An Army of Fighters for Freedom. The social environment of the first Mont-Pèlerin Society conference

In 1944, Friedrich Hayek gave a lecture at Stanford University where he referred to the organization he was planning to set up as ?an army of fighters for freedom?. This article investigates the social environment of ?Hayek?s army? by looking specifically at the founding conference of the Mont-Pèlerin Society, some three years later. An exploration of this famous 10-day conference in the Swiss Alps shows that the transnational group of neoliberal thinkers was characterized by social privilege, something that contributes to contextualising their rightleaning political views. Several of the American conference attendees hailed from more modest backgrounds than their European counter parts, however, and the views on display during the conference were far from uniform. This was especially the case when discussions centred on redistribution and poverty, where, to widespread criticism, Milton Friedman presented his famous proposal for a negative income tax. JEL classification: A14, A30, B20, B25