Ten Years After - Don Lavoie (1951-2001)

Steven Horwitz

As Pete noted the other day, today marks the 10th anniversary of the death of the man who was a mentor to the two of us, as well as Dave, not to mention Virgil Storr, Emily Chamlee-Wright, Howie Baetjer, Roy Cordato, and others.  It's still hard to believe that he's gone, much less that it's been a decade.  Rather than another full-blown tribute, I want to make three quick observations as a way to remember Don on this day.

First, all early deaths are sad, but given how much amazing progress the Austrian movement has made in the last decade, it's just a shame that Don was not here to be a part of it and to enjoy it.  So much that's happening would have fascinated Don, especially the attempts at a left-libertarian alliance and the rise of the Internet as a site for Austrian ideas.  One of the great things about Don was that he was perpetually  young in the sense that he was always looking for new ideas and new ways of interacting with the world.  You just know he would have been blogging and using the Internet and Web 2.0 to advance both Austrian ideas and his work in the classroom.

I think Don would have also been very proud to see what his PhD students have accomplished and the way their careers have gone.  It struck me recently that each of us has carried on in our own way a particular piece of Don's broad vision and approach to ideas.  Speaking for myself, I know that my own attempts to talk to the Left reflect one of the central themes of Don's own work, best articulated in many ways in his much under-appreciated book National Economic Planning:  What is Left?  Pete's mentoring of PhD students, Dave's interest in heterodoxy (and his work as an undergraduate teacher), Emily's use of qualitative methods, Virgil's work on culture, Roy's work in the policy world, and Howie's work on software and capital similarly reflect aspects of who Don was. 

Finally, Don would have also been overjoyed to see the interest in Austrian and libertarian ideas from young people, especially the amazing work of Students for Liberty.  And his passing has, unfortunately, made him largely invisible to that generation of young libertarians.  If nothing else comes of the 10th anniversary of his passing, I hope that we can make his work more visible to the young libertarians out there, especially the rapidly growing left-libertarian movement, which should be embracing Don's work (read Ronn Neff's eulogy to understand why).  For our younger readers, go forth and read Don's work and understand why people like me and Pete and Dave and Virgil and Emily and Howie were drawn to him and how his vision continues to inform our own work every single day.

Pete's remembrance of Don is here.  Mine is here. 

 

Comments

[Jake Roundtree]

I absolutely think that more people in my generation should read Lavoie's work, but other than his two most well-known books I cannot find much work by Lavoie on the internet and a list of his publications does not seem to be available, so I have no idea what to look up. I hope that you guys could release his CV or a list of his publications, and maybe release some of his articles.

[Greg Ransom]

It's hard to under estimate the value & significance of Lavoie's _Rivalry & Central Planning_.

Among other things, it establishes the signal significance of placing explanatory rivals head to head for making explanatory progress in the science of economics.

Economists hardly know what they've done or what they can achieve until they are put in a place where they able look down and observe the alternatives before them, and the far different explanatory power and capacities of rival scientific explanatory schemes.

Lavoie did that -- and the profession of economics as a science was immediately altered.

Suddenly Hayek & Mises were scientific victors of first rank social significance, and no longer just dead men.

[Greg Ransom]

I would draw particular attention to Lavoie's chapter on the philosophy of science in his _National Economic Planning_ book.

First rate stuff, which helps open the mind.

But let's not overlook Lavoie's big blind spot -- he could have learned a tremendous amount from Wittgenstein & Hayek on shared rule following, which could have helps both immunize and free Lavoie from the vicious circle of hermeneutics and the "interpretive" stance. We can grasp that everyone can have a unique understanding of things without going the "everything is a text" and "all understanding is interpretation" route, which puts you in a hall of circus mirrors.

There is such a things as "seeing" rather than "seeing as", and at some point "seeing as" turns into just seeing.

A door needs a hinge to turn on, on hermeneutics is a game pretending doors can turn without hinges.

It may be helpful for some in escaping from a worse prior "objectivist/rationalist" mistake, but it leaves you still caught in a viciously circular mistake.

[Greg Ransom]

A used copy of _Rivalry and Central Planning_ will cost you $169.95 from Amazon.

Why is this book out of print?

[Jake Roundtree]

@Greg Ransom:

If you private message me I can direct you to a site where you can get a free pdf copy of that book, as well as others by Lavoie.

My email is [email protected]

[austrian away]

Yes, Don Lavoie was a great scholar. I cherish my NATIONAL ECONOMIC PLANNING book. Its application of Hayekian knowledge problems to bureaucratic economic planning initiatives is just great.

His Rivalry and Cental Planning is also an EXCELLENT discussion and history of the economic calculation debate. Because the book costs about $300 on Amazon, I remember photocopying the entire book at my university and thinking to myself, "This better be worth it!" And boy, was it!

Thank you for posting these tributes to Don Lavoie. I agree that new generations of students should continue to learn from his excellent writings.

[Mario Rizzo]

In my years of teaching as I get older and the students are increasingly of a different generation, I have come to the reluctant conclusion that those people and events so meaningful to me are just a curiosity to them.

They are "now" (even in an extended sense). They have their meanings, important events and persons -- these are not ours. This doesn't mean we should not talk about our personal influences. But we should not expect that they will share our concerns and feelings.

In the world of ideas only ideas matter (the people fade into insignificance rather rapidly). Luckily, Don had really important and interesting ideas. They will last even when everyone who ever knew him passes from the scene.

[Richard Ebeling]

In her book, "The Human Condition," philosopher Hannah Arendt explained that for the ancient Greeks the most important impact on people was the speaking of the spoken word.

In front of an audience or group, the listeners not only heard what the speaker had to say, but saw the meaning of the words to the speaker through their watching and interacting with the speaker -- his sincerity, his passion, his logic as expressed through his very persona.

This is why each generation has connection to their mentors, and the thinkers that have impacted on them in the context of their own times.

Those of us who had the opportunity to interact and get to know, say, Ludwig Lachman, or F. A. Hayek, or Fritz Machlup have more than the words in their books and articles in their minds. They have the memory and the imageries of them as living persons with whom they shared time and experience.

For many today, even among Austrians, Carl Menger is this renowned and eminent economist who "discovered" marginal utility and various unique aspects to the theory compared to Jevons and Walras. But he is not a "living person."

Read, on the other hand, Friedrich Wieser's memoir of Menger following the latter's death in 1921, and you see the profound meaning and influence he had on Wieser and Bohm-Bawerk as a great intellect with whom they shared time and experience in the context of the events and ideas of their epoch.

How touching, moving, are Schumpeter's and Mises' recollections of Bohm-Bawerk. They participated in his seminar, and they owed so much of their own young intellectual development to the human interaction they had with him. But for us, he is the historical, long-gone figure who developed Austrian capital and interest theory.

I knew Don Lavoie. We were students, for a time, together at NYU. We shared many a night in deep discussions about, well, "everything." We laughed, we shared our frustrations, our hopes, or dreams -- personally and professionally.

I remember when Don had failed his Macro qualifying exam -- for the second time. He was sitting up in the NYU economic department, and was crushed. He believed that all his hopes for his professional future was gone. He broke down in tears, and we talked for a long time. Fortunately, it was arranged for him to take the exam one more time, and he passed.

These are the attachments that humans form, that those who come long after can never know, even when it is written about. Because living time was shared. And that makes the impact and meaning of people unique within each generation that others who come later cannot know. They are living in their own time, in their own living human interactions and experiences.

It remains, nonetheless, that those of us who had the opportunity to know Don Lavoie are better for it.

Richard Ebeling

[Jerry O'Driscoll]

Don was an outstanding student at NYU. His death was a personal loss to his family and many friends. And, of course, to the world of scholarship.

[TGGP]

Whoa, didn't expect a link to The Last Ditch here. Not complaining though. I've actually got a physical copy of "Black Suits and Red Guards" they sent me, and I told them I was going to type it up and put it online. Never got around to doing that though.

[Barkley Rosser]

Don's death was indeed premature and a continuing loss.

[Rafe Champion]

Don was clearly an inspirational teacher and these are thin on the ground. They don't have to be brilliant but it helps and clearly Don had it all. One of the disasters of the modern mega university is the way that students are distanced from teachers. There is no substitute for the master/apprentice relationship but precious few students ever get to exerience it in a meaningful way.

At a Mont Pelerin meeting a few years age there were some Big Men present but I didn't see any sign of them getting one on one with young folk. Maybe they tried and found that the game was not worth the candle. Never under-estimate the long-term influence of a little time spent with the right person at the right time in the life of a young scholar.

[Albert Loan]

Don was my teacher inside and outside the classroom from 1982 to 1992. He is the reason I am teaching today and why I see the Austrian tradition very much in pedagogical terms. I echo the call for students to read Don's work. It is a call to me to include his work more frequently in my own courses. Thanks for this invitation to remember the grand example he was to us.