Irving Kristol on Hayek

|Peter Boettke|

In the April 1960 issue of Commentary, Irving Kristol reviewed The Constitution of Liberty.

What is your favorite argument from Hayek's book; least favorite; best review; worst review; best story about the influence of the work; worst story about the influence of the book?

HT: Dan Klein

Comments

[twitter.com/AFG85]

My favorite argument is the idea that everything that is common among the majority today was the purview of some minority beforehand. That freedom allows for trial and error to occur among numerous subsections of the population before anything is adopted more widely.

[Lode Cossaer]

Favorite argument the whole division of knowledge/mutual adjustment/coordination argument. Since I've been reading this blog - and the literature by (primarily Horwitz) I'v been arguing not in terms of 'efficiency' of the market, but in terms of the market as an 'efficient' coordination mechanism (which has a different emphasis to it).

My least favorite argument - I think - is nearly every time he defends the need for government with arguments like 'sometimes there are 'just' things that voluntary cooperation can't do'. (There are some, more ingenious, arguments that have some validity, but sometimes he just uses terrible arguments.)

The best 'review' is probably - although I haven't read it; only a review - 'Socialism after Hayek', which really takes the Hayekian challenge serious, which can count as a good review. I don't know the 'worst' review, but I have some mixed feelings about the Review Rothbard wrote. Although I agree with several critical remarks of Rothbard, the tone of it is just nasty. Alhough I understand why - in Rothbards vision - it was necessary to write so nasty, I still think he could have done a better job.

I don't know any 'worst' stories. My favorite story is actually concerning the proposals Hayek made in LLL (but there are already some references in CoL); of which I heard that there is a movemen which is trying to have a 'Hayekian constitution' in Guatamala. I'm not sure wether it is true, but since they have the really classical liberal university there, it doesn't sound to unbelievable.

[Greg Ransom]

Find more discussions of Hayek's book here:

http://hayekcenter.org/?p=2662

[Roger Koppl]

What did Kristol mean by the following?

"Professor Hayek no longer insists (as he once did) that economic planning is impossible. He now insists only that it is incompatible with a progressive society."

[Greg Ransom]

Late in life Kristol admitted than he had never read Hayek's _The Road to Serfdom_, although again and again over the years Kristol had besmirched the book, and Hayek with it.

In some of his most famous essays Kristol borrowed some of the key themes from _The Constitution of Liberty_, without explaining the sources of these themes.

Kristol wasn't a scholar and didn't hold himself to scholarly standards. (And let's be honest, many scholars don't hold themselves very strictly to those standards either.)

[Dain]

The attempt by libertarians to distance themselves from the lunacy of the mainstream right is becoming harder to swallow. Glen Beck is celebrating Hayek, and he's got Tom Woods on his show? Wow.

[Fearsome Tycoon]

Yes, I can't imagine why Tom Woods would appear on a radio show that millions of people listen to, when he could be posting on a blog somewhere with 23 ideologically pure readers. Has he no concern for orthodoxy or ritual purity?

[Dain]

I don't blame him for wanting more exposure, but for being such an anti-imperialist radical historian with radical economic views, how is he on Glen Beck? Wouldn't in theory he be more likely to end up on Democracy Now or something?

Apparently not, because libertarianism is as mainstream and idiotic as Glen Beck. That's what I'm going to assume anyway.

I turned off Fox long ago because it seemed unrelated to libertarianism. I see I've gone too far down the rabbit hole of narcissism and small differences.

[Fearsome Tycoon]

You don't get to decide which shows invite you to be on. Also, I don't see why Democracy Now would ever invite someone like Woods. Woods is a radical libertarian at the Mises Institute. Democracy Now tends to be very pro-socialism. They might have him on if the topic were the Iraq War, but certainly not economics. A show that has repeatedly invited Noam Chomsky is probably not going to care what Tom Woods has to say about economics.

And why are you shocked that Glenn Beck would devote an entire episode to celebrating Friedrich Hayek and would invite an Austrian school economist to speak? I believe Beck got turned on to the Austrian school by Peter Schiff, whom he had on the show at least a couple times back in 2008.

And the fact is, when a show with millions of listeners or viewers invites you to promote your views on something, you'd be an idiot not to go.

[Dain]

Ah, but the neo-conservative Fox News is also socialist right? That's what libertarians say about those big government conservatives who are just as much socialist, but they prefer corporate welfare of the defense contract variety. So, in theory, Tom Woods is even less likely to appear on Fox News than Democracy Now because they are both pro-war AND pro-socialism. (Unless libertarians are faking some big difference between themselves and mainstream conservatism - which is why Woods is on Fox News and not Democracy Now.)