Looking back at the early MPS conferences, we note a growing self-confidence within the neoliberal camp with regard to the development theme. Although many intellectual and real components and circumstances needed for the subsequent rise to hegemony were still missing, many internal obstacles had been identified and addressed: Peter Bauer in particular clarified the neoliberal vision with regard to foreign aid. Bauer overcame the previous lack of confidence in entrepreneurship and market relations in the developing world within the neoliberal group of scholars and intellectuals steeped in colonial economics. Bauer’s work manifestly documents a neoliberal reasoning in which economic considerations are no longer subordinate to security concerns. Other contributions recognized and addressed specific needs with regard to capitalist agriculture in developing countries, and the manifold battle lines with competing discourses were more readily identified: the neoliberal war of position (Gramsci) could be fought more easily toward the end of the 1950s. At this point in time, organized neoliberals in science and politics had already developed an important network of intellectuals (as well as a few think tanks and corporate and political foundations) across borders, which operated in a more pluralist environment.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1334