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Friedrich Hayek

-- Bradford DeLong (delong@econ.berkeley.edu), May 04, 2000

Answers

Barkley:

Stick to your guns...

In the 1952 forward to _The Road to Serfdom_, Hayek wrote:

Of course, six years of socialist government in England have not produced anything resembling a totalitarian state. But those who argue that this has disproved the thesis of The Road to Serfdom have really missed one of its main points: that the most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people. This is necessarily a slow affair, a process which extends not over a few years but perhaps over one or two generations...

And he also wrote:

[Today]... socialism has come to mean chiefly the extensive redistribution of incomes through taxation and the institutions of the welfare state. In [this] kind of socialism the [totalitarian] effects I discuss in this book are brought about more slowly, indirectly, and imperfectly. I believe that the ultimate outcome tends to be very much the same...

I think that the most Ransom can say is that at times Hayek said "X", and at times Hayek said "not-X".

Brad DeLong, who has trouble maintaining intellectual consistency from week to week...

-- Bradford DeLong (delong@econ.berkeley.edu), May 04, 2000.


>>Part of the problem with the critique of Hayek's RtS is that, when we talk about 'totalitarianism' or 'dictatorship' people tend to have too concrete an image of what that means. They immediately think about military uniforms ` la fascism or, still worse, concentration camps ` la Gulag.<<

Yep. That's what "totalitarianism" means.

>>But one cannot reduce the question to this kind of folklore.<<

In other words, when Hayek uses the word "totalitarianism" he doesn't mean it? He's just calling names?

>>The essence is that the mixed economy leads to a severe loss of personal freedom and one must be blind not to see this.<<

I live in a mixed economy. I don't see that I have suffered a severe loss of personal freedom. What freedoms have I lost, exactly?

-- Bradford DeLong (delong@econ.berkeley.edu), May 04, 2000.


>>Well, perhaps that's because you've always >>had a sheltered life as an >>academic, no? >> >>I don't know whether you are a tax consumer or a tax payer but every time >>government increases the marginal tax rate that is a step in the direction >>of more serfdom. >> >>lvdh

Oh, I'm a net tax payer to the tune of $50,000 a year or so. Nevertheless, the value of the services the government provides me are vastly, vastly in excess of the taxes I pay. And your answer reveals that you have no clue as to what serfdom is...

-- Bradford DeLong (delong@econ.berkeley.edu), May 04, 2000.


Subject: Hayek myths

Brad -- On the web page you've written on Hayek you write:

>> In 1944 he suggested in The Road to Serfdom that mild piecemeal reforms and governmental manipulations inevitably lead to the kind of ultimate domestic disaster that paves the way for totalitarian takeover by a Hitler. <<

In fact Hayek denigned this -- several times in _The Road to Serfdom_, and in later introductions to the book, and in a series of letters between Hayek and Paul Samuelson, in which Hayek takes Samuelson to task for spreading this falsehood -- Hayek in fact indicates that he was prepared to go forward with in a legal action to stop Samuelson from spreading the "inevitibility" myth.

Read Hayek's actual words in _The Road to Serfdom_. He allows for all sorts of piecemeal reforms in the book -- including socialized medicine. He also _explicitely_ rejections the notion that there is any inevitability to the road to serfdom, and he rejects this _more than once_, and even discusses the issue explicitly in one of his introductions.

Greg Ransom Dept. of Social Science

-- Greg Ransom (GBRansom@aol.com), May 04, 2000.


Subject: Hayek's name

Brad -- I was just looking at your web page on Friedrich Hayek. A short note on Hayek's name. By law in 1920 all Austrian citizens no longer had a "von" as a part of their names, thus after 1920 Friedrich Hayek's legal name was Friedrich A. Hayek, and not Friedrich A. von Hayek.

Hayek's professional work was published under his name Friedrich A. Hayek -- his name according to law and use. Most of his work, in fact, was published under the name F. A. Hayek.

The upshot is that Hayek's name is Hayek, and not "von" Hayek. I haven't as yet figured out why so many call Hayek 'von' Hayek (no academics known to me who do scholarship on Hayek use the name '"von" Hayek).

Hayek notes in an interview that Labor Party members refered to him as "von" Hayek in the press in the immediate post WWII period as an intentional smear -- to associated Hayek with the German's and the Nazis. Also the Swedish Nobel committee used the name "von" Hayek -- I've never heard the story why they chose to do this. Non-scholars mistakenly call Hayek "von" Hayek as a result, hearing about Hayek thru a source talking about Hayek in relation to his Nobel Prize in economics.

-- Greg Ransom (GBRansom@aol.com), May 04, 2000.



I have found your website very interesting. I am searching all what I can found about Hayek as we are organizing a photografic show of him in Verona (Italy)from the 28th of August to the 18th of September. I would be very happy to keep in touch with you, and to know what other material you have on Hayek .

Thanks, Anna Cracco

-- Anna Cracco (willis_40@hotmail.com), May 04, 2000.


do you think that fascism and nazism grew from socialism? this is what hayek said in "road to serfdom"

-- patty (pzakipour@ aol.ca), May 04, 2000.

I think there is little doubt that _Road to Serfdom_ was Hayek's most influential book, certainly for the trivial reason that it was the most widely read, if for no other reason. However, I personally do not find it his most persuasive or impressive book, far from it. The obvious problem with it, which also was the source of much of the ridicule that it received from those now-ridiculed elites, was his claim in certain places in the book that social democracy would lead to dictatorship. This was ridiculous then and is ridiculous now, unless one takes an ultra-libertarian position that high taxes are "dictatorship," which I know some on this list espouse.

I understand that part of his argument rested on examining the social democratic origins of many of the Nazis, which was valid. But it is one thing to note that former social democrats became Nazis, and quite another to say that later social democrats will also necessarily go on a "road to serfdom." Of course it is ironic that the same book also contains passages where Hayek allowed for the possibility of some policies that might be called social democratic, such as national health insurance, with him later repudiating some of these positions. These passages are among those that have opened him up to criticism from some more libertarian oriented folks. For those who want to say _Road to Serfdom_ deserves praise because Hayek forecast the fall of socialism in it, well, von Mises did that back in 1920 and Hayek himself made his more cogent critiques of socialist planning well before he wrote _Road to Serfdom_. Hayek, of course, significantly extended and expanded von Mises' original critique. Many other of his works are much more impressive to me than this particular wildly oversold volume.

Barkley Rosser Professor of Econ

-- J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. (rosserjb@JMU.EDU), May 04, 2000.


>>The obvious problem with it, which also was the source of much of the ridicule that it received from those now-ridiculed elites, was his claim in certain places in the book that social democracy would lead to dictatorship.<<

But of course Hayek never made this claim, said essentially the exact opposite of this claim, and repeatedly attempted to correct those who sought to undermine his credibility by attributing this claim to him. Hayek sent some rather hot letters to Paul Samuelson for spreading this false notion. Samuelson promised to retract the smear publicly, yet as has so far failed to do so. Samuelson managed to flatter Hayek via correspondence enough so that Hayek pulled back from a threated public exposure of Samuelson's smear of Hayek. The ill-motivated mis- representation of Hayek's position, however, pre-dates Samuelson, and began much earlier. Among those who consistently misrepresented Hayek's views and claims in _The Road to Serfdom_ was John Kenneth Galbraith. Others, too numerous to name, have done the same.

Greg Ransom

-- Greg Ransom (gregransom@home.com), May 04, 2000.


Part of the problem with the critique of Hayek's RtS is that, when we talk about 'totalitarianism' or 'dictatorship' people tend to have too concrete an image of what that means. They immediately think about military uniforms ` la fascism or, still worse, concentration camps ` la Gulag. But one cannot reduce the question to this kind of folklore. The essence is that the mixed economy leads to a severe loss of personal freedom and one must be blind not to see this. Mises argued already that "middle of the road policy leads to socialism" (for a recent elaboration of this thesis see the book by Ikeda about the dynamics of the mixed economy). Whether one describes this phenomenon as 'totalitarianism', 'dictatorship' or whatever is of verbal interest mainly.

-- Ludwig VAN DEN HAUWE (ludwig.van.den.hauwe@skynet.be), May 04, 2000.


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