Salut!

Essays on Hayek Edited by Fritz Machlup New York University Press, 182 pp., $10 Would time spent reading this book be better spent reading the works of Hayek himself? That the answer is not immediately and obviously “yes” is a tribute which shows the difference between this collection and the many comparable ones. The essays are, of course, not by Hayek, but they are all really about Hayek: the authors all stick to the subject, rather than using Hayek as a peg on which to hang whatever essays they happened to have on a back burner when they received invitations to a symposium on Friedrich August von Hayek, 1974 Nobel Laureate in economics, at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in August 1975. Not only, indeed, do they stick to the subject, they quote liberally from him. Together, they offer a broader appreciation of Hayek’s works than could be obtained from the same amount of time reading those works. (On the other hand, no essay or book by someone else can convey the quality of Hayek’s thought, scholarship, and style as well as would any one of his own essays, much less a collection of them as large as this volume.)

Milton Friedman, in his Foreword, provides an excellent summary of the book’s contents: “George Roche . . . sets the stage with a penetrating discussion of the implications of Hayek’s work for the ‘moral and spiritual underpinnings of the free society.’ . . . Fritz Machlup surveys Hayek’s contributions to economics proper in his typical perceptive, encyclopedic, and lucid fashion. Arthur Shenfield introduces the reader elegantly to Hayek’s forays into methodology, and into the sources of some of the threats to freedom that have been generated by writings labeled ‘social science.’ Max Hartwell considers the role that historians have played in portraying a distorted picture of the achievements and problems of capitalism. The irrepressible, omnipresent, William F. Buckley Jr., takes Hayek’s famous polemic, The Road to Serfdom, as a starting point for an examination of the appeal of socialism to the intellectuals, not neglecting the contribution of businessmen to the undermining of a free society. Gottfried Dietze ranges over Hayek’s contributions to the analysis of the political structure requisite to a free society, with special stress on Hayek’s profound distinction between an imposed order and an order that develops without conscious intention out of the voluntary interaction of individuals. And as a final pièce de résistance, Shirley Letwin gives a subtle and sophisticated survey of the achievement of Hayek . . .”

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Essays on Hayek Edited by Fritz Machlup New York University Press, 182 pp., $10 Would time spent reading this book be better spent reading the works of Hayek himself? That the answer is not immediately and obviously “yes” is a tribute which shows the difference between this collection and the many comparable ones. The essays are, of course, not by Hayek, but they are all really about Hayek: the authors all stick to the subject, rather than using Hayek as a peg on which to hang whatever essays they happened to have on a back burner when they received invitations to a symposium on Friedrich August von Hayek, 1974 Nobel Laureate in economics, at a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in August 1975. Not only, indeed, do they stick to the subject, they quote liberally from him. Together, they offer a broader appreciation of Hayek’s works than could be obtained from the same amount of time reading those works. (On the other hand, no essay or book by someone else can convey the quality of Hayek’s thought, scholarship, and style as well as would any one of his own essays, much less a collection of them as large as this volume.)

Milton Friedman, in his Foreword, provides an excellent summary of the book’s contents: “George Roche . . . sets the stage with a penetrating discussion of the implications of Hayek’s work for the ‘moral and spiritual underpinnings of the free society.’ . . . Fritz Machlup surveys Hayek’s contributions to economics proper in his typical perceptive, encyclopedic, and lucid fashion. Arthur Shenfield introduces the reader elegantly to Hayek’s forays into methodology, and into the sources of some of the threats to freedom that have been generated by writings labeled ‘social science.’ Max Hartwell considers the role that historians have played in portraying a distorted picture of the achievements and problems of capitalism. The irrepressible, omnipresent, William F. Buckley Jr., takes Hayek’s famous polemic, The Road to Serfdom, as a starting point for an examination of the appeal of socialism to the intellectuals, not neglecting the contribution of businessmen to the undermining of a free society. Gottfried Dietze ranges over Hayek’s contributions to the analysis of the political structure requisite to a free society, with special stress on Hayek’s profound distinction between an imposed order and an order that develops without conscious intention out of the voluntary interaction of individuals. And as a final pièce de résistance, Shirley Letwin gives a subtle and sophisticated survey of the achievement of Hayek . . .”