforts to promulgate the neoliberal creed. It had ceased to function as the sparring grounds for world-class thinkers. With typical folksy candor, Friedman continued, “Unfortunately, I was unable persuade my fellow directors of that view, but in retrospect I still believe it was a darn good idea.” Seldon replied that he remembered Friedman's positionwell and recalled being “shocked at the notion that the effort to muster market economists of the world might end prematurely.” With hindsight, however, Seldon (1987) had to agree that Friedmanwas probably right and that he could “now see your argument.” Not for the first time Friedman had propounded a viewpoint once derided by his peers and only later to be embraced by others. Many scholars believe the Society has played a noteworthy role to play in the formation of neoliberal ideas and implementation of neoliberal policies. Mirowski and Plehwe, who assembled an international team of esteemed scholars to assess the Society's impact, turned the significance and centrality of the Society into an axiom for their research colloquium: theirs was a study of “what we believe has been the central thought collective that has conscientiously developed the neoliberal identity for more than sixty years now” (Plehwe, 2009, p. 4). Elsewhere, Mirowski (2014, p. 29) has claimed that the Society was “at one time in its history the premier site of the construction of neoliberalism,” rebranding it as one of the preeminent sites in what he terms the “Neoliberal Thought Collective,” a network of