Dear Dr. Offer, dear colleagues,
thank you for these highly interesting thoughts on the MPS.
I still cannot agree with the stance of Dr. Offer on the character of the debates within the society, especially his calling them "self-affirming consensual discussions". Having written my dissertation on neoliberalism, I spent considerable time during the last years to study the literature on the MPS as well as archival evidence in the Hayek and Röpke archive collections. The spectrum of liberalisms united in the society until the Hunold Affair is, in my reading, quite considerable; the clashes start already at the Colloque Lippmann at the Röpke/Rüstow-Mises line and characterize already the second MPS meeting in Seelisberg in 1949 with a very intense debate between Eucken and Mises on competition policy. In a forthcoming article, two colleagues and myself show how immense Eucken's role was in the first years of the society and what paramount expectations Hayek had as to Eucken's contributions to the future spirit of the society. It is true that Hayek did not adopt Popper's idea to invite socialists to the society, but this does not mean that the group that evolved from 1947 onwards does not deserve the term "debates" for their discussions, as stated by Dr. Offer. As pointed by Dr. Leeson, Mises was highly skeptical of Hayek's plans to include Röpke & Co. into the club (here his memo commenting on Hayek's 1946 plans: http://www.libertarianpapers.org/articles/2009/lp-1-2.pdf), and Röpke-Rüstow correspondence published in the MPS histories of Walpen, Plickert and Burgin show their correspondingly deep distrust in the role of Mises and his (increasingly influential) group.
The interpretation of the Hunold Affair as "mostly about personalities" seems also incorrect or incomplete to me. Hayek's famous MPS address of 1957 "Why I am not a conservative" can be seen not only as directed to American conservatism, but also to the increasing conservatism in Röpke's work, their correspondence becoming increasingly rare and estranged at that time. The Hunold Affair of the late 50s and early 60s was also about the character of the society, Hunold and Röpke pressing for more public engagement of the society itself, Hayek and the American group around him opposing this and sticking to the originial arrangement that the society does not express unified opinions itself. Finally, I find nothing unusual that the president of a club - and Hayek was president until 1961 - needs to give his approval for memberships of the club and that potential members are invited to meetings beforehand.
As to the question on Maurice Allais, I was out of my books until tonight but could now check: in the official history of the MPS by Hartwell and in Angus Burgin's book, a letter from Allais to Hayek of May 1947 is quoted where Allais does not agree to sign the Statement of Aims: although he is not against private property of enterprises, he is against private property of land in line of Henry George's reasoning (in Hartwell, the footnote is on p. 42, in Burgin, on p. 107). Still, he must have become member since, according to Walpen's history, he was active at several points during the years, also he is quoted in the section "Notable members" on the MPS website: https://www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/mpsMembers.html Again, not quite a verification of the purity thesis of a hermetically closed club with "self-affirming consensual discussions".
Best regards,
Stefan Kolev
---
Prof. Dr. Stefan Kolev
Wilhelm Röpke Institut e.V.
Gorkistraße 9
99084 Erfurt
Tel +49 (0) 179-125 75 76
Internet: www.hwwi.org
Email: [log in to unmask]
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________________________________________
Von: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] im Auftrag von ALAIN ALCOUFFE [[log in to unmask]]
Gesendet: Samstag, 4. Januar 2014 18:19
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: [SHOE] RVW -- Emmett on Burgin, _The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression_
Hi,
I would be curious to know if there are some records about the
membership of Maurice Allais.
According to the French wikipedia article devoted to Société du Mont
Pélerin, Maurice Allais attended the inaugural meeting in 1947 but did
not sign the manifesto because of its emphasis on the property right.
I wonder if he stayed nevertheless a member of the MSP or not
Best wishes
Ross Emmett <[log in to unmask]> a écrit :
> Burgin argues that the early years of the MPS saw greater variation among
> membership than it did once Friedman was President. Note that Mises did not
> succeed in getting roepke out. But several people did leave MPS in 1950s as
> focus became narrower.
>
> On Friday, January 3, 2014, Robert Leeson wrote:
>
>> The blackball power - often based on evidence-free assertions - was not
>> infrequently exercised. Roger Freeman, for example, was blackballed because
>> he had - allegedly - not paid a dentist's bill (no evidence was ever
>> provided).
>>
>> Mises tried unsuccessfully to blackball Röpke: "I am primarily concerned
>> about the participation of Röpke, who is an outspoken interventionist. I
>> think the same holds true for Brandt, Gideonse, and Eastman. All three of
>> them are contributors to the purely socialist—even though decidedly
>> anti-Soviet—New Leader."
>>
>> RL
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Stefan Kolev" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: Thursday, 2 January, 2014 6:51:41 AM
>> Subject: Re: [SHOE] RVW -- Emmett on Burgin, _The Great Persuasion:
>> Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression_
>>
>> Dear Professor Offer,
>>
>> please allow me to contradict your brief statement on the Mont Pèlerin
>> Society. From its very beginning, the society has decided not to act itself
>> as an entity in the public discourse; it is instead its members who are
>> free to engage in scientific or political discussions as they wish. As all
>> histories of the MPS show, the last being that by Angus Burgin, this club
>> has united quite a variety of liberalisms, so expecting coherent public
>> reactions from such a group has never been realistic, also bearing in mind
>> the pronounced individualism of its members. Thus in my opinion your remark
>> about the MPS not "condescending to engage in debates with its opponents"
>> misapprehends this very basic discourse constitution which the society has
>> given itself and which has persisted since its founding. As to the
>> individual MPS members, probably no one can accuse them of inactivity as to
>> debates with their opponents in the last six decades.
>>
>> That Rawls was a MPS member is not a secret, Philip Plickert's 2008
>> history of the MPS (which, differently structured, is about double the size
>> and the amount of details as Angus Burgin's book) describes this and other
>> affiliations which do not suit the story of the homogeneous "thought
>> collective" (here a review:
>> http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/feuilleton/_buchrezensionen_nichtmehrgueltig/die-macht-der-liberalen-ideen-1.1322861)
>> Which leads me to your point about the "vetting new members for orthodoxy".
>> The MPS has a fully transparent joining procedure (
>> https://www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/join.html), as any club it
>> requires sharing its statement of aims (also on the website), and as a
>> recent member of the society I assure you that the degree of my "vetting"
>> did not exceed the check necessary to become member of our small Wilhelm
>> Röpke Institute, for which I would certainly claim to be a "critically
>> open" institution.
>>
>> Best regards and a Happy New Year,
>> Stefan Kolev
>>
>> ---
>> Prof. Dr. Stefan Kolev
>>
>> Wilhelm Röpke Institute e.V.
>> Gorkistraße 9
>> 99084 Erfurt
>> Tel +49 (0) 179-125 75 76
>>
>> Internet: www.hwwi.org
>> Email: [log in to unmask]
>> ________________________________________
>> Von: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] im Auftrag
>> von Avner Offer [[log in to unmask]]
>> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 1. Januar 2014 20:40
>> An: [log in to unmask]
>> Betreff: Re: [SHOE] RVW -- Emmett on Burgin, _The Great Persuasion:
>> Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression_
>>
>> The one thing that the Mont Pelerin Society never ever had was 'critical
>> openness'. It never condescended to engage in debates with its opponents,
>> and always vetted new members for orthodoxy. And did you know that Rawls
>> was a member for a few years?
>>
>> Avner Offer
>>
>> ======================================================
>> From Avner Offer, Chichele Professor Emeritus of Economic History,
>> University of Oxford
>> All Souls College, High St., Oxford OX1 4AL, tel. 44 1865 281404
>> email: [log in to unmask]
>> personal website:
>> avneroffer | avoffer <http://sites.google.com/site/avoffer/avneroffer>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of
>> Humberto Barreto [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: 01 January 2014 19:01
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: [SHOE] RVW -- Emmett on Burgin, _The Great Persuasion:
>> Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression_
>>
>> Published by EH.Net (December 2013)
>>
>>
|
