Their narrative relies, ironically, on precisely the relationship between ideas and po liti cal change that Keynes cited as a rationale for his confi dence that laissezfaire was on the wane. The shift in pop u lar approaches to the market occurred on many levels, and many actors and institutions played constitutive roles, but it could not have occurred without the committed efforts of a transnational community of ideas. Much as Keynes worked, with manifest success, to develop and disseminate an understanding of advantageous ways in which the public sector could intervene, a network of phi los o phers, economists, journalists, and private foundations across the Atlantic world coalesced with the common goal of reversing the growth of government and rebuilding public support for freemarket ideas. As distant colleagues they had weathered depression and war; in future years they would experience perceptions of public irrelevance, impediments to academic advancement, countless po liti cal defeats, and, eventually, an extraordinarily rapid institutional and ideological ascent.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 21