The Other Path to Mont Pelerin

My concern in this chapter is to offer a preliminary account of an alternative path that led Friedrich Hayek to the formation of the Mont Pelerin Society. By referring to an ‘alternative’, I am acknowledging the importance — and the substantive correctness — of a better-known story of how the Mont Pelerin Society was formed. This — which was set out by Richard Cockett,2 and has subsequently been elaborated upon by others — stresses the continuity between the Mont Pelerin Society and an earlier gathering in France, the Colloque Walter Lippmann. This was an international gathering of classical liberals, convened by Louis Rougier, to which Lippmann was invited, which took off from his The Good Society. This work — which was itself strongly influenced by the ideas of Hayek and Lionel Robbins — made a considerable general impression. As has been documented in a recent article, it led both Robbins and Hayek to write at length to Lippmann about his work,3 and created a swell of interest amongst classical liberals in France. The proceedings were published (alas, there is no contribution from Hayek in them);4 and there were plans to set up an organization with branches in various countries, with Hayek taking an organizing role in the UK.