[Part of The Constitution of Liberty series, click to see all the posts organized by chapter.]
This is the introductory post in a series which will “live blog” through F.A. Hayek’s book, The Constitution of Liberty. For curious readers, the copy I have is the Routledge Classics 2006 reissue of the original 1960 edition. If you are looking in the bookstore it’s the one with the olive-green cover featuring surgical scissors (also available from Amazon in the UK). It is, in my opinion, infinitely preferable to the garish orange bound version printed by the University of Chicago press sold in the United States.
Hayek’s stature as an economic thinker and political philosopher is today undisputed. I shall forego a detailed description of his life and work, Wikipedia and other places, are better suited to that task. However, it is important to appreciate a few aspects of Hayek before delving into one of his most important works.
Today, the bulk of Hayek’s legacy lies in his political and economic philosophy, however it would be a mistake to forget his contributions to economic theory as well. His influence is seen in the work of John Hicks, the midwife of Keynesian economics, Ronald Coase, the economist who first thought to ask the question “Why do firms exist?”, and Leonid Hurwicz, the father of mechanism design theory (which is like game theory, but backwards, in that the objective is to design a game given strategies as opposed to designing strategies for a given game).
Justifiably then, Hayek regards himself, at least in his preface to The Constitution of Liberty, as chiefly an economist rather than a philosopher or political scientist. Even the most cursory reading of Hayek, though, reveals that “economist” is too narrow a definition of him. I often find myself thinking that even “social scientist” or “political philosopher” is too narrow a definition for him. Really he is a logician– a very skilled, precise one. Keynes’ scathing review of Hayek’s earlier work, Prices and Production, reveals as much,”It is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in a bedlam.”
As Irwin Stelzer’s introduction to this edition alludes, The Constitution of Liberty, is a work that hardly requires context. Though Hayek was writing in the middle of the 20th century, his analysis and description of fundamental ideas remain just as cogent and applicable today at the beginning of the 21st century. Stelzer’s introduction, ironically, does feel a touch dated. Writing in 2006, Stelzer’s examples are mostly grounded in foreign policy and concern the “clash of civilizations” thesis. He does well, though, to include Hayek’s sage advice about people preferring a domestic despot to foreign freedoms. But I’m not sure if I approve of what seems to be an attempt to hijack Hayek as a neoconservative in the last paragraph of his introduction.
Any introduction to Hayek written today (mid 2010) could not do without reference to the crisis in financial capitalism, the state’s resurgence as a key economic actor after the liberalization of the ’80s and ’90s, and the global spread of capitalism’s methods if not its ideology. It would be a mistake, though, to confine our attentions to only these themes. Hayek is clear that he is writing a general thesis, a blueprint for a liberal society.
After the introductory remarks the book proceeds in three parts, “The Value of Freedom”, “Freedom and the Law” and “Freedom in the Welfare State”. I begin from the first chapter of part one in the next post.
Fatally Conceited 