The Battle against Big Government Started Here

T his past week has marked the 75th anniversary of the meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, a group of scholars devoted to discussing and advancing the ideas of a free society. The post–World War II founding of the society by economist Friedrich Hayek and several other intellectuals was a crucial first step in defending the liberal order against encroachment by both the administrative-welfare state of the West and the totalitarian state of the Soviet bloc. The Society provided the intellectual firepower for the resurgence of classical liberalism and free-market/limited-government conservatism. (Sadly, adjectives are needed because of the illiberal liberalism of the progressives, the authoritarian conservatism of scholars such as Adrian Vermeule and Patrick Deneen, and central-planning-lite conservatives such as Oren Cass.) The meetings of the Mont Pelerin Society between April 1 and 10, 1947, in Mont Pelerin, Switzerland, led to the establishment of think tanks and policy institutes, such as the Institute of Economic Affairs in Britain and the Atlas Network in the United States. The Society also helped advance academic programs, such as the economics department at the University of Chicago, whose leading members figured prominently in the organization.

All this made arguments for limited government and a free-enterprise economy respectable and established a case for resisting the growth of government. Figures as varied as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Donald Trump derived their opposition to the regulatory state and to socialism from this work, as did William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater.

In economics, the work of the Society made space for transaction-cost analysis and serious treatment of information and knowledge — essential for an appreciation of the crucial roles of private property, entrepreneurship, and the free market — and revisited the Mises-Hayek critique of socialism, which proved correct. This, in turn, prepared the West to give a slight nudge to the collapsing Soviet house of cards. It also began building popular reaction against progressivism and the welfare state, and for freedom, especially in America. After 75 years, the Society can certainly claim to have lived up to Hayek’s goal that it should “contribute to the preservation and improvement of the free society.” Had it not been for these founders and the work they inspired, we would live in a much less free and poorer world than we do.

And yet, it hasn’t been enough. The work of the Society remains unfinished. As the modern Left has doubled down on its assault on the moral and economic foundations of society — especially freedom of thought and expression — the central values of civilization remain in peril.

To be sure, it isn’t that the arguments for a free society have been found wanting. Yes, they can be developed better and further, but the problem facing today’s defenders of liberty is not a lack of good arguments — it’s a lack of strategy.

Most of the modern Left has adopted and promoted a postmodernist mindset. They’re propagating what Hayek’s colleague Ludwig von Mises termed “polylogism,” the denial of objective truth and substitution of the notion that each identity group has its own “truth.” Words, for the Left, are simply weapons that groups use to suppress and control other groups; thus, they claim, there’s no need for serious engagement with opponents’ arguments. This polylogist doctrine and denial of objective truth is taken to such extremes as critical race theory — where any denial that some phenomenon is an example of racism is taken as further evidence of racism — or in pretending not to notice that an NCAA women’s swimming champion is actually a man, or in the first black woman nominated to the Supreme Court claiming not to know what a woman is.

Though conceded to be fiction by its primary inventor, the ahistorical mess known as the 1619 Project is now official dogma in many schools. Leftist enemies of free society have never been particularly effective in responding to the arguments of its defenders, but they have proven skilled at sidestepping these defenders and seizing the commanding heights of culture and society. The commanding heights of academia, the administrative state, the entertainment world, social-media platforms, legacy media, and the public-school establishment are largely hostile to the ideals of classical liberalism and serve as convincing evidence of the success of a Gramscian “long march through the institutions.” The Left is the establishment. Those on the left also have shown themselves willing to fight, inventing such things as cancel culture and weaponizing federal agencies.

Proponents of liberty, however, have been far less effective at shaping institutions and combating polylogism. Although the case for a free society is strong, “arguing harder” isn’t a solution. Strategy is. Any serious strategy must first acknowledge the willingness of today’s Left — including (in America) the Democratic Party establishment and the administrative state — to resist opponents with force if they deem it expedient, ranging from “shout-downs” at Yale Law School, to Antifa/BLM riots, to FBI entrapment, to CDC interference with rental contracts. The rule of law and the moral standards of the free society are under direct and explicit assault.

The original Statement of Aims of the Mont Pelerin Society calls for developing methods for re-establishing the rule of law and restricting predatory power, combating the misuse of history, and building an international order of freedom and peace. From method comes strategy, and in all this, there is much yet to be done. The Mont Pelerin Society has done great work in developing the ideas of freedom. May this work continue, and with it, an understanding of how to implement ideas for the preservation and improvement of a free society.