Angus Burgin

This is a fascinating history of ideas in political economy that benefits from having been written by an historian rather than an economist. Burgin situates the foundation of the influential Mont Pèlerin Society in historical-contextual space and traces its evolution as part of an elaborate policy network that inspired and advised Anglo-American conservative leaders of the late 20th c. Between the lines, we get a lesson in how ideas are denatured as they trickle down from the scholarly elite to the realm of public opinion.

The key figures here are Friedrich Hayek, who founded the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1947, and Milton Friedman, who succeeded Hayek as the most influential advocate of the market mechanism. Both rejected the label ‘conservative,’ but Hayek comes off as much less doctrinaire and presumptuous in his postulates than Friedman. Friedman's great talent was for popularizing the notion than 'freedom' is essentially economic―but, given the nature of political discourse, popular ideas are inevitably simplistic ones.

Burgin mostly confines his discussion to the debate among supporters of the market system. In so doing, he exposes the range of arguments in favor of markets, and he allows the paradoxical, contradictory features of the ‘capitalist doctrine of freedom’ to reveal themselves.… (mais)