Mont Pèlerin 1947

The verbatim record of the ten-day April 1947 meeting at Mont Pèlerin at which Hayek convened thirty-nine scholars to see whether liberalism could be rebuilt after the war. The transcripts show the disagreements rather than a manifesto — over religion, over agriculture and trade, over how much the state should do — and Caldwell supplies an introduction, explanatory notes and the meeting photographs.

Why it’s on the list: It sits in the Austrian School Economics section as the founding document of the postwar liberal network — useful less as theory than as evidence of how a durable intellectual movement was actually started, and how little its founders agreed.

Where I saw it: On Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the section on Austrian School Economics, saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note. The full 211-entry transcription lives on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the list this came from.