The Origins of Neoliberalism, Part I – Hayek’s Delusion
Friedrich Hayek was an unusual character. Although well known to be a libertarian political philosopher, he is also commonly associated with being an economist. And its certainly true that at one time Hayeks focus was solely on economics. In the 1920s Hayek was still within the fold of pure economics, publishing papers and works that were taken seriously by the discipline. However, by the 1930s Hayeks theories had started to come apart at the seams. Exchanges between Hayek and John Maynard Keynes and Piero Sraffa show Hayek as confused and even somewhat desperate. It was around this time that Hayek discontinued making any substantial contributions to economics. Not coincidentally this overlapped with the time when most economies, mired as in Great Depression, demonstrated that Hayeks theories were at best impractical, at worst a complete perversion of facts.
So, Hayek turned instead to constructing political philosophies and honing a metaphysics rather than engaging in any substantial way with the new economics that was emerging. When pure logic and empirical reality ceased to support Hayeks emotionally charged ideology he turned, to the more malleable sphere of meaning and metaphysics. He became concerned with watery terms like freedom and liberty, which he then set out to impregnate with a meaning that would support his dreams. The most famous result of this period of conversion, which resembled less St. Paul on the road to Damascus and more so an alcoholic who had hit rock bottom, was Hayeks 1944 work The Road to Serfdom. In a very real way it was this book that marked the close of Hayeks career as a serious economic thinker and set him on the path of the political propagandist, agitator and organiser....
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...Today whenever we encounter an anxiety-ridden Tea Partier or a fearful and paranoid internet Austrian, it is Hayeks delusion that we are hearing echoed through the chambers of history, albeit in slightly vulgarised form. It is the fear, distrust and paranoia which Hayeks portrait of a free society descending into barbarism evokes that captures the minds of those it touches. That it is completely deluded and ignorant of history only makes it more effective, like all propaganda, in its role as propaganda. The bigger the lie, the more emotional investment it requires to believe in and so the more it captures the uncritical and the emotionally weak.
(Read more: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/philip-pilkington-the-origins-of-neoliberalism-part-i-hayeks-delusion.html)
orwell
(7,775 posts)...thanks for the link.
The post article discussion is good as well.
It will be fun to follow the rest of the series.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)4dog
(505 posts)which was missing at the link:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/01/the-origins-of-neoliberalism-part-iv-a-map-of-hayeks-delusion.html
If anybody knows where it is, please add to thread.