In 1946, as he toured the United States attempting to drum up support for his new society, he explicitly stipulated that he was “using the term Academy in its original sense of a closed society [my emphasis] whose members would be bound together by common convictions and try to both develop this common philosophy and to spread its understanding.” This evocation of Plato’s Academy was not harmless, as he doubtless understood; it has been the recourse of other MPS members whenever the closed, secret nature of the society has been raised. Hayek managed to have his way in this regard—from the start, recruitment, participation, and membership in the NTC has always been strictly controlled from within—but this starkly raises the issue of whether the MPS could practice what it nominally preached.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 193