Once Hayek managed to create such a venue, the debates failed to unfold as he had hoped. He discovered that he had assembled colleagues who were largely united in what they opposed but shared little agreement in their attempts to construct an alternative vision. Some of the participants regarded capitalism and tradition as twin elements of an antirationalist critique of planning, while others perceived them as at best an antagonistic pair. A number of them warned that the logic of the market would need to be restrained in order to avoid wreaking havoc on ethics, religion, agriculture, or the arts, but others believed that a desire to avoid such restrictions was precisely the goal that had brought them together. All of them struggled to explain how the free market could be implemented and protected in the midst of a hostile public without the adoption of some form of authoritarian control (a prospect that, in certain cases, several of them seemed to embrace).

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 308