Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

REVIEWS AND COMMENTS BY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 61
2.
CONFIDENTIAL MEMO ON F.A. HAYEK’S
CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY
January 21, 1958
To the Volker Fund
F.A. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty is, surprisingly and
distressingly, an extremely bad, and, I would even say, evil
book. 14 Since Hayek is universally regarded, by Right and
Left alike, as the leading right-wing intellectual, this will
also be an extremely dangerous book. The feeling one gets
from reading it is the same sort of feeling I would have gotten
if I had been a U.S. senator when Taft got up to support
the Wagner public housing bill, or any of his other compromises:
i.e., that this tears it. 15 For when the supposed leader
of one’s movement takes compromising and untenable positions,
the opposition can always say: “but even Taft (Hayek)
14F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1960). In this Memorandum, Rothbard refers to the
first fourteen chapters of Hayek’s manuscript. The Volker Fund had
provided a grant for Hayek’s work and Rothbard was asked to give
his opinion of it.
15Robert A. Taft (1889–1953) was a U.S. Senator from 1939
to 1953. Known as “Mr. Republican” for his frontline role in the
eponymous party, he was a strong opponent of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
In 1947 he supported the Taft-Hartley Labor Relations Act. He was
against the United States’ entry into the Second World War and he
further opposed many of the measures adopted during the Cold War
period. The Wagner Act (1937) took its name from Senator Robert
F. Wagner (Democrat), who was responsible, as a result of the law
that bore his name, for the United States Housing Authority, a government
agency with the responsibility of providing low-cost housing.
In 1949, the question of the right to housing was addressed once
again, and the Housing Act was passed—extending the legislation on
public housing—with Taft’s support.