<p>LONDON--Friedrich von Hayek founded the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947 to combat the seemingly inexorable rise of socialism, along with its more virulent collectivist cousins, fascism and communism. As some 550 disciples gathered here last week, the prevailing mood might be summed up: If we finally won, how come we feel so glum? Hayek died in 1992 at age 92, having lived long enough to receive the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974 and to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Neither outcome seemed remotely likely when he published "The Road to Serfdom" in 1944; John Maynard Keynes dominated economic theory, Fabian Socialism was rising in Great Britain and the New Deal prevailed in the U.S. Hayek's brilliant polemic argued that central economic management was an impossible task, leading to ever greater measures of authoritarian control and ultimately ending in totalitarianism.</p>