Mont Pelerin Society

The MPS was created in Fall 1947 at a conference organized by Friedrich Hayek during the International Trade Organization (ITO) drama of that year. As ITO delegates met in Geneva, Switzerland, to draft the world trade charter, another group of intellectuals convened at the opposite end of the lake at the base of Mont Pèlerin. Taking their name from the location, the Mont Pèlerin Society was formally established on April 10, 1947.[4][6]

Originally, it was to be named the Acton-Tocqueville Society. Frank Knight protested against naming the group after two "Roman Catholic aristocrats," and Ludwig von Mises expressed concern that the mistakes made by Acton and Tocqueville would be connected with the society.[6]

In its "Statement of Aims" on 8 April 1947, the scholars were worried about the dangers faced by civilization, stating the following:

Over large stretches of the Earth’s surface the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom have already disappeared. In others they are under constant menace from the development of current tendencies of policy. The position of the individual and the voluntary group are progressively undermined by extensions of arbitrary power. Even that most precious possession of Western Man, freedom of thought and expression, is threatened by the spread of creeds which, claiming the privilege of tolerance when in the position of a minority, seek only to establish a position of power in which they can suppress and obliterate all views but their own.[7]

The group also stated that it is "difficult to imagine a society in which freedom may be effectively preserved" without the "diffused power and initiative" associated with "private property and the competitive market" and found it desirable inter alia to study the following matters:[7]

1. "The analysis and exploration of the nature of the present crisis so as to bring home to others its essential moral and economic origins.
2. The redefinition of the functions of the state so as to distinguish more clearly between the totalitarian and the liberal order.
3. Methods of re-establishing the rule of law and of assuring its development in such manner that individuals and groups are not in a position to encroach upon the freedom of others and private rights are not allowed to become a basis of predatory power.
4. The possibility of establishing minimum standards by means not inimical to initiative and functioning of the market.
5. Methods of combating the misuse of history for the furtherance of creeds hostile to liberty.
6. The problem of the creation of an international order conducive to the safeguarding of peace and liberty and permitting the establishment of harmonious international economic relations."[7]

The group "seeks to establish no meticulous and hampering orthodoxy", "conduct propaganda" or align with some party. It aims to facilitate "the exchange of views [...] to contribute to the preservation and improvement of the free society."[7]

Notably absent are the range of human and political rights traditionally embraced by liberals (including the right to form coalitions and freedom of the press).[8]

View of Mont Pèlerin from Vevey

In 1947, thirty-nine scholars, mostly economists with some historians and philosophers, were invited by Friedrich Hayek to meet to discuss the state and possible fate of classical liberalism, his goal being an organization which would resist interventionism and promote his conception of classical liberalism.[9] The first meeting took place in the Hotel du Parc in the Swiss village of Mont Pèlerin, near the city of Vevey, Switzerland.

Funding for the conference came from various sources including the William Volker Fund thanks to Harold Luhnow,[10] the Bank of England owing to the help of Alfred Suenson-Taylor,[11]^: 84 the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York and the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (today known as Credit Swiss), which paid 93 percent of the total conference costs, 18,062.08 Swiss francs.[12]

William Rappard, a Swiss academic, diplomat and founder of the Graduate Institute of International Studies, addressed the society's inaugural meeting. In his "Opening Address to a Conference at Mont Pelerin",[13] Hayek mentioned "two men with whom I had most fully discussed the plan for this meeting both have not lived to see its realisation", namely Henry Simons (who trained Milton Friedman, a future president of the MPS, at the University of Chicago) and John Clapham, a British economic historian.

The MPS aimed to "facilitate an exchange of ideas between like-minded scholars in the hope of strengthening the principles and practice of a free society and to study the workings, virtues, and defects of market-oriented economic systems". The MPS has continued to meet regularly, the General Meeting every two years and the regional meetings annually. The MPS has close ties to the network of think tanks sponsored in part by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.[14]

Hayek stressed that the society was to be a scholarly community arguing against collectivism while not engaging in public relations or propaganda. The society has become part of an international think tank movement and Hayek used it as a forum to encourage members such as Antony Fisher to pursue the think tank route. Fisher has established the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London during 1955, the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York City in 1977 and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1981. Now known as the Atlas Network, they support a wide network of think tanks, including the Fraser Institute.[15]

Prominent MPS members who advanced to policy positions included the late Chancellor Ludwig Erhard of West Germany, President Luigi Einaudi of Italy, Chairman Arthur F. Burns of the Federal Reserve Board and Secretary of State George Shultz. Among prominent contemporary political figures, former President Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic and acting politicians, such as Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe of Sri Lanka, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Geoffrey Howe of the United Kingdom, former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Defence Antonio Martino, Chilean Finance Minister Carlos Cáceres and former New Zealand Finance Minister Ruth Richardson, are all MPS members. Of 76 economic advisers on Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign staff, 22 were MPS members.

Several leading journalists, including Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Walter Lippmann, former radical Max Eastman (then roving editor at Reader's Digest), John Chamberlain (former editorial writer for Life magazine), Henry Hazlitt (former financial editor of The New York Times and columnist for Newsweek), John Davenport (holder of editorial posts at Fortune and Barron's) and Felix Morley (Pulitzer Prize-winning editor at The Washington Post), have also been members. Members of the MPS have also been well represented on the Committee for the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.[16]

Eight MPS members, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Maurice Allais, James M. Buchanan, Ronald Coase, Gary Becker[17] and Vernon Smith have won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Graeme Maxton and Jørgen Randers note that it is no surprise that so many MPS members have won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences because the MPS helped to create that award, specifically to legitimize free-market economic thinking.[18] In contrast, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Romer attended a meeting of the MPS and found it "boring and depressing."[19]

In the 2014 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), the MPS is noted as having the 9th (out of 55) "Best Think Tank Conference".[20]

In 2018, the Swiss blockchain banking Fintech company Mt Pelerin has named itself after the Mont Pelerin Society as an homage to the values that the organization advocates.[21]

Numerous notable economists have served as president of the MPS:[22]

• Colloque Walter Lippmann
• Neoliberalism

• R. M. Hartwell (1995). A History of the Mont Pèlerin Society. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund. ISBN 978-0865971363. OCLC 32510484, 683676105.
  • Hans Otto Lenel (1996). ORDO: Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, vol. 47, pp. 399–402. JSTOR 23743153.
• Robert Higgs (Spring 1997). "Fifty Years of the Mont Pèlerin Society." Archived 19 July 2021 at the Wayback Machine Independent Review, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 623–625.
• Philip Plickert (2008). Wandlungen des Neoliberalismus. Eine Studie zu Entwicklung und Ausstrahlung der Mont Pèlerin Society | Changes in Neoliberalism: A Study on the Development and Charisma of the Mont Pèlerin Society. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius. ISBN 978-3828204416. OCLC 243450906. Preview.
  • Reviewed: Marcus M. Payk (November 23, 2009). Archiv für Sozialgeschichte (AfS).
• Review of The road from Mont Pèlerin. Kaza, Greg (March 30, 2010). Washington Times.
• Angus Burgin (2012). The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674058132. OCLC 791491622, 844090781. Preview.
  • Reviewed: Liggio, Leonard (Fall 2013). Independent Review, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 298–301. Independent Institute. JSTOR 24563316.
• Daniel Stedman Jones (2012). Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1400851836.
• Quinn Slobodian (2018). Globalists: The End of Empire and the Rise of Neoliberalism. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674979529. The postwar neoliberal movement was born in the midst of the ITO drama, and some of its members played a starring role in it. As delegates met in Geneva in the spring of 1947 to draft the world trade charter, a group of intellectuals gathered at the other end of the lake at the base of Mont Pèlerin. Taking their name from the location, the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) became the germ of what its organizer Hayek called 'the neoliberal movement.'

• Official website
• Organization profile at DeSmogBlog
• Organization profile at National Center for Charitable Statistics (Urban Institute)
• Mont Pèlerin Society (1947–…): Inventory of the General Meeting Files (1947–1998). Preface by Jacques Van Offelen. Belgium: Liberaal Archief (2004). Archived.
• Guide to the Mont Pelerin Society Records and sound recordings of meetings online at the Hoover Institution Archives