Robbins drew a clear line between the necessity of wartime regulation, where there was a pressing and an obvious objective, and the functioning of a peacetime economy, where no such objective existed and it was not government’s place to choose one. He was, however, moderate in his assessment of the strains of a transition period, and also in passing disavowed more extreme views expressed in his Great Depression, in which he had overlooked “deep-seated possibilities of disharmony.”

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 414