This was not simply a personal mission for him; rather, he felt that it was of the deepest political significance. Ideological incoherence, he thought, was one of the greatest obstacles faced by opponents of liberalism. As Crane wrote to a friend in 1945, he had been deeply impressed by another friend’s idea that “Christianity made little progress until in the Second Century it had the writings of the New Testament; Communism got nowhere until Marx wrote Das Kapital (read by very few people at first but gradually gaining enormous influence); National Socialism needed Mein Kampf to be effective.” Crane was looking, as he put it, for the “New Testament of capitalism,” the “‘bible’ of free enterprise.”

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 1447