In recent years scholars have increasingly referred to the development of “neoliberalism” as an explanatory mechanism for the reemergence of a market-oriented sensibility. Those who use the term have tended to assume the existence of a relatively stable neoliberal tradition, and to imply that a course can be charted between a set of theorists and a subsequent process of political and institutional change. This unitary narrative has been adopted by politicians and journalists as well, in service of attempts to identify patterns of appropriation between academic ideas and contemporary politics. This paper seeks to historicize the term “neoliberalism,” and to disaggregate its early development, by looking at several figures who are often cited as crucial to its emergence between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, including Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand. It argues that disputes over method among these theorists are crucial to understanding the disjunctions between their social philosophies that, in many cases, they believed to be irreconcilable. Further, these methodological differences help to explain the very different patterns of appropriation of their ideas, as some saw their arguments lose the support of all but small circles of devoted acolytes while others came to exercise a broad influence in both popular politics and the academic social sciences. Finally, the paper examines how and why this complex and often intensely conflicted landscape has so often been rendered homogenous in recent academic and political debates.