Today is F.A. Hayek’s Birthday (born May 8, 1899). Today, Mises.org features fully 15 books in its catalog, as well as vast writings in Literature.
Mario Rizzo has an excellent tribute here today. In the course of his writing, he mentions that Rothbard was critical of Hayek’s impure libertarianism and impure Misesianism – criticisms that Rizzo says that he later came to reject.
But let’s think about this in context. Rothbard was critical of Hayek’s own criticisms of Mises and defended Mises against them – exactly as one might expect and rightly so. Rothbard also criticized Hayek’s periodic embrace of aspects of the social-assistance state, such as we find in The Constitution of Liberty. Rothbard was also a rationalist who didn’t have a high opinion of Hayek’s theory of knowledge, but even this I suspect was brought to a head by The Fatal Conceit, a book that appeared in 1988 and which only later turns out to be highly suspect at best.
Even so, I was just looking around at Rothbard’s citations of Hayek throughout Rothbard’s writing. Rothbard’s favorite book appears to The Counter-Revolution of Science; he cites it in a dozen or so methodological pieces. But he also cites The Road to Serfdom, Prices and Production, and make frequent reference to Hayek’s “brilliant” criticisms of Keynes from the 30s and 40s, many of which are now in Prices and Production and Other Essays.
As late as 1982, Rothbard wrote: “It is, furthermore, too late for gradualism. The only solution was set forth by F.A. Hayek, the dean of the Austrian School, in his critique of the similarly disastrous gradualism of the Thatcher regime in Great Britain.”
Yes, Rothbard could be tough on Hayek but it sources were clear, and if you look at the full sweep of writing, especially before 1988 and Conceit, we get a much different picture.
{ 8 comments }
Holy crap I was born on the same day as Hayek.
Fancy that.
I wrote a birthday message to Hayek on Motley Fool.
http://caps.fool.com/Blogs/ViewPost.aspx?bpid=191767&t=01000860093551905860
His existence has enriched my life. So, thanks Friedrich, and Happy Birthday!
David, your post beats my paltry effort, which was simply to post a photo of Hayek holding a bull’s testicles.
No joke: http://irishliberty.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/happy-birthday-f-a-hayek/
N. B. Because Hayek died in 1992, the Fatal Conceit, published in 1988, was not a posthumous work…
woohoo today’s my birthday too!
I did not mean to suggest that Rothbard was completely unappreciative of Hayek’s importance. I happen to agree with Rothbard on the policy part of The Constitution of Liberty in which Hayek endorses many aspects of the welfare state. However, the point was simply that Rothbard too often focused (especially in the late 60s and early 70s) on the points where Hayek may have been deficient. For a young scholar, such as myself, this gave a distorted impression of Hayek’s significance.
I didn’t know Rothbard had referred to Hayek as the dean of the Austrian school. That is awesome.
Is it correct to say Rothbard was a rationalist? It seems to me that there’s a wide gulf between neo-Thomism and rationalism.
The matchless message, is pleasant to me
Comments on this entry are closed.