Product Description

Twenty years ahead of its time, Hayek's thinking has become the stuff of economic orthodoxy in the twenty-first century and he remains a crucial voice in the debates about globalisation that are raging ever more passionately today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96196 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 512 pages

Review

'Professor von Hayek has boldly taken for his province the whole science of man and has deployed his powerful and lucid mind over the entire range of its concerns.' - The Spectator

From the Back Cover

With a new introduction by Irwin Stelzer

‘Professor von Hayek has boldly taken for his province the whole science of man and has deployed his powerful and lucid mind over the entire range of its concerns.’ – The Spectator

Working after the war, Hayek's writing was very much against the tide of mainstream Keynesian economic thought, and he struck a lonely figure on the outskirts of academia. His time would come in the 1970s and '80s - the eras of Thatcherism and Reaganomics - when he was championed as a prophet of neoliberalism by those who were looking to revolutionize the post-war social consensus. The Constitution of Liberty is crucial reading for all those seeking to understand ideas that have become the orthodoxy in the age of the globalized economy. First published in English: 1959.

Customer Reviews

I great place to start with Hayek
I've read Hayek's polemics against socialism like The Fatal Conceit and The Road to Serfdom and found them very disappointing, he is a great writer and I find his style and content in some ways similar to another english writer, the socialist, George Orwell but these books seemed very negative.

This book is divided into three sections and post script, the first The Value of Freedom outlines Hayek's views on liberty, reason, responsibility and progress and politics, the second section on Freedom and The Law outlines Hayek's views on the relationship between individual freedom and the state, the final section is on Freedom and The Welfare State and begins with an essay on the decline of socialism and the rise of the welfare state.

This book is a lot more complete and holistic, you get a much clearer idea of what Hayek's proposing aswell as opposing, even if you dont necessarily agree.

In reading it Hayek does appear to be a lot less dogmatic than many of his supporters or popularisers and he's a great writer besides, the very simple introduction which seeks to link Hayek with contemporary wars of religion with the islamic world and the rise of neo-conservatism in America is over shadowed by the main work (infact it reads a lot like Trotsky paying homage to Marx or any other political pundit who tries to bask in reflected glory).

I would seriously recommend the chapter on the decline of socialism and the rise of the welfare state to anyone but to socialists in particular.

This chapter accurately forecasts many of the developments within socialist or left parties, like the rise of new labour, the attempts to conjour a political third way, there's fair comment making the distinction between socialism and the welfare state that is seldom made by anyone left or right, apart from forgotten books from American socialists writting in the seventies.

Market libertarians have been among the few people to really grapple with the issues of appartniks and the unintended consequences of growth of state machinery.

An insightful and at times brilliant defence of capitalism
The Constitution of Liberty can in many ways be regarded as Hayek's most important work. It centres around a highly nuanced defence of the free market based upon the concept of spontaneous order. But in articulating this defence Hayek skilfully interweaves philosophical and historical insights, at all times displaying tremendous erudition and learning.

The result is not a comprehensive treatise like von Mises's Human Action, or the Wealth of Nations. Hayek always regarded himself as an intellectual 'muddler' (albeit a brilliant one). And his work reflects this. I prefer him when he is focused upon a particular issue at hand, like in The Road to Serfdom, or in the essays that comprise Individualism and the Economic Order.

This is not to detract from the value of this work. Hayek's defence of negative verses freedom, his description of the rule of law, the chapter on Responsibility and Freedom, and the post-script 'Why I am not a Conservative,' deserve to be treasured. Hayek's intellectual integrity shines through here. He was never a polemist or an extremist, and this has compromised his stature amongst libertarians. But Hayek's particular position on any single issue should not be of concern here. A reiteration of classical liberalism will always be of value, but this work stands out for the subtlety of its insights, and the range and depth of its arguments. Hayek's ideas should be recognised as providing, along with those of Mises and Milton Friedman, the best twentieth century defence of a free and spontaneously ordered society; a defence which should be distinguished from the limited and compromised one provided by many neo-classical economists, by social democrats or conservatives, and the dogma provided by Aynn Rand and her disciples.

Mark Koyama