On the other hand, Jesus Huerta de Soto, a Spanish economist of the Austrian school, argued eloquently in favour of maintaining the common currency. According to him, only the discipline of a fixed standard — the gold standard, a fixed exchange rate or the euro — can force the Mediterranean countries to implement reforms. He didn't seem to mind that this is a costly way to enforce discipline, and not all that strict since the European Central Bank is ready to back the system. According to Otmar Issing, the former ECB chief economist, the euro is indeed here to stay-but possibly at great cost. Either the eurozone returns to fiscal stability with a stable currency, or the currency will be severely weakened, bringing inflation and rising public debt.

The critics' language has become more inflammatory. Vogl, for example, mentions the "disinhibition" that the market allegedly demands of "its subjects". In a newspaper article on the Mont Pelerin meeting, Nordmann called the society the "ideological North Korea of global capitalism". Stedman Jones uses terms such as "mantra", "fantasy world", "colonisation" and "overwhelming fact of market failure". Such language is clearly not an invitation for an exchange of views, and it shouldn't be emulated. But these bad linguistic manners are not confined to one side. At the MPS meeting one could hear talk about "battles", "wars" and "troops" that are needed to "combat the enemy", and some not-so-radical members were sneered at as "socialists". After the meeting, a German professor of business and banking could even be seen wearing a T-shirt decorated with the distasteful slogan Euro verrecke ("Death to the euro").

The Mont Pelerin Society continues to be perceived as a dangerous secret society; a dark conspiracy; a sort of sect; the secluded locus where all the evil thinking is coming from; "the address of neoliberalism", as Nordmann puts it. Vogl not only goes to great pains to "demonstrate" that the "invisible hand" doesn't exist, that markets can't work and that neoliberals have embarked on an impossible defence of a market that can only fail. In elaborate literary language, he also accuses the advocates of the free market of succumbing to an occult faith to which they cling by habit and against their better judgment.

Stedman Jones chimes in: "Neoliberalism was a particularly powerful theory, almost a faith, for true believers in the free market and its possibilities." (He later switches to the present tense.) Faith is, of course, equated with lack of reason and blind ideology. 

It would be easy to dismiss this sort of diatribe as intellectually unfair. The MPS is not secret, but private — like many other societies. And there are good philosophical reasons why market exchange is considered the economic realisation of liberty. But the neoliberals themselves should mind their language, too. My own small private survey in Prague on the frequency with which quasi-religious language is used produced alarming results. Phrases such as "we believe in markets", "our creed", "the original sin" were commonplace. But belief is not appropriate here; deeper arguments are needed.  Language influences our thinking. Quasi-religious expressions may serve to generate a feeling of parochial togetherness, but at the same time, they promote intellectual laziness, an ever present danger. 

When the MPS was founded it consisted mainly of academics. Today however, with 700 members, it is dominated by think-tankers. Many young academics who are attracted by neoliberalism and would enjoy the discussions at MPS keep their distance. They fear that membership would impair their academic careers — not because universities might dislike their political views, but because debates at MPS are viewed as ideological and lacking rigour. Is this only a prejudice? Vaclav Klaus did not think so: "We have to concede that we are not producing serious empirical, descriptive, positive socioeconomic analyses. What prevails are pieces of partial analysis and shallow normative ideological papers. What is missing are non-declaratory texts, a deep ‘anatomy' of the current situation." 

The climate of opinion changes like the tides. But maybe the  waves needn't be so high. Is it really impossible to raise the discussion to a more productive level, where new ideas instead of ancient prejudices would be exchanged? Where honest arguments would replace axioms, where a willingness to question one's own standpoint would be rewarded by respect from the other side? Where the stale state-or-market dualism would be abandoned? Where utopian visions won't get in the way of realism? 

It is high time for everybody to take seriously the questions that have arisen since 2008, in sober intellectual analysis and language. Ideas, not ideologies, are what matter.