In The Great Persuasion, Angus Burgin has given us a carefully researched and clearly presented account of the place of the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) in the development of the modern conservative or neo-liberal movement. Like another recent collection (Mirowski and Plehwe’s The Road from Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective), the book seeks to account for the long-term influence of a group of academics and of a set of ideas upon the policy consensus of recent years. In so doing, we are provided with a narrative account of the evolution of the MPS, which, by implication, parallels the rise of the prominence of ‘neoliberal’ ideas in the policies of the 1970s and 1980s. The point is that ideas matter and are influential over the long term. The history of the MPS suggests that ideas do indeed matter, and Burgin’s approach to the society itself is to examine the diversity of opinions expressed by its members and the shifts in ideas within the society.

The central thesis of the book is that the MPS changed over time from a broad church dedicated to the philosophical principles of a free society, to a narrower group devoted to a particular style of economics with a more extreme version of free market advocacy. Burgin’s argument is that one can trace two distinct periods in the development of MPS, the period where F. A. Hayek established the society, acted as president, and held the position as the foremost public advocate of market economics; and the period where Milton Friedman assumed both the presidency (1970–1972) and the mantle of leading public intellectual. Burgin argues that the initial MPS meetings were characterized by a diversity of academic disciplines and interests, a range of nationalities, and competing visions of the economic and political order that the society ought to advocate. Perhaps the chief aspect of this period was the desire to promote and defend markets while stressing the differences between this new liberalism and the purported laissez faire capitalism of the nineteenth century. As Burgin notes, this was a society whose members were far from doctrinaire opponents of all State action. With time and with the ascendancy of Friedman, the society became less international and more Anglo-American, came to be dominated by economists devoted to a particular set of methodologies and policy ideas, and became more willing to adopt the language of laissez faire in support of a more extreme vision of the free market.

Burgin demonstrates his case by providing some nicely handled description of figures who participated in MPS and their relationships with each other as they played out in the early attempts to create some sort of international association of classical liberals. Figures such as Walter Lippmann, Louis Rougier, and Michael Polanyi indicate the diversity of academic outlooks encompassed in the early period of the society, while the contrasting visions of William Röpke and Hayek indicate that agreement on what was wrong with the alternatives to the market was easier to achieve than a coherent shared platform. We then see that, as the society became more directed towards a particular advocacy of free markets rather than a more general liberal position, such figures began to take a back seat or give up attending the meetings altogether. The divisions in the society in the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called ‘Hunold’ affair, are used to demonstrate the increasingly Anglo-American nature of the society, and Friedman’s assumption of a central role illustrates the gradual coherence of the society around a particular set of shared ‘neoliberal’ positions.

Though, in the main, convincing, it does, on occasion, seem that Burgin makes his case a little too strongly. Can we really believe that the gradual move away from the philosophical inquiry of the Hayek years to the empirical focus of the Friedman years was a result of Friedman’s personal proclivities or his famous methodological essay on positive economics (p. 213)? Might it not be more convincingly thought to be an expression of general moves within the economics profession or as a feature of the increasing influence of think-tanks and politicians within MPS? As Burgin himself admits, the MPS and its meetings had grown in scale since the 1950s, and many of those involved in more recent years come from the world of policy advocacy rather than pure academia (Richard Cockett’s Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-Tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931–1983 providing an account of how the more abstract ideas of Hayek and Friedman influenced the policy ideas of a network of free market think-tanks). With this in mind, we might also have a plausible explanation of why the rhetoric of the free market movement shifted from careful academic qualification to more emphatic public exhortation of the benefits of a market system.

Moreover, one might think it more likely that the increasing willingness to advance more radical free market ideas was a reaction to the success of those earlier ideas in persuading an increasingly receptive political audience during the 1970s and 1980s. When once-radical ideas become part of the intellectual consensus, we might reasonably expect their early proponents to be emboldened by their success and more strident in their rhetoric. With this in mind, we might see that questions of context and personnel might provide more convincing reasons for the changes in the society. This would, at least in part, militate against the ideas-driven argument that Burgin advances here.

The thesis that ideas matter in long-term political change seems to be given ample support by the history of the impact of the MPS, but Burgin’s attempt to carry it over into the history of the society itself may be a little less convincing. The analytical division between the Hayek era and the Friedman era works as an organizational tool, but it seems that there must be more to be said about the internal mechanics of the society than the dominance of these two figures. While both Hayek and Friedman were obviously key figures in the society and famous public advocates of markets, a little more evidence from the memoirs and recollections of those who were members of MPS, or who attended the meetings, might have been helpful in revealing the extent to which the society was dominated by them or the extent to which their personal interests matched the character of the society’s meetings during the two periods that Burgin sketches.

The ‘Hunold’ affair is discussed in some detail, but, as Burgin concedes, much of the disagreement was about personalities, about feelings and friendships, rather than a grand intellectual schism between Anglo-Americans and Europeans. The society itself may have become more Anglo-American, but Burgin offers no direct evidence for this: no interviews and no membership lists are provided that might confirm the view. In the later chapters of the book, Burgin’s stress moves to the place of Friedman and MPS in the development of American conservatism. Now, while it is obvious that the ‘new right’ (as it was once called) differed from nation to nation, there’s little in the initial part of the book that prepares us for this narrowing of focus to the US.

In the conclusion, Burgin suggests that the MPS moved to the right as its ‘surroundings’ (p. 225) moved right. But we have no idea what is more ‘rightwards’ here. Did the members become more socially conservative? More libertarian? Certainly, the rhetoric about markets may have become more pronounced, but the commitment to civil liberties and individual freedom seems to remain constant in the writings of most of its members who continued, like Hayek, to disavow the name “conservative.” Moreover, if the MPS moved to the right with its surroundings, then where does this leave the thesis that ideas drive long-term change? It would seem that the ideas of the MPS shaped the policy consensus, which, in turn, shaped the direction of ideas in the society’s latter years.

Michael Polanyi, whose early membership and later absence from the society is taken as evidence of a rightward, economistic shift, wrote to Hayek, saying that “I have often disagreed with your views, but have done so as a member of the same family, and I have always admired, unfailingly, the power of your scholarship and the vigour of your pen” (Polanyi to Hayek 2/2/68, Hayek Archive, Hoover Institution, Box 43, Folder 35). Perhaps, given the project of plotting the diversity of ideas in MPS, the image of a family might have been a better organizational conceit than the Manichean Hayek/Friedman chronological line. By understanding the MPS as a family of scholars exploring a family of different, but related, ideas, Burgin’s “divergent sub groups” (p. 150) might instead be revealed as distinct branches of the same familial line. Approaching the history of MPS and its place in modern intellectual history in this way might have offered greater scope for an examination of the views and relationships of the members of the society as a whole rather than the intellectual biography of the ‘big two’.