In Chapter 7, Dieter Plehwe observes how the heritage of colonial economics on the one hand and the overriding security concerns of the early Cold War on the other hampered the development of a neoliberal perspective on development. Early on, MPS analysts nurtured doubts both about the opportunity of independence and free markets in the developing world, and not just a few MPS members made a case for continued colonialism both explicitly and implicitly. But modernization theory and (state-led) industrialization strategies were soundly rejected, and it is possible to observe rudimentary forms of the export-oriented development paradigm neoliberals successfully advocated during the late 1970s. … Only toward the end of the 1950s did Peter Bauer clarify a vision of a more complete neoliberal perspective on development: Bauer contradicted his fellow MPS members with regard to the existence of an entrepreneurial class in developing countries and planted seeds of doubt with regard to the effectiveness of providing state development aid in the fight against Soviet expansion. Based on such evidence, Chapter 7 concludes that the neoliberal revolution in development economics observed in the late 1970s and early 1980s had been conceived much earlier; perhaps as early as the late 1950s.

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 159