Sunday, April 06, 2008

BERLIN VS. HAYEK & VON MISES

I've read much of what Isaiah Berlin has written but I don't think I ever came across his thoughts of two of the greatest Free Market Fairy apologists of the 20th Century: F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. I just came across this letter1 Berlin wrote to Elisabeth Morrow on April 4, 1945:

I am still reading the awful Dr Hayek. He is in New York now, I gather, and causing a certain feeling of jealousy in the breast of his old Viennese mentor, Dr von Mises, who is just as much of a dodo, if not more so, and used to be the principal influence behind the more reactionary writings of Mr Henry Haslett in the editorial columns of the New York Times. Dr von Hayek is now competing for Mr Haslett's soul with Dr von Mises: and a great jealousy has sprung up between the two.


I wouldn't consider either dodos but I think that's how Oxford Dons refer to people they think are deeply misguided. Berlin also included a mention of both men in one of his official dispatches2 to the Foreign Office from the British Embassy in DC:

In the meanwhile, the Reader's Digest, which in effect is the voice of Big Business, has printed a digest of Professor Hayek's notorious work, The Road to Serfdom (any number of off-prints of this at reduced prices would be supplied by the Book of the Month Club to purchasers). Wall Street looks on Hayek as the richest goldmine yet discovered and are peddling his views everywhere. The Scripps-Howard papers have syndicated a digest of this digest, and the imminent arrival of the Professor himself is eagerly anticipated by the anti-Bretton Woods party, who expect him to act as the heavy artillery with formidable academic ammunition, a commodity at present insufficiently supplied by the somewhat thin writings of their university allies, faced as these are by the almost complete consensus of all the reputable economists in the country. Professor Hayek should not be surprised if he is invited to address the Daughters of the American Revoution to provide them with the latest weapons against such sinister social incendiaries as Lord Keynes and the British Treasury.


1Letters, 1928-1946 / Isaiah Berlin ; edited by Henry Hardy, pp. 540-41.
2Washington despatches, 1941-1945 : weekly political reports from the British embassy / edited by H. G. Nicholas, pp. 534-35

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