Five corrections to Ebeling's review of *Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, Part I: Influences, from Mises to Bartley*
1. The volume does not "conclude with a further brief discussion of Hayek, Bartley and Karl Popper on "justificationism" and the abuse of reason, also written by Leeson".
There are two further chapters: Chapter 11, an 'Interview with Stephen Kresge', and Chapter 12, written by Werner Erhard, the founder of Erhard Seminar Training.
2. The chapter on justificationism and the abuse of reason was written by Rafe Champion.
3. Decisive evidence about false assertions made by one of Ebeling's colleagues on the authorship of the *The Fatal Conceit* is provided on page 202.
4. Ebeling's assertion regarding "the origin of Hayek's fear" about central planning is contradicted by the archival evidence.
5. With respect to Ebeling's "strange construction and content" and "unsystematic journey" description: the Introduction had to be hastily rewritten when - without any explanation or advance notice - Ebeling failed to deliver the two chapters that he had been commission to write.
RL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Humberto Barreto" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Wednesday, 26 February, 2014 6:35:04 AM
Subject: [SHOE] RVW -- Ebeling on Leeson, ed., _Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, Part I: Influences, from Mises to Bartley_
Published by EH.Net (February 2014)
Robert Leeson, editor, *Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, Part I:
Influences, from Mises to Bartley*. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013.
viii + 241 pp. $100 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-230-30112-2.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Richard M. Ebeling, Department of Economics,
Northwood University.
*Hayek: A Collaborative Biography, Part I: Influences, from Mises to
Bartley* edited by Robert Leeson (visiting professor of economics at
Stanford University), has the strengths and weaknesses of any anthology of
essays. It offers a variety of different perspectives, but lacks the
logical coherence of a biography authored by a single writer. This means
that it does not offer an interpretive narrative that fully leads the
reader from one moment to the next in F.A. Hayek's life and contributions --
to demonstrate the evolution of the man and his ideas.
This weakness even applies to the ordering of the book's chapters. After
what is meant to be an intellectual overview of Hayek's ideas penned by the
editor, the next chapter (by Melissa Lane) is devoted to a discussion of
the development of the ideas that culminated in Hayek's 1944 book, *The
Road to Serfdom*. This is followed by two short contributions on how often
as a Nobel Prize winner Hayek has been cited in the scholarly literature
(by Gabriel Söderberg, Avner Offer and Samuel Bjork), and on the awarding
of the Nobel Prize in 1974 to Hayek and Gunnar Myrdal (this chapter is
written by David Laidler and is less than three pages long).
The next chapter is a review of Nicolas Wapshott's 2011 book, *Keynes Hayek*,
written by Selwyn Cornish. It then jumps to a discussion of Hayek's
relationship to Ludwig von Mises that is contributed by Douglas French,
which is followed by a history of Hayek's professional time at the
University of Freiberg in the 1960s, contributed by Viktor Vanberg; then
there is an evaluation by Nils Goldschmidt and Jan-Otmar Hesse on Hayek's
relationship to the leading founder of the German ORDO liberal movement,
Walter Eucken, as captured in their correspondence in the 1930s and 1940s.
Finally in what is the longest chapter in the book (65 pages), written by
Robert Leeson, the reader is given a fairly detailed biography of William
W. Bartley III, who had initially been chosen by Hayek to be his official
biographer, but who died in 1990 at the age of 55. The volume concludes
with a further brief discussion of Hayek, Bartley and Karl Popper on
"justificationism" and the abuse of reason, also written by Leeson.
The introductory biography by Leeson reads more like a "stream of
consciousness" in which the author takes the reader on an unsystematic
journey about Hayek's relationship with his teacher at the University of
Vienna, Friedrich von Wieser, and his early mentor, Ludwig von Mises, and
other interwar Austrians; this shifts to his time at the London School of
Economics during the 1930s and 1940s and then to how Hayek fit into the
reemerged Austrian School in America after receiving the Nobel Prize in
1974.
Douglas French's chapter on Hayek's relationship to Mises focuses mostly on
their relationship in Vienna, but discusses little about Mises' substantive
influence on Hayek in terms of either monetary and business cycle theory,
or economic planning under socialism, or the philosophy of the social
sciences.
The chapters on Hayek's association with Walter Eucken and the Freiberg
School of ORDO liberalism add substantive insight on how Hayek's views on
the market economy and the legal framework of the free society compared
with these German liberals. The chapters highlight the greater importance
that Eucken and his German colleagues placed on social "order" and legal
stability in which the freedom of the individual would be defined and given
rein. Hayek's interest in the same questions was precisely with individual
freedom as the essential issue, with problems concerning the legal and
political order being about how that freedom might be assured and preserved.
Melissa Lane's discussion of the genesis of *The Road to Serfdom* clearly
explains that Hayek's arguments grew out of his focus on decentralized
knowledge in a system of division of labor, which only a competitive price
system could effectively coordinate; a theme that Hayek had been developing
in the second half of the 1930s. Hayek's central point in *The Road to
Serfdom*, she argues, was the fact that a comprehensive system of socialist
central planning would require the construction and imposition of a
detailed system of relative values to which and within which all in the
society would have to conform, if "the plan" was to succeed. This was the
origin of Hayek's fear that central planning ran the danger of becoming
tyranny, since any meaningful dissent in word or deed could not be
permitted without threatening the fulfillment of the goals of the plan.
The "odd-man-out" chapter, in the reviewer's opinion, is that longest one
devoted to William Bartley. Given its length, Hayek's role in the
discussion is a shadowy second to the explanation of Bartley's life and
career (with its many frustrations and disappointments) and his
relationship with Karl Popper, whose official biographer Bartley was
supposed serve as, as well. In what ways Bartley may or may not have had
an influence on Hayek's later life, or to what extent Bartley may or may
not have "rewritten" parts of Hayek's last book, *The Fatal Conceit*,
before its publication, are not really given the attention and detail that
one would expect in a volume devoted to the life and contributions of F.A.
Hayek.
The reviewer waits, now, with anticipation for the promised part II of this
"collaborative biography," but his expectations are not too high, given the
strange construction and content of the first volume.
Richard Ebeling is professor of economics at Northwood University, Midland,
Michigan. [log in to unmask] He is the author of*Political Economy,
Public Policy, and Monetary Economics: Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian
Tradition* (Routledge 2010), and is currently editing one of the volumes
in the *Collected Works of F. A. Hayek*, devoted to "Hayek and the Austrian
Economists: Correspondence and Related Documents."
Copyright (c) 2014 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be copied
for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and
the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net Administrator (
[log in to unmask]). Published by EH.Net (February 2014). All EH.Net
reviews are archived at http://www.eh.net/BookReview
|
