The central mandate the society's members set for themselves was to provide, in the words of their statement of aims, a "reassertion of valid ideals." Any attempts to present a compelling alternative to the Communist worldview, to foster a contrary intellectual tradition, or to appropriate the language of progressivism would require a renewed inquiry into the philosophical foundations of capitalism. If not an unrepentant individualism, what social ideal would best justify and represent the social theory they sought to defend? How could they represent their market advocacy as part of a holistic worldview that their compatriots might conceivably share? Answering these questions would require them to reinvent, or at the very least to reground, the morals of capitalism. It was their task to provide a convincing account of the ethical foundations of a marketcentered world. The early members of the Mont Pèlerin Society struggled, however, to arrive at anything resembling consensus in their responses to the problems raised by the project they had assigned to themselves. Although they found some unity in their respect for the price mechanism, they gradually discovered that this shared orientation derived from deeply incongruous worldviews.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 277