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The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression
Just as today's observers struggle to justify the workings of the free market in the wake of a global economic crisis, an earlier generation of economists revisited their worldviews following the Great Depression. "The Great Persuasion" is an intellectual history of that project. Angus Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider many of the most basic assumptions of our market-centered world.
Conservatives often point to Friedrich Hayek as the most influential defender of the free market. By examining the work of such organizations as the Mont Pelerin Society, an international association founded by Hayek in 1947 and later led by Milton Friedman, Burgin reveals that Hayek and his colleagues were deeply conflicted about many of the enduring problems of capitalism. Far from adopting an uncompromising stance against the interventionist state, they developed a social philosophy that admitted significant constraints on the market. Postwar conservative thought was more dynamic and cosmopolitan than has previously been understood.
It was only in the 1960s and '70s that Friedman and his contemporaries developed a more strident defense of the unfettered market. Their arguments provided a rhetorical foundation for the resurgent conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and inspired much of the political and economic agenda of the United States in the ensuing decades. Burgin's brilliant inquiry uncovers both the origins of the contemporary enthusiasm for the free market and the moral quandaries it has left behind.
Conservatives often point to Friedrich Hayek as the most influential defender of the free market. By examining the work of such organizations as the Mont Pelerin Society, an international association founded by Hayek in 1947 and later led by Milton Friedman, Burgin reveals that Hayek and his colleagues were deeply conflicted about many of the enduring problems of capitalism. Far from adopting an uncompromising stance against the interventionist state, they developed a social philosophy that admitted significant constraints on the market. Postwar conservative thought was more dynamic and cosmopolitan than has previously been understood.
It was only in the 1960s and '70s that Friedman and his contemporaries developed a more strident defense of the unfettered market. Their arguments provided a rhetorical foundation for the resurgent conservatism of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan and inspired much of the political and economic agenda of the United States in the ensuing decades. Burgin's brilliant inquiry uncovers both the origins of the contemporary enthusiasm for the free market and the moral quandaries it has left behind.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published October 30, 2012
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687 people want to read
About the author
Angus Burgin
1 book6 followersAngus Burgin is Assistant Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
August 9, 2020
This is a very good, detailed, and pretty academic history of the neoliberal movement--starting with Hayek and Mises, then the Friedman Buchanan, and others. I learned a lot!
November 6, 2013
This book certainly doesn't read like a thriller, and it really bogs down in places. However, it documents an important period of recent history when support of free markets was definitely a minority point of view among academic economists. Whether you agree with Hayek, Friedman, et al., or not, you should know something about how they preserved and modernized free-market economics in the wake of the transformations brought about by the New Deal. For better or for worse, these people's ideas inform much of today's politics. This book helps us understand how we got to where we are now.
May 22, 2021
A really fantastic history of the rise and influence of the Mont Pelerin Society, with special attention to the ideas of Walter Lippmann, Wilhelm Röpke, Friedrich Hayek. And Milton Friedman. Fair and thorough, and a quite enjoyable read to boot. Highly recommended.
June 24, 2017
Economic History, focusing on free-market economics (laissez-faire, neoliberalism, libertarianism, etc) since 1930's-now, which started off as an alternative to Keynesian Interventionism to combat Depression, Fascism and Communism.
Will help you understand how these free-market ideas evolved and got us to where we are now.
Writer avoids getting into polemics, and holds a balanced and crisp line.
A good prequel to the more liberal-leaning 'Dark Money' by Jane Mayer, which focuses more on today's Super PACs and domination of billionaires in politics.
Actually I was surprised of lack of mention of the liaison between economists and politicians and corporations in Burgin's book, the corporations being the obvious winners of the policies.
Only in the later chapters do we hear of Friedman's connections with Goldwater and Reagan. Amazingly, Hayek and earlier neoliberals seem to have kept their ideas at their universities and 'economists' clubs' such as the Montpelerin Society, seemingly on purpose.
Sadly, it is the dumbed-down Readers Digest version of Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom' which has been most widely read by corporate leaders, and thus they never learned that free-market capitalism ought to be delivered with some regulations from a third party like a, duh, government!
Will help you understand how these free-market ideas evolved and got us to where we are now.
Writer avoids getting into polemics, and holds a balanced and crisp line.
A good prequel to the more liberal-leaning 'Dark Money' by Jane Mayer, which focuses more on today's Super PACs and domination of billionaires in politics.
Actually I was surprised of lack of mention of the liaison between economists and politicians and corporations in Burgin's book, the corporations being the obvious winners of the policies.
Only in the later chapters do we hear of Friedman's connections with Goldwater and Reagan. Amazingly, Hayek and earlier neoliberals seem to have kept their ideas at their universities and 'economists' clubs' such as the Montpelerin Society, seemingly on purpose.
Sadly, it is the dumbed-down Readers Digest version of Hayek's 'The Road to Serfdom' which has been most widely read by corporate leaders, and thus they never learned that free-market capitalism ought to be delivered with some regulations from a third party like a, duh, government!
January 24, 2016
As Angus Burgin illustrates in The Great Persuasion, the MPS “perceived their role…to be one of precipitating long-term ideological change.” Friedrich Hayek was the dominant voice in the early MPS, and its president from 1947-1961. Under Hayek’s guidance, the society sought to find a third way, an alternative not just to socialism and fascism, which were corrosive to the principles of a free society, but to classical laissez-faire liberalism. The economic philosophy of the MPS became far less nuanced following the ascension of Milton Friedman to the role of the Society’s president in 1970. While often painted with the same ideological brush, Burgin suggests that Friedman and Hayek represented dramatically different political-economic philosophies, with Friedman breaking from Hayek’s “ambition to create a new social philosophy that would moderate the excesses of prior modes of market advocacy” of both the left and right. While both Hayek and Friedman believed in “the generative capacity of ideas,” Friedman—a talented popularizer—succeeded in transforming the transatlantic ideological landscape by recognizing the power of the simple idea. He knew that not even the most carefully phrased arguments were as persuasive as words like: ‘freedom,’ ‘individual,’ and ‘market.’
It would be Friedman’s version of neoliberalism that would come to define the Mont Pélerin Society, and that would influence generations of Americans. Friedman, writes Burgin, “heralded both a return to the market advocacy of the nineteenth century and the arrival of something wholly new…[he] developed the rhetorical architecture of an unapologetically market-centered world.” Friedman was a market-utopian, but he also understood the importance of taking firm stances on practical political issues. In so doing, he brought the field of economics down from the clouds of academic abstraction, setting the stage for an “era in which economists have become our most influential philosophers.” Friedman’s other great victory was the image he crafted for himself as “a genuine and emphatic populist,” his rhetoric bridging what had once seemed an insurmountable divide between the interests of the many and the few. At times, Burgin risks overstating the importance of Milton Friedman on twentieth century history, but if not a world-historical figure of singular importance, Friedman is at least the most striking example of a free-market economist successfully proselytizing to those in and out of the academy, from blue-collar workers, to captains of industry, to presidents.
It would be Friedman’s version of neoliberalism that would come to define the Mont Pélerin Society, and that would influence generations of Americans. Friedman, writes Burgin, “heralded both a return to the market advocacy of the nineteenth century and the arrival of something wholly new…[he] developed the rhetorical architecture of an unapologetically market-centered world.” Friedman was a market-utopian, but he also understood the importance of taking firm stances on practical political issues. In so doing, he brought the field of economics down from the clouds of academic abstraction, setting the stage for an “era in which economists have become our most influential philosophers.” Friedman’s other great victory was the image he crafted for himself as “a genuine and emphatic populist,” his rhetoric bridging what had once seemed an insurmountable divide between the interests of the many and the few. At times, Burgin risks overstating the importance of Milton Friedman on twentieth century history, but if not a world-historical figure of singular importance, Friedman is at least the most striking example of a free-market economist successfully proselytizing to those in and out of the academy, from blue-collar workers, to captains of industry, to presidents.
October 18, 2019
Jesus... I've a keen interest in this topic and a high tolerance for long winded writing as long as the topic is something I want to learn about. But this book was just too boring, even for me. It had nothing to do with the subject - which has been written about more engagingly elsewhere. It was entirely down to the author. This was a tour de force in how not to write non fiction for a popular audience.
I tried switching to the audiobook version at times to help slog through the book but it's even worse! The narrator was one of the worst I've encountered. They somehow made the book even more boring.
Can't recommend to anyone. Read literally any other book on the birth of neoliberalism instead.
I tried switching to the audiobook version at times to help slog through the book but it's even worse! The narrator was one of the worst I've encountered. They somehow made the book even more boring.
Can't recommend to anyone. Read literally any other book on the birth of neoliberalism instead.
June 15, 2025
"A Nuanced and Rigorous History of Free-Market Reinvention"
As an MBA student exploring the evolution of capitalism after attending the Economics Environment of Business course, I read The Great Persuasion to delve deeper into the intellectual roots of today’s free-market paradigm. Angus Burgin’s work offers a compelling, meticulously researched account of how free-market ideas, once discredited by the Great Depression, were reinvented and re-legitimised over the 20th century.
Rather than charting a simple return to laissez-faire, Burgin traces a complex intellectual rebirth led by figures like Friedrich Hayek, Walter Lippmann, and Milton Friedman. He highlights how Lippmann’s The Good Society (1937) triggered renewed dialogue and how Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) reframed anti-planning sentiment for a mass American audience. The Mont Pèlerin Society, founded in 1947, became the institutional cradle for this transatlantic neoliberal thought collective.
Friedman’s rise, examined in Chapter 5, marks a shift from academic caution to public persuasion. His Capitalism and Freedom (1962) recast free-market ideas as both practical and moral imperatives. Burgin notes Friedman’s belief that ideological influence follows a four-act arc, beginning with “crackpots like myself” and ending with widespread, if diluted, acceptance (p. 218).
The book’s strength lies in mapping the infrastructure of belief—think tanks, philanthropic foundations, and academic networks—that helped market liberalism regain dominance. However, Burgin largely refrains from evaluating the later socio-political outcomes of this ideological triumph, especially post-2008.
Still, for those seeking to understand how economic ideas shape policy and politics over generations, this is a rigorous and insightful read.
Recommended for: readers of political economy, history of economic thoughts, as well as business and economics students examining the ideological foundations of modern capitalism.
As an MBA student exploring the evolution of capitalism after attending the Economics Environment of Business course, I read The Great Persuasion to delve deeper into the intellectual roots of today’s free-market paradigm. Angus Burgin’s work offers a compelling, meticulously researched account of how free-market ideas, once discredited by the Great Depression, were reinvented and re-legitimised over the 20th century.
Rather than charting a simple return to laissez-faire, Burgin traces a complex intellectual rebirth led by figures like Friedrich Hayek, Walter Lippmann, and Milton Friedman. He highlights how Lippmann’s The Good Society (1937) triggered renewed dialogue and how Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (1944) reframed anti-planning sentiment for a mass American audience. The Mont Pèlerin Society, founded in 1947, became the institutional cradle for this transatlantic neoliberal thought collective.
Friedman’s rise, examined in Chapter 5, marks a shift from academic caution to public persuasion. His Capitalism and Freedom (1962) recast free-market ideas as both practical and moral imperatives. Burgin notes Friedman’s belief that ideological influence follows a four-act arc, beginning with “crackpots like myself” and ending with widespread, if diluted, acceptance (p. 218).
The book’s strength lies in mapping the infrastructure of belief—think tanks, philanthropic foundations, and academic networks—that helped market liberalism regain dominance. However, Burgin largely refrains from evaluating the later socio-political outcomes of this ideological triumph, especially post-2008.
Still, for those seeking to understand how economic ideas shape policy and politics over generations, this is a rigorous and insightful read.
Recommended for: readers of political economy, history of economic thoughts, as well as business and economics students examining the ideological foundations of modern capitalism.
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January 25, 2022Recommended by Dr Michelle Darlington
The Great Persuasion by Angus Burgin, gives an account of the origins of neoliberal ideology. It tells the story of academic debate around economics and government interventionism from John Maynard Keynes at Cambridge, to Friedrech Hayek (of LSE) and Wilhelm Ropke of the Mont Pellerin society, and then to Milton Freedman at the Chicago school. Several things about the story are striking, including how the circumstances of these individuals shaped their beliefs about economic policy, and also how the ideas took hold over generations and into the popular imagination.
The Great Persuasion by Angus Burgin, gives an account of the origins of neoliberal ideology. It tells the story of academic debate around economics and government interventionism from John Maynard Keynes at Cambridge, to Friedrech Hayek (of LSE) and Wilhelm Ropke of the Mont Pellerin society, and then to Milton Freedman at the Chicago school. Several things about the story are striking, including how the circumstances of these individuals shaped their beliefs about economic policy, and also how the ideas took hold over generations and into the popular imagination.
March 9, 2018
Great analysis of free market thinking after the beginning of the last century. Especially interesting for those who are puzzled by the question "why there is "neo" in front of liberalism". Burgin clearly shows that the free market thinking of Mont Pelerin society was not 19th century laissez-faire anymore. Of course there were differing opinions inside the group, but that is inevitable in any political movement.
May 25, 2021
Keynesin elämänkerran verrokiksi. Tämä hyvä myös. Heille tärkeätä oli vapaus. Osasivat myös tehdä sen eteen töitä ja lobata. Mutta kirjassa nostetaan merkittäviä eroja Hayekin ja Friedmanin välillä (nämä kaksi päähahmoa, paljon muitakin). Hayek oli jossain määrin valmiimpin kompromisseihin (johtuiko, että sillä aikakaudella oli pakko). Friedman oli ehdottomampi.
Jännää, että Mt Pelerin Societyn edeltäjää, Colloque Walter Lippmania, ei mainita ollenkaan niin usein Lippmanin yhteydessä.
Jännää, että Mt Pelerin Societyn edeltäjää, Colloque Walter Lippmania, ei mainita ollenkaan niin usein Lippmanin yhteydessä.
November 7, 2022
A book on nothing
Holy shit make a point, really a book about nothing. A bunch of proper names just alk jumbled up for no reason.
Holy shit make a point, really a book about nothing. A bunch of proper names just alk jumbled up for no reason.
January 22, 2024
Great introduction to the Mont Pelerin society and the formation (or death and revival ?) of free market thinking in the mainstream. Very dry read but also really helped inform my reading of other books on 20th century socio-economic discourse and thinking.
June 12, 2022
PROS
Burgin's book is recommendable for the following reasons: it contains a good general outline of presentation, makes a remarkable development of the biographies of the characters, includes milestones and figures little remembered in the process, and provides a suggestive exposition of the different controversies among the members of the Mont Pèlerin Society.
CONTRAS
As a project of intellectual history, it is in debt because it does not clarify the concepts used nor does it adequately explain the object of discussion and its evolution.
FINAL
Just good enough
Burgin's book is recommendable for the following reasons: it contains a good general outline of presentation, makes a remarkable development of the biographies of the characters, includes milestones and figures little remembered in the process, and provides a suggestive exposition of the different controversies among the members of the Mont Pèlerin Society.
CONTRAS
As a project of intellectual history, it is in debt because it does not clarify the concepts used nor does it adequately explain the object of discussion and its evolution.
FINAL
Just good enough
November 7, 2013
The Great Persuasion is an easy-to-read, non-technically-demanding history of free market ideas from the Great Depression until the present. Its narrative is centered around The Mont Pelerin Society, Friedrich Hayek's society formed in 1947 with the aim of preserving and renewing liberal, capitalist ideals in the face of a perceived rise of collectivism and economic planning. The trajectory of the narrative is from intellectuals such as Hayek and Frank Knight who saw virtue in the price system but granted that it had profound problems as well, to the mature Milton Friedman who saw markets as an unambiguous panacea to all social and economic problems. It is a book that made me admire Hayek's social thought more, and admire Friedman's gift for public engagement. Overall, this book gave me a much greater appreciation for the breadth of ideological opinions within the neoliberal movement.
It also gave me a greater appreciation for the complex and subtle ways that the development of intellectual and social ideas. There was anything but a one-way transmission of ideology from those in the Mont Pelerin Society to the public. Rather, the experiences of public intellectuals like Hayek and Friedman fed back on their ideologies. For instance, although Friedman always explicitly claimed a fierce independence from his financial backers, Burgin shows how pivotal support from institutional backers like the Volker Fund were to his career. Throughout the period of the book, the Volker Fund consistently played an active role in shaping the free market movement---it was never just a passive observer, but often made its opinions known to and negotiated with its beneficiaries.
It also gave me a greater appreciation for the complex and subtle ways that the development of intellectual and social ideas. There was anything but a one-way transmission of ideology from those in the Mont Pelerin Society to the public. Rather, the experiences of public intellectuals like Hayek and Friedman fed back on their ideologies. For instance, although Friedman always explicitly claimed a fierce independence from his financial backers, Burgin shows how pivotal support from institutional backers like the Volker Fund were to his career. Throughout the period of the book, the Volker Fund consistently played an active role in shaping the free market movement---it was never just a passive observer, but often made its opinions known to and negotiated with its beneficiaries.
November 27, 2013
I would have given it 5-stars, but the chapter entitled "The Invention of Milton Friedman" was a hodgepodge of Friedman's often bizarre musings and really weak when compared to the rest of the book.
Though ostensibly sold as a history of the Mont Pelerin Society, it actually does not even discuss it until almost half way through the book. The actual focus is much more interesting, tracing the society from a rather humble rethinking of liberalism through the rise of Friedman and the market fundamentalists.
Though ostensibly sold as a history of the Mont Pelerin Society, it actually does not even discuss it until almost half way through the book. The actual focus is much more interesting, tracing the society from a rather humble rethinking of liberalism through the rise of Friedman and the market fundamentalists.
May 20, 2014
What's missing from the entire book, it seems to me, is the firm pinpointing of what has always seemed to me guideline that connects everything that the Mont Pelerin Society aimed for—from the dark prefigural days in the dank, middle-class atmosphere of LSE, through its translation to power in the hands of Pinochet and Reagan—is a instinctual sympathy for the man of affairs as against the working man. Hayek and Friedman's hosannas to the market were sincere enough: but they explicitly assumed that those who know best how to negotiate in a market deserve society's greatest fruits.
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July 26, 2013330.122 B956 2012
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews