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

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REVIEWS AND COMMENTS BY MURRAY N. ROTHBARD 71 3. LETTER ON THE CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY BY F.A. HAYEK June 11, 1960 Mr. Kenneth S. Templeton William Volker Fund Dear Ken: F.A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty is a work monumental in its scope and invaluable for the extent of its erudition. 20 Of the twenty-five chapters in the complete work, I reviewed fourteen in detail in draft form. (See my confidential memorandum of January 21, 1958, and my critique for Hayek sent to you on January 24, 1958.) The major change in those chapters is the far greater breadth of the footnotes, which now become an invaluable reference source for people wishing to dig further into the literature on liberty. Hayek’s work may be divided into three parts: philosophical, historical, and economic applications. His aim is to erect a groundwork for a theory and systematic approach to liberty; unfortunately Hayek fails in this aim, in all three departments. Philosophically, Hayek grounds freedom solely on the shaky reed of man’s ignorance. There are good arguments to be drawn for leaving all roads open so that knowledge can expand, but this hardly deserves the exclusive reliance that Hayek places on it. So concerned is Hayek to oppose rationalism as the threat to liberty, that he abandons any attempt 20 F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS 72 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI for a rationalist groundwork for liberty. While Hayek has improved on his previous draft slightly, in richness of material and in qualifying particularly poor passages, there is no substantive change in his position. As before, Hayek begins very well in the first chapter by defining freedom as meaning “absence of coercion,” but fails badly in defining “coercion.” For Hayek, “coercion” is defined as arbitrary, specifically harmful acts; the term is thus used much more broadly and yet more narrowly than its proper definition: “the use of violence.” Hence, Hayek can say that for a factory to fire a worker in a place where unemployment is heavy—or to threaten to fire him—is an act of “coercion,” on the same level as actual acts of violence. Hayek’s only principle of noncoercion for government is the “rule of law,” on which he places exclusive reliance. In such a chapter as chapter 16, “The Decline of the Law,” Hayek is excellent in attacking modern legal philosophers who push the state in a socialistic direction beyond the rule: such as Kelsen and the legal positivists, and Harold Laski. 21 However, Hayek spends virtually equal emphasis on attacking those who would narrow the rule to limit government activity to defense of life, liberty, and property. Hayek attacks this as an “extreme,” unduly narrow, etc., view of the role of government. To Hayek, laissez-faire is almost as bad an outgrowth of “rationalism” as is socialism. This book makes clear to me, as the first fourteen chapters of the draft did not, that Hayek’s rule of law limits are 21 Harold Laski (1893–1950) was an English political theorist and professor of political science at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. He was convinced that socialism in England had been more greatly influenced by John Stuart Mill than by Karl Marx, and he taught a kind of modified Marxism. He was a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee between 1937 and 1949 and significantly influenced its policy. He was chairman of the Labour Party from 1945 to 1946. He wrote A Grammar of Politics (1925); Liberty in the Modern State (1930); Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (1943); and The American Democracy (1948).
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© 2009 by the Ludwig von Mises Ins
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ROTHBARD’S UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS I
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LAW AND NATURE IN THE WORK OF MURRA
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CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF
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REFERENCES 1 Buckley, William F. Go
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REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 151 BIB
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REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 153 Dav
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REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 155 giv
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“Absolutes, Relativism, and the S
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INDEX 161 environment, 123-24 Essay
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INDEX 163 Jesuits, 24 judges, 69 ju
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INDEX 165 Oriental Despotism (Wittf
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INDEX 167 Socrates, 26n42 solidarit
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Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

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