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Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950
A 2022 Economist Best Book of the Year.
The definitive account of the distinguished economist’s formative years.
Few twentieth-century figures have been lionized and vilified in such equal measure as Friedrich Hayek—economist, social theorist, leader of the Austrian school of economics, and champion of classical liberalism. Hayek’s erudite arguments in support of individualism and the market economy have attracted a devout following, including many at the levers of power in business and government. Critics, meanwhile, cast Hayek as the intellectual forefather of “neoliberalism” and of all the evils they associate with that pernicious doctrine.
In A Life , historians of economics Bruce Caldwell and Hansjörg Klausinger draw on never-before-seen archival and family material to produce an authoritative account of the influential economist’s first five decades. This includes portrayals of his early career in Vienna; his relationships in London and Cambridge; his family disputes; and definitive accounts of the creation of The Road to Serfdom and of the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society.
A landmark work of history and biography, A Life is a major contribution both to our cultural accounting of a towering figure and to intellectual history itself.
The definitive account of the distinguished economist’s formative years.
Few twentieth-century figures have been lionized and vilified in such equal measure as Friedrich Hayek—economist, social theorist, leader of the Austrian school of economics, and champion of classical liberalism. Hayek’s erudite arguments in support of individualism and the market economy have attracted a devout following, including many at the levers of power in business and government. Critics, meanwhile, cast Hayek as the intellectual forefather of “neoliberalism” and of all the evils they associate with that pernicious doctrine.
In A Life , historians of economics Bruce Caldwell and Hansjörg Klausinger draw on never-before-seen archival and family material to produce an authoritative account of the influential economist’s first five decades. This includes portrayals of his early career in Vienna; his relationships in London and Cambridge; his family disputes; and definitive accounts of the creation of The Road to Serfdom and of the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society.
A landmark work of history and biography, A Life is a major contribution both to our cultural accounting of a towering figure and to intellectual history itself.
824 pages, Hardcover
First published November 25, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 11, 2024
Book Review
Caldwell, Bruce, and Hansjörg Klausinger. Hayek: A Life, 1899-1950. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2022.
Biographers require perceptive perspectives that can only be gained through time. The new biography of Frederick von Hayek’s first fifty-one years, an economist famous for the World War II era monograph, The Road to Serfdom, demonstrates this truism. Often lumped together in a group termed the “Austrian School of Economics,” his twenty-first-century biographers demonstrate that this characterization is too narrow, insufficiently nuanced, and often flat-out wrong.
Hayek grew up and was educated in inter-world war Vienna, Austria, among an uncommonly productive group of intellectuals. Hayek and his colleagues addressed societies’ most pressing issues, including the benefits and risks of government planning, socialism versus capitalism, and how to tame vicious, seemingly out-of-control business cycles. While Hayek and several colleagues advocated liberalism, opposing collectivism, central planning, and socialism, others veered into Nazism and Marxism. Even among those like-minded anti-statists, Hayek had major differences. For example, Hayek differed with his iconoclastic mentor, Ludwig von Mises, over the appropriateness of a state-sponsored social safety net.
Despite advocating differences, Hayek convened seminars, meetings, and other gatherings to further intellectual development. These meetings offered venues to cross intellectual lines and discuss contentious issues with critics such as John Maynard Keynes but excluded those who advocated Nazism. The authors highlight that Keynes praised Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, illustrating Hayek’s collaborative problem-solving approach. His respect for other points of view is remarkable, and he assisted others in becoming academically successful. Due to the rise of National Socialism, Hayek fled Vienna for Britain, and his close colleagues, many with Hayek’s help, fled to the United States, including Gottfried Haberler at Harvard, Oskar Morgenstern at Princeton, and Fritz Machlup at NYU, Princeton, Buffalo, and Johns Hopkins.
Caldwell and Klausinger thoroughly dispel one of the enduring myths that Hayek was antisemitic, as was rampant in pre-World War II Austria. Hayek’s critics point to the antisemitism in the Hayek family and identify two quotes from Hayek’s work that describe the difficulty of joining Jewish-dominated intellectual circles. However, Hayek’s writing and actions demonstrate a clear break with his family over Jewish discrimination. Further, Hayek’s colleagues included numerous Jewish intellectuals, including his mentor Ludwig von Mises. Finally, before and during the Second World War, Hayek actively worked to extricate Jewish colleagues from Europe to Britain or America. After reading this new biography, I believe this issue should be resolved.
Another of the book’s key strengths is a fulsome description of Hayek’s personal life. He loved visiting the Alps and engaging in active sports, including hiking, mountaineering, and skiing. He used his time away from cities to recharge and get away to think. However, not everything was idyllic with his family life. He failed to communicate his commitment to the first woman he loved and married on the rebound. Hayek was not happy in the marriage and treated his first wife horribly by engineering a controversial and messy divorce. He lost his best friend, Professor Lionel Robbins, over the divorce as the London School of Economics professor took sides with his first wife. Additionally, he was insufficiently involved with his children from his first marriage. Even though he eventually managed to marry his childhood sweetheart, his family continued to suffer from his inattention.
Readers will conclude that Hayek was a provocative thinker, prolific writer, and a convener of colleagues with a troubled family life. He was a polymath economist who integrated psychology, law, and history into his economics. Hayek argued against government planning of the economy, viewing government planning as less efficient. The authors, over 730 pages, provide a comprehensive and captivating view of Hayek’s intellectual and personal lives with good transitions and easy-to-read prose.
Hayek’s contributions to economics and politics are more than captured in his book The Road to Serfdom, and lumping him as simply a member of the Austrian School of Economics does a disservice to his contributions. Hayek’s economic and political views resonate today with the rise of authoritarianism, racism, and national economic planning.
I can’t wait for part two!
January 19, 2023
'We must be able to offer a new liberal program which appeals to the imagination. We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible . . . The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion . . . Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark.'
March 4, 2023
Caldwell and Klausinger have produced a magisterial biography on one of the 20th century's great public intellectuals (although Hayek would likely prefer the term "puzzler").
There are portions of the book that deal with advanced economic theory and philosophical questions that a layperson might get a bit lost with (guilty as charged). But if you are interested in the ideas that shaped our world, it's worth the effort to read through.
Libertarians should take particular delight in reading about the formation and first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, the writing of and critical response to The Road to Serfdom, Hayek's role in bringing together the "Chicago school", and the intellectual battles Hayek waged against the proponents of planning and intervention (most notably Keynes). Of lesser renown but equally fascinating stories to read about include Hayek's scientific work at the Institute for Business Cycle Research, his hands-on research in Gibraltar and his role in helping colleagues escape Nazi persecution.
The authors make a point that Hayek, while a free market economist, was not an absolutist. They point to arguments Hayek made in Road about an "extensive system of social services" as a "security against severe physical privation" and his position at the first Mont Pelerin conference on creating a governmental labor service for the unemployable. The willingness to address challenges like this is why I admire Hayek's scholarship (along with Milton Friedman) over Ayn Rand. It also lays waste to the recent bad-faith depiction of Hayek's ideas by Jacob Soll in his book Free Market: The History of an Idea. Per Soll's screed, Hayek sees "absolute dangers of any and all government involvement in the economy" while calling Road a "fanatical vision of the state as a force of evil." Has Soll ever read Hayek? Free Market is not a serious undertaking—Hayek: A Life is.
Despite the high regard Caldwell and Klausinger clearly hold for their subject, they don't shy away from Hayek's personal short-comings, as the rather unsavory details of Hayek's divorce are laid bare.
The book ends at a time when Hayek's ideas were not en vogue. I can't wait for the 2nd volume, which will encompass a time period when the classical liberal ideas of Hayek and like-minded thinkers start to find validation. Highest recommendation.
There are portions of the book that deal with advanced economic theory and philosophical questions that a layperson might get a bit lost with (guilty as charged). But if you are interested in the ideas that shaped our world, it's worth the effort to read through.
Libertarians should take particular delight in reading about the formation and first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society, the writing of and critical response to The Road to Serfdom, Hayek's role in bringing together the "Chicago school", and the intellectual battles Hayek waged against the proponents of planning and intervention (most notably Keynes). Of lesser renown but equally fascinating stories to read about include Hayek's scientific work at the Institute for Business Cycle Research, his hands-on research in Gibraltar and his role in helping colleagues escape Nazi persecution.
The authors make a point that Hayek, while a free market economist, was not an absolutist. They point to arguments Hayek made in Road about an "extensive system of social services" as a "security against severe physical privation" and his position at the first Mont Pelerin conference on creating a governmental labor service for the unemployable. The willingness to address challenges like this is why I admire Hayek's scholarship (along with Milton Friedman) over Ayn Rand. It also lays waste to the recent bad-faith depiction of Hayek's ideas by Jacob Soll in his book Free Market: The History of an Idea. Per Soll's screed, Hayek sees "absolute dangers of any and all government involvement in the economy" while calling Road a "fanatical vision of the state as a force of evil." Has Soll ever read Hayek? Free Market is not a serious undertaking—Hayek: A Life is.
Despite the high regard Caldwell and Klausinger clearly hold for their subject, they don't shy away from Hayek's personal short-comings, as the rather unsavory details of Hayek's divorce are laid bare.
The book ends at a time when Hayek's ideas were not en vogue. I can't wait for the 2nd volume, which will encompass a time period when the classical liberal ideas of Hayek and like-minded thinkers start to find validation. Highest recommendation.
August 18, 2022
Frederich Hayek was born in Austria in 1899 and educated at the University of Vienna where he was granted doctorates in both Law and Political Science. He was best known for his work that reflected the interdependence of economic, social and institutional fluctuations. From his writings was developed the Austrian School He suggested that private investment in public markets was a better road to wealth than government spending programs.
He first went to teach at the London School of Economics where he taught men like John Kenneth Galbraith and John Maynard Keynes, while there he was a tutor to David Rockerfeller. One of his two major works was while there "The Road to Serfdom". He was concerned that Fascism would hinder the ability of people to be individuals and lead to a stagnation of thought and liberalism. He left for the University of Chicago before WW2, where he worked with Milton Friedman.
At UofC he worked on his magnus opus "Law, Legislation and Liberty" which he wasn't to finish for almost twenty years. Hayek believed that a limited democracy was better at protecting individual liberty but that "government loses the power to do what it thinks right if any group where the majority thinks otherwise". The lose of free speech and thought was an anathema.
Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were admires because of Hayek's position that immigrants who refuse to assimilate cause problems of non-acculturation. "Free choice is to be exercised more in the market place than the ballot box and is indispensable for individual freedom." In the 60s he went back to Europe where he taught at University of Freiburg.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974,
What I found most interesting about this book is the way that Caldwell was able to break down very intricate ideas about the effect of freedom of thought on on economics.
He first went to teach at the London School of Economics where he taught men like John Kenneth Galbraith and John Maynard Keynes, while there he was a tutor to David Rockerfeller. One of his two major works was while there "The Road to Serfdom". He was concerned that Fascism would hinder the ability of people to be individuals and lead to a stagnation of thought and liberalism. He left for the University of Chicago before WW2, where he worked with Milton Friedman.
At UofC he worked on his magnus opus "Law, Legislation and Liberty" which he wasn't to finish for almost twenty years. Hayek believed that a limited democracy was better at protecting individual liberty but that "government loses the power to do what it thinks right if any group where the majority thinks otherwise". The lose of free speech and thought was an anathema.
Both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were admires because of Hayek's position that immigrants who refuse to assimilate cause problems of non-acculturation. "Free choice is to be exercised more in the market place than the ballot box and is indispensable for individual freedom." In the 60s he went back to Europe where he taught at University of Freiburg.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974,
What I found most interesting about this book is the way that Caldwell was able to break down very intricate ideas about the effect of freedom of thought on on economics.
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January 8, 2023The Economist's 2022 Books of the Year.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews