What exactly is neoliberalism, and where did it come from? This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. Now with a new preface.

Although modern neoliberalism was born at the “Colloque Walter Lippmann” in 1938, it only came into its own with the founding of the Mont Pèlerin Society, a partisan “thought collective,” in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1947. Its original membership was made up of transnational economists and intellectuals, including Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Luigi Einaudi. From this small beginning, their ideas spread throughout the world, fostering, among other things, the political platforms of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the Washington Consensus. The Road from Mont Pèlerin presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy. The book captures the depth and complexity of the neoliberal “thought collective” while examining the numerous ways that neoliberal discourse has come to shape the global economy. “The Road from Mont Pèlerin is indispensable for anyone wishing to gain an understanding of neoliberalism, whether as an end in itself or as a means for constructing alternative, non-neoliberal futures.” —Daniel Kinderman, Critical Policy Studies “If you work on post-war history of economics, there is almost no reason not to read this book.” —Ross B. Emmett, Journal of the History of Economic Thought

What exactly is neoliberalism, and where did it come from? This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. The Road from Mont Pèlerin presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy.

What exactly is neoliberalism, and where did it come from? This volume attempts to answer these questions by exploring neoliberalism’s origins and growth as a political and economic movement. The Road from Mont Pèlerin presents the key debates and conflicts that occurred among neoliberal scholars and their political and corporate allies regarding trade unions, development economics, antitrust policies, and the influence of philanthropy.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, in 1947, this volume presents for the first time the original transcripts from this landmark event. The society was created by Friedrich Hayek as a forum for leading economists and intellectuals to discuss and debate classical liberal values in the face of a rapidly changing world and political trends toward socialism. Bruce Caldwell, a major scholar of Hayek, provides an informative introduction and explanatory notes to the source documents, drawn from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, where they have been available to scholars. Now accessible to all, the transcripts reveal what was said on a wide range of topics, including free markets, monetary reform, wage policy, taxation, agricultural policy, the future of Germany, Christianity and liberalism, and more. They provide insights into the thinking of men such as Hayek, Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, Frank Knight, Walter Eucken, Karl Popper, and other leading figures in the classical liberalism movement, illuminating not only their ideas but also their distinctive personalities. A photo section shows rarely seen images from the meeting.

Just as economists struggle today to justify the free market after the global economic crisis, an earlier generation revisited their worldview after the Great Depression. In this intellectual history of that project, Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider the most basic assumptions of a market-centered world.

A number of distinguished dissidents voice their opinions on the intervention by NATO in the former Yugoslavia. The collection also provides background historical information on the conflict in the Balkans.