Um Livro sobre o Encontro dos Liberais em Mont Pèlerin em 1947

Bruce Caldwell revê o livro editado por Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe, intitulado The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. vi + 469 pp. Obviamente se o livro é escrito por “historiadores do pensamento econômico” ele deve ser claramente viesado contra o pensamento libertário:
The great weakness of this collection is the attempt by some of the authors in various ways, some subtle, others not, to associate their subjects with authoritarian regimes and thinkers, with fascism, and with hucksterism. Carl Schmitt, the German legal theorist of the Nazi state and critic of parliamentarian democracy, is brought up by no fewer than four contributors (Tribe, Ptak, Plehwe, and Mirowski). Ptak makes sure to alert us to “the obscure authoritarian tendencies that were operating just beneath the surface of many neoliberals,” of their “weaknesses for repressive regimes,” and of Ludwig von Mises’ “sympathies for Italian fascism” (!) (pp. 119, 130). In his treatment of unions, according to Steiner, Hayek opted “for contempt” (p. 195). Milton Friedman, according to Mirowski and Van Horn, was “proud” to be “an intellectual for hire” (p. 168), and Hayek found himself after having gotten involved with the Volker Fund forced “to do everything for money” (p. 165). Some of these claims are risible, others are in the process of being responded to (see, e.g., Caldwell on the claims made in Mirowski and Van Horn, and Shearmur on the alleged influence of Carl Schmitt on Hayek). Once such claims are out there, though, they very quickly get picked up by what Hayek would call second-hand dealers in ideas: witness the recent New York Times Book Review commentator who, in a breezy piece on the brief rise of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom to top seller on Amazon.com in June, could not resist adding a slur about Hayek’s “sunny view of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet” (Schuessler 2010, p. 27).