# Mont Pelerin Society The **founding institution of the modern free-market intellectual movement** — and the organizational ancestor of virtually every libertarian and neoliberal think tank, policy shop, and donor network documented in this KB. Founded in **April 1947** by economist **[[Friedrich Hayek]]** at a meeting of 36 scholars, journalists, and businessmen at the Hôtel du Parc in Mont Pèlerin, Switzerland. Named after the mountain village above Lake Geneva where the first meeting took place. The MPS is not a think tank, a lobbying organization, or a policy shop. It is an **invitation-only international scholarly society** — a network of intellectuals who meet biennially to discuss the principles of classical liberalism. Its power is not institutional but genealogical: it is the seedbed from which the entire postwar free-market infrastructure grew. ## Origin and purpose In 1944, Hayek published *[[The Road to Serfdom]]*, arguing that central economic planning inevitably led to totalitarianism. The book was a sensation — Reader's Digest published a condensed edition that reached millions — but Hayek recognized that winning the argument intellectually required more than a bestseller. The dominant intellectual consensus of the postwar period was Keynesian: government management of the economy, strong labor unions, progressive taxation, and welfare-state expansion were accepted across the political spectrum in both Europe and the United States. Hayek's diagnosis: free-market ideas needed an **institutional infrastructure** — a network of scholars who would develop the intellectual framework, train the next generation, and wait for the political moment when their ideas would be needed. The Mont Pelerin Society was explicitly designed as this infrastructure. The founding statement declared the group's concern that "the essential conditions of human dignity and freedom" were endangered by the growth of government power, but it was deliberately not a manifesto. Hayek insisted on intellectual pluralism within a broad free-market frame. Original members included: - **[[Friedrich Hayek]]** — [[Austrian School]] economist, founder - **[[Milton Friedman]]** — [[Chicago School]] economist, became the movement's most influential public voice - **[[Ludwig von Mises]]** — Austrian School patriarch, Hayek's mentor - **[[Karl Popper]]** — philosopher of science (*[[The Open Society and Its Enemies]]*) - **Frank Knight** — Chicago School founder - **George Stigler** — later Nobel laureate in economics Eight MPS members have won the Nobel Prize in Economics, including Hayek (1974) and Friedman (1976). ## The think tank incubator The MPS's most consequential function was not its own meetings but the **organizations its members went on to create**. The society served as a network through which intellectuals, donors, and institution-builders found each other and coordinated. A partial genealogy: | Organization | Founded | MPS Connection | |---|---|---| | **Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)** | 1955, London | Founded by MPS member Antony Fisher; became Thatcher's intellectual base | | **[[Heritage Foundation]]** | 1973 | Founded with support from MPS-connected donors; multiple MPS members on early boards | | **[[Cato Institute]]** | 1977 | Founded by [[Charles Koch]] and Ed Crane; Koch was deeply influenced by MPS circles | | **Fraser Institute** | 1974, Canada | Founded by MPS member Michael Walker | | **[[Atlas Network]]** | 1981 | Founded by Antony Fisher specifically to replicate MPS-inspired think tanks globally; now coordinates 500+ free-market organizations in 90+ countries | | **[[Mercatus Center]]** | 1980 | Koch-funded at George Mason; chaired by MPS-adjacent [[Tyler Cowen]] | | **[[American Enterprise Institute]]** | 1938/restructured 1960s | Became a major MPS-connected institution under William Baroody Sr. | The Atlas Network is the most direct institutional descendant — Fisher explicitly modeled it on the MPS principle of creating a transnational network of free-market intellectual centers. Today's 500+ Atlas affiliates worldwide are, in an organizational genealogy sense, grandchildren of the Mont Pelerin Society. ## The Hayek strategy Hayek's theory of social change — which he articulated explicitly and the MPS embodied — was that **ideas drive politics, but only on a generational timescale**. The sequence: 1. **Academics** develop the intellectual framework (MPS, university economics departments) 2. **Think tanks** translate academic ideas into policy proposals (Heritage, Cato, IEA) 3. **Journalists and public intellectuals** popularize the proposals (Friedman's PBS series *[[Free to Choose]]*, 1980) 4. **Politicians** implement the policies when crisis creates an opening (Thatcher 1979, Reagan 1981) This model — sometimes called the **"Hayek pipeline"** or the **"second-hand dealers in ideas"** strategy (Hayek's own phrase) — is the template for the entire right-wing intellectual infrastructure. When [[Charles Koch]] built his donor network, he was following Hayek's playbook. When [[Heritage Foundation]] wrote [[Project 2025]], they were executing step 2 of a process Hayek designed in 1947. The timeline is important: the MPS was founded in 1947; Thatcher and Reagan implemented its ideas in 1979–1981. That's a **32-year gestation period** from intellectual project to political power. The patience and long-term thinking embedded in this model is one of the fundamental asymmetries between the right-wing and left-wing intellectual infrastructures — the left has never built an equivalent multi-generational pipeline. ## KB significance The Mont Pelerin Society is the **root node** of the KB's dark money and think tank mapping. Understanding its role resolves a recurring question: why do so many seemingly independent organizations (Heritage, Cato, Atlas Network, Mercatus, ALEC, state policy networks) share overlapping donors, personnel, and intellectual frameworks? Because they all descend from the same 1947 project. The MPS also provides the historical depth that makes the current moment legible. [[Project 2025]] is not a spontaneous product of the Trump era — it is the latest iteration of a strategy that Hayek designed 78 years ago. The personnel have changed; the institutional logic has not. ## See Also - [[Friedrich Hayek]] — founder - [[Milton Friedman]] — most influential member - [[Charles Koch]] — the donor who operationalized the MPS model at scale - [[Koch Network]] — the contemporary donor infrastructure built on MPS principles - [[Heritage Foundation]] — MPS-descended think tank; authored [[Project 2025]] - [[Cato Institute]] — Koch's first major think tank, built from MPS circles - [[Atlas Network]] — the global replication engine for MPS-model think tanks - [[Mercatus Center]] — Koch's academic policy arm, chaired by [[Tyler Cowen]] - [[Neoliberalism]] — the ideology the MPS incubated