Transcripts For CSPAN2 Bruce 20240705

As many of you know, david boaz, ive been here a long time. I want to remind you that well be taking question both from people here in the audience and from people watching online. And the online audience may the conversation and submit questions directly on the event page or on facebook or youtube web or on twitter using hashtag tag keto events and hopefully all of those questions will come directly to me on this ipad. And if you are asking question in here, please speak directly and clearly into the microphone so everybody can hear you here and online. A lot of my colleagues these days prefer to events in interview but im Old Fashioned and i think when an author has spent years becoming the worlds leading expert on a topic id rather give him a few minutes to tell us what he thinks is important about what hes discovered. So thats what going to do before we take questions and we two outstanding scholars to hear from. It would be presumptive of me to say much about a hike in the presence of Bruce Caldwell and Deirdre Mccloskey, but ill just set the stage a bit. Hayek is best known as a recipient of the nobel prize in economics, or maybe as a distinguished senior fellow of the Cato Institute. But i think that understates the depth breadth of his scholarly work. Lawrence h. Summers, hayek, the author of the single most important thing learn from an economics course today, and Milton Friedman, him as the most important social thinker of the 20th century. John wrote in the new yorker that on the Biggest Issue of all the vitality of, he was vindicated to such an extent that it is hardly an exaggeration to refer to the 20th century as the hayeks. I wrote a few ago hayek was more than just an economist. He published impressive works on political psychology and the methodology of the social sciences. Hes like marx, only right . And with that ill introduce our distinguished speakers and get off the stage. Or technically put down my microphone. Bruce caldwell is Research Professor of economic ics at Duke University and director of the center for the history of political economy. He may be the greatest hayek scholar. He has the general editor of the collected works of f. A. Hayek, which has just been completed after more than 20 years. He is the author of hayeks challenge, an intellectual rule biography of f. A. Hayek. And hes here today because. He is the coauthor of the new fall biography hayek, a life. Though it was a life of such accomplishment that this is only the first of two volumes after he discusses the biography, well hear from Deirdre Mccloskey. And speaking of interdisciplinary scholarship, deirdre is the distinguished scholar isaiah chair in liberal thought at the Cato Institute and professor emerita economics and of history and professor emerita of english and of communication at the university of illinois at, chicago. She previously taught at the university of chicago and the university of iowa, and she is the author of some 24 books, perhaps most notably her bourgeois bourgeois virtues virtue, bourgeois dignity and bourgeois equality, and recently why liberalism works, how liberal values produce fairer, freer, more equal, prosperous world all. Please welcome Bruce Caldwell. David. Im delighted to be here and delighted to be joined on the podium by dear friend deirdre. So what to say as introduction to this book . I cant give you a summary of hayeks life in 20 minutes, given that the book took me ten years to to write. So what i thought id do is just start by my first of all say, why do we need book on hayek . Because indeed there are a number of other works on hayek, including one that that i that i wrote myself. And i think the best way to explain this is i am the general editor of the collected works of hayek. And i became in 2002, i was invited by the second general editor, steven kresge to take over for him. And i said, yes. I mean, this sounds like a wonderful opportunity to get to know more about this person whose work i was already quite interested in. And he said, well, but theres a catch, youll have to be vetted and approved by the hayek family. And i said, okay, okay. I can i can be charming, persuasive, perhaps find out anyway. So i went to devon in england where larry hayek had his home and christine hayek. So his family was his is his son, his daughter. She lived in london. She went down there to to meet me. And i was just blown away by this this introduction into his actual family. Christine hayek was was immediately charmed me completely. I mean, she i said, well, tell me something about your father and and she said, i barely knew the man she rears back and just he was the professor in the study. And i said, oh, my goodness, no, but she goes on and of course, tells me lots and lots and lots of stories about her father and her interaction with her father and his interaction with people that that she knew. And then she left. And larry came to the house and we had another long conversation. And i actually spent the night there. They said, well, lets have dinner. And you spend the night here. And the next day he took me up to his study and. His study was filled with hierarchy, ian memorabilia. Ill just give you a few. First of all, his these are skis that no person who skis today would recognize as skis. Basic he was one of the first out of skiing of type of downhill skiing that that think of as skiing is kind of more or less invented. Back at the time when he was boy and he just bought some skis of the type that would be available then and and he got a manual taught himself how to ski. That was one of the things there was a photographic collection. I said, what this . Well, when he was 16, he would accompany his father was who was a plant geographer would be kind of the way he would be described today. There wouldnt be a description back then, but he would he would accompany his father to various places in the austrian alps and surrounding areas and identify new species or what they thought were new species. And he would take photographs for his father. Each one of these was, you know, to carefully labeled, put into into place. There are a bunch of maps. And i said, what are these maps from . And i figured they were maps that he used when. He was either a skier, he was also an alpinist. He was a mountain climber. Turns out i find out now these maps were the maps that he was using as an artillery during world war one on the italian. So these are all the maps that that he had kept from that. So there was also lots of intellectual sorts of materials in the library and i just i between the interaction with the people and the recognition that there was all this material that had not been in, you know, i was an intellectual historian eminently historian, but i had an i had never i liked reading biographies but had never attempted to would even think about attempting to write one. Well, i was just so taken by the amount of material that was there and and there, there openness and willingness to, to talk it. And it only got better. They shared lots of family correspondence with me. Theres interesting stories behind each one of these things that ill just mention a sentence. There were interviews that bill bartley, who was the first general editor, had that his partner, stephen gave me. There was chriss own materials that he released slowly, surely to me. And i did interviews with larry. He died in 2004, but i did multiple interviews with christine, who became really, in a sense, a close friend, as well as someone who was who i was going to be writing about. One of my favorite times was we went to turner close, which is where they lived for 20 years in london. It was in a very now a very nice area near the Hampstead Heath garden, hampstead garden suburbs and. She hadnt been there for 50 years. This is the place that she grew up as a child. She would point out, oh, well, you know, the trees have grown up and theres a church over there that we used to be able to see the clock and no when it was time to come in and just being there with her and asking her questions in that environment was was very rich because she started to remember things that i think probably would have been difficult to remember. If you just say, well, tell about your childhood, you know, so we we have a lot of material. And what we what we tried to do with the book was to make it both a biography, but also blending that his intellectual contributions. So really putting and as as his Institution Building sorts of contribution so were were really trying to cover the the entire map thats why its such a thick book. If you if youve seen it out there and at the the emphasis would be, first of all that his was a 20th century life. He grew up and and and lived in extreme lonely, Interesting Times in terms of both whats going on in the world, but also whats going on in the economics profession. So he he grew up in fantastically austria he fought in world war one. Americans think of world war one as the, you know, the western front. Well, he he fought on the italian front where over a Million People died. It a fascinating to learn about the various episodes that took place during his war period. He got the spanish flu. Here we are in covid times they. He survived it. He got malaria and gets back to austria and the austrohungarian empire gets gets up. The Russian Revolution takes place. He sees sasha and antisemitism of various varieties emerging in various strange. We have a whole chapter on varieties of antisemitism that existed Central Europe during this period. Mean it was, you know, just doing this work. I learned a lot, all of which was very pleasant. But yeah, fascisms a Great Depression world war two, the the, the rise of the welfare immediately following world war two. All of these various episodes and this is just in, in, in this volume one. Volume one is 1899 to 1950. It 1950. He moved to the university of chicago not quite so close sorry so. We had one person who said we i didnt realize he he he died so early and i said, oh no, this is just volume one. Its just volume one. So the other thing that i wanted to emphasize is that we tried to place him in in time and place in the context of the people that he interacted with. One of the things about about hayek is as a figure to study is that he interacted with everyone. The Austrian School of economics people, people at the London School of economics, a Lionel Robbins and a whole host of people who are in robbins grand in the 1930s, when hayek was there, this was a this was a place where a lot of the, uh, the formalism of what we, what intermediate price theory and intermediate macroeconomics was developed. So he was on hand when this stuff was being developed. Of course there were his famous battles with the with various types of socialists as well as with John Maynard Keynes in the 1930. So we get to all of those stories up at the montpellier in society she founded in 1947. He this brought together all of the liberals, all of the most famous liberals of the 20th century were most of them were at that meeting. And those who werent were people who he had invited, but they werent able to come but ultimately became members. And just looking at the interactions, these people, one of the one of the side projects that came out this doing this book was another book with the Hoover Institution press on the very first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in 47. And its a transcript of what took place at the meeting. Not a verbatim transfer script, but gives you a sense of sorts of things that were being discussed at a very, very fraught time. Mean europe in 1947 was in is in horrible situation when it was still occupied. There was four zones of occupation through much of europe as they were trying to resolve what what was going to happen going forward. And that was the context in which they they had this meeting, important meeting, where they were saying what what would liberalism for the the postwar 20th century look like. So i have so many things to say about and what i should probably do at this point is just shut up and see if theres any questions. Its when we get to the q a and. That would probably be a better way to to deal with it. So thank you. For. Thank you, Bruce Deirdre mccloskey. Well, ill be brief, but youve heard professors say that before. That was a charming. Vignette. I think the thats an excellent. Entry way to this this fascinating book. I only came to hayek very late in my academic career. I was like so many people in that. In that 20th century where i started as a socialist, the old joke is that if youre not a socialist when youre 16, you have no heart, youre still a socialist. At 26, you have no and i just made it on both counts, but i didnt turn to austrian economics as i thought of hayek as being or understand not much about him really. The 1990s, as late as that. And it the key point that i got from the book book was what do we mean by being a liberal person work when were talking earlier and we we said we dont agree we we think we should take back the word liberal and perhaps put on the shelf the word. Libertarian and surely neo liberal or liberal. Those all need to go. We to get back to the l word and whats plain about hayek is that hes not a man of dogma. I mean, he hes accused of being a conservative. And he has a famous essay, if i had an as an appendix to the constitutional liberty, which is why i am not a conservative and he wasnt a conservative of a conservative. It would be someone who thinks about known past and admires it and wants to get back or to hold on to some or all of its and a progressive or a socialist is someone who looks forward to an imagined future. You often hear our friends. Our friends on the left, and i still have friends in the left who say, well, you, i want to be on right side of history. And i seem to know what the right side of history was in the 1940s at the end of this book, everyone thought that socialism was inevitable and this tiny group around hayek and he was very much at the heart of this, said, no, we think maybe theres theres hope for for saving a free society. So he was neither a conservative nor a progressive or a socialist. And then it shows in his School Career and his university career, he he founded a group when he was at the u. University of havana, which they called the la the geist crisis everything in vienna, all meetings were were crisis that is circles and their main principle was that they werent going to choose between catholics and or protestants they werent going to choose between socialists and conservatives. They werent going to choose between austrians and germans or austrians and whoever they were going to admit and encourage and intellectual girls interaction. Anyone who didnt want to belong to of those tribes. So it was against the tribalism which is so vivid these days in our politics here in the United States where you choose up your sports team and youre either a or a gop maga or a socialist, and youre wrong. And i think thats the core of modern liberalism since the 18th sense. Everyone came to be rather suddenly in france originally and then in scotland and britain and holland in this. 17th century. The the idea that neither were now here is the key point neither a masterful state with Central Planning nor a self and self indulgent individual is how society works. Hi, its great discovery or rediscovery, you might say was the invisible hand of adam smith. It was that most of our institutions, most of our life, our Economic Life is in between. Its not macro and micro. Its messel. Its the spontaneous orders, as he would say, of human interaction, as in the german language, which is not planned by anyone. And i cant just say, well, now im going use the word, for christs sake. Now crisis is the word. Youre youre stuck with it. And, and most so social institutions. So the the side of the french enlightenment or the the characteristically french side of the enlightenment is the reason side. And he didnt believe in a unaided human reason and that sense that sense he shared was people like edmund burke, a conservative, but he also he also didnt believe in the corresponding french idea of rousseau and so forth that private property the problem and we need to crush it and centrally plan on the contrary he believed all through his life in in the liberty side of the enlightenment which what you see in france but its especially obvious in adam smith and david hume and of the scottish enlightenment so oh i came to hayek late. Hes had a tremendous influence. Me and i highly recommend this book because hell have an influence on you. Thank you, deirdre. Well the florida questions. Now, as i said online you can submit questions a variety of ways facebook youtube, hashtag keto events. And here in the auditorium raise your hand and we will bring a microphone to you all right right there in the back. Thank you. Bert ely. Before proposing my question, i just want to mention that i had the pleasure of the time that i came to cato and i came here, what year was david . But i may probably not long before he died, but it was a real pleasure. And i still think back it of hearing the man himself speak as he did to cato that day. My question is, is this to what extent did hayek get into monetary manners and monetary theory in the Banking System and finance and just looking through the index, i didnt see references to that. And i was wondering if thats the theory he just didnt get into or it something youll address in the second book . No he actually started his intellectual career with a book called monetary theory in the trade cycle, so he interacted with keynes on their respective models of of of, you know, in hayeks case, it was a it was a theory of a capital using monetary economy. And his critique of keynes was that keynes had left out the capital theory. So his his early work in monetary theory and if its not clear from the table contents, it will be when. You look at the sections on his work in the late twenties and the early thirties, he continued, having an interest in that throughout the thirties and then he kind moved into other areas, but he returned to this in the 19 late 1960s and early 1970s and and he had, as is is often the case. He changed his mind through time. He originally was was a great advocate in terms of policy a great advocate of the Gold Standard by the late thirties he he moved away from that in the in the sixties he actually had a chapter on the monetary framework in the constitution of liberty and by the 1970s he changed his mind again and talked about you know, competition against the fed as possibly something that you you want to countenance his writings on money are often at a very high level. His early work is is theoretical theory in this case means not mathematics but models that are expressed in words. And some of these papers are pretty difficult to follow. So we you know, we i think we in an a in an appendix, some of the early work a kind of summarizing it. So but its there youll be able to find it and it certainly was a theme throughout his throughout his life. And speaking of whats in the book, let me just point out to the people are here in the room that there are copies of the book for sale out there. Feel free to pick one up right now or when the event is concluded. I believe hayek lectured at cato on our in our Capitol Hill Office in 1983. I think he came again for lunch in 1984, but that was a small lunch, not a public event. He was our first distinct lecturer when we found out hayek was available to give a lecture, we said, well, we have to. We have to call it something. So we called it distinguished, and then we had a few more distinguished lecturers over the years before we decided that all of our lecturers distinguished enough. Well, yeah, thats that sounds right. Okay, another question right here. High water, masada. Is there anything else you can say about hayek mentioning that he killed another soldier in handtohand combat . It seems to be mentioned almost by passing. Its something that hayek maybe didnt want to talk about too much. Or is there anything else you can tell us about that . Yes. So we do have a chapter on his war experience and he was bored through most of it. Thats thats the the first thing to mention. He he joined the army and made it the front in of 1917, right after the Austrian Army had had a big advance and they advanced from isonzo river to the prv river, and the prv river is very wide and shallow, and the two lines just sat there through most of the time that was at the front. So he became really bored there was nothing going on. He did have a trauma in that his his closest friend childhood friend. He found out had died of dysentery. He himself was able to keep clear and a lot of people were dying of diseases in world war one, as opposed to to military encounters and. So the only action he saw was right at the very end. And he mentioned it to bill berkeley in an interview, one of the interviews that bartley shared us, where he puts it in a way that is very. Yeah, it was it was a confusion of war. It was he thinks he may have stabbed this guy and and that was it he wasnt making any big deal about it but i berkeley was a bit of a someone who loved to tell a story and he told the story to John Blondell who also loves to tell the story and and John Blondell reported on this, an ieee publication. And when i that i said that doesnt that doesnt sound like highiq at all the way it was being reported, the way that he reported to berkeley was, i think a better representation, which is he thinks he killed somebody. Okay. But it was a, you know, it was a it was a combat situation. So and he described the guys. He was a little italian and was very tall, you know, so couldnt who knows what happened. This is one of the wonderful things about doing a biography is trying to figure out these things. But its all we do. We do a count for that particular tale. I think we. Put it in a footnote. Were counting the bits about bartley and blundell. Let me bring the online audience in here. I see two questions that are sort of similar, although it may turn out its like five questions, but well well see how that works. An anonymous emailer says while writing this book, did you find something about hayek that you thought was controversial . Maybe a lot or difficult to believe and then greg ransom asks, what did you come across in the papers and archives that you look through that most surprised you or most delighted you or was most exciting to discover. Or thats going to be a lot. Ill be able to ill be able to say a lot of we discovered a lot of things that that i didnt know. So we do have quite an extensive of coverage of his divorce. And i knew that he got divorced. I didnt know the details and that story is a sad story. Its a tragic story. But that is certainly treated in some depth. But the sort surprising and delightful things. One of them is something that deirdre referred to his his university. So he grew up in an antisemitic environment and his own family, his family, his mother in particular, but also his father. His father was the head of a medical association that had an aryan paragraph, which meant that they they disallowed jewish members of his his close friend who he started the geist christ with, although he was lutheran herbert firth was a lutheran. His his descent was was jewish lots of people would convert to some protestant denomination in order to find employment if you were jewish. So he was his closest friend in college and Universe Party and they formed this this group and the group was mostly jewish people and he could not associated with jewish people before. In a sense it was a period when he discovered the jewish intelligentsia of vienna. Vienna is a big city. But in terms of the area in which they were interacting was very place. As four said later, everyone knew everyone else. And but here was this whole group of people that because of his family background he had not interacted with. He started interacting with at university. And indeed, he you know, he he went against his family, his mother was disgusted by the fact that he was interacting with these people, these people, and how he was just these people are really smart. In fact, he he did he did some research to try to find whether or not he was jewish. You know, whether he had jewish heritage because he thought a lot of these people, these are great people, these are smart. They have knowledge of literatures that i have no knowledge of. You know, he he grew up knowing the german canon but yeah, had french and italian english literature. So that was that was a delightful find. And he has independence there of of just as you say no dogma, he he he he investigates things and tries to figure them out on his own and comes to his own conclusions. And another example of something that this was a chapter that we a specialized in terms of division of labor adam smith would have been proud in terms of writing chapters and i did one on on his visit to new york, which was a wonderful again exploring asian to to to to undertake because new york he went to new york in 1920 324 which is the of the Roaring Twenties and it it was fascinating to do the research and trying to figure out the the the space that he was occupying at that particular point in and also his reactions to it very much a standard Central European reaction to america of his time. He he came with lot of preconceptions and any wrote back home and all of them are being reinforced. Okay he had a kind of almost a visceral reaction against American Culture as a as an upper class, Central European might. But he also was learning so much there. So he attended Wesley Claire mitchells a course. Mitchell was a leading american institutionalist. He was just about to become president of the American Economic associate nation. And and he saw echoes in in in mitchells views of ideas that he thought were completely discredited from the German Historical School that Austrian School of economics had it as opponents. So hes hes hes from this guy but hes also saying how is it that that views that we think have been have already been refuted are suddenly you know very taken taken to be avant garde. You know the latest the latest thing and this started him on his his ultimate project of arguing against scientism that you can get this kind of of planning just like a engineer might plan a bridge. We can plan society in such a way in the german storycorps old school, writers were german imperialists and conservatives. This is an american progressive, yet theyre sharing this vision. What can be done to society by the experts to make it a better place . And it was a vision that he that he found a dangerous one. So at the same time that reacting to american society, hes hes also thinking hes going to the Library Night and he discovers british liberalism in the readings he did at the library. And hes also become fascinated by how news is reported. So he had fought in the war on the austrian german side. He had a vision of what was going on in the war. He reads all of these other historical accounts and, recognizes how biased the reporting was, not only in the types of, you know, just the general impression that people had about the war, having been on on that other side and and recognizing the the carefulness with which these writers were were opposing what had taken place during the war that contradicted everything he knew. This was fascinating to him. And he actually started he came up with a project. He was always coming up with projects of having International Page in every newspaper that would have contributors for Different Countries and reporting what they saw the as what was going on as kind of a way to balance against the the kind of jingoism that you get from Just National reporting. So it was it it was so much fun to kind of put together his experience as a person, plus his intellect, full experiences that in each one of these places, because in each one of these places hes dealing with different, different sets of circumstances, different locations and different ideas and it was a fun. We have a lot of Great Questions coming in online. Do we have a question in here . All right. Ill take one more here. Thank you. David sobel in washington, d. C. I have a question about your subtitle. Im wondering what went into your decision as to have that particular subtitle, for example, why you didnt include part one or chapter one or volume one. That was a recommendation by the university of Chicago Press and im not sure we did. We talk about maybe doing saying volume one that is promising that be a volume two, number one. And i could get hit by a truck as i go out the door. Maybe there wouldnt be a volume to. So maybe there was a worry that or maybe there was also a worry that. People would say, well, wait a second. You know, volume one, i dont know if i want to, but im not sure. They just we we went to them and said what we call this book because we really didnt have a title for the book. And he said, well, its high acolytes. Yeah, its its ive faced this myself. Publishers hate volume one. Volume two. They just hate it because then what happens is that the customers say, wow, what do you mean . I got to commit to three volumes of this , you know . No, i cant. And they wont buy the first one. All right. Let me try some questions here. Several questions are along this line from bruce. 80 years after the publication of the road to serfdom, what would hayek say today about the health of our liberal institutions and traditions to resist authoritarian fascism and the reemergence of socialism . What would he advise us. So there used to be this bracelet that teenagers what would jesus do okay. And this is kind of what would hayek say is another its one of those difficult questions because youre trying to take a person out of his time period and put them in hours and figure out what would say so. And particularly given the framing that question, which was basically given all of the the the the tensions we find in current society. And i would just say read the chapter over on the formation of the montpellier in society in 1947 because we do we do do the background as to what the world looked like then and how horrible things were and what their response was to that. And if you look at the at the, at the montpellier society book and the ten topics that they that they discussed every, one of them maps to problems that weve got today. Only i think they were more serious back then and yeah, 1930s it was it was the same sort thing. We didnt have a recession we had the Great Depression, for gods sakes. So they were living through times that in fact were much more intense than the times that we live in today. Take a look at what they his his response to it was. Lets see if we can with liberalism is everywhere under attack. I teach a course at Duke University liberalism and its critics. It looks at the history of liberalism and attacks on the left and the right throughout the hundred and 50 years. Its always been under attack. And theres not a lot of, frankly speaking, in the attacks that are taking place today. So thats one of the lessons of history. In the time period that they were existing in, they were responding these these same sorts of pressures. So ill ill step. There was a sort of proto montpellier in Society Meeting in 1937. Right. Thats largely unknown. Yes. So in 1938 there was a in paris called the clock. Lippmann Walter Lippmann had written a book called the good society. Hayek was quite enthusiastic about the book. Here was a journalist, a famous american journalist. I mean, really famous, this was the Walter Cronkite before. Walter cronkite, everyone read lippmann and his opinion pieces, and he was arguing for a liberal vision, basically. And so this meeting took place in 1938. Hayek had a hand in arranging it and they met von mises was the number of the people not actually. There was less overlap than than you would think of the people who were at the lippmann and the montpellier in society. But it was very much a proto montpellier Pelerin Society sort of meeting because they too were saying liberalism is everywhere under attack. What are are its problems and what would a new liberalism look like . And they formed center that was going to carry that work forward. But this was in. 1938 and in 1939 that was no on the table with this with the start of world war two. So the montpellier society in a sense did contribute continue on the work that was kind of laid out in in that earlier meeting. There is a a transcript of that meeting as thats available at least at my university. This is something that can be this is a book that can be accessed, accessible online. So its a its interesting as well. Hayek attended it, unfortunately, whoever was taking notes, the original transcript was in french and then that was translated. And thats what the book is thats thats available online. But how the the person doing the translation didnt really understand people who are talking in english. So what so theres not much of hayek there because i talked in english so emily chamblee. Right. Says hayeks work deepens our understanding of institution is essential to free and prosperous societies. Nodding to Deirdre Mccloskey his thesis on dignity as driving force of the great enrichment, how would hayek respond to that argument . So, so argument . What the well in spencer specifically the change in toward individual dignity and enterprise. Well i think he would in the here he is hes hes good really he like annie hall hes going to agree with me hes on the stage here i, i think he would that. Ground changes are what change the world not so much top down i mean institute versions like an independent not a tertiary or a parliament or something are are neces sary. But as the three soviet constitutions show, theyre not theyre not sufficient at and i was my much influenced as i said by his contrast between the french in light moment and the scottish enlightenment and in the scottish enlightenment it was ground up which has to be based on as david hume famously said, moral sentiments are before theorizing and they and the and the more french idea top down. So sure i think he would. Agree with my books and praise them. You should put a blurb on it a attributed to fact. All right. Heres a challenge bruce. Despite his claim of not being a conservative, isnt hayek ultimately a man of the right. So the essay why am not a conservative is the appendix to hayeks 1960 book, the constitution of liberty. So why would i say . Hes not a conservative so. The context for this is that and he states, by the way, in in the second or third paragraph early on in that in that epilog that in the american context, a conservative is someone whos returning to the founding, which was a liberal. So if youre going to be a conservative in the United States, it means youre being a liberal and. We had a great colloquium with george orwell, who made the same argument in in a recent book. So this is thats thats an important. Preface to why hayek might write why not a conservative . Excuse me so what he was about was a different sort of conservatism the sort of conservatism that might be associated with with various countries in europe that and remember, the 1950s, even in the United States, was kind of when conservatism was being revived. Okay, William Buckley et al. And he had hayek had read Russell Kirks book, a conservative mind, early on, like some of it, and disliked other parts of it. And actually this essay started out as a as a a paper that he delivered at a montpellier and Society Meeting and kirk objected to it. So there was there was a bit of a discussion that took place this is in the 1950s, so youll have to wait for two to get to this bit. But it was a it was a warning in sense to, american readers, that theres certain of conservatism that believe in hierarchy that that are that want to preserve a proper d being very narrowly owned that believes in natural law which hayek was not a particular advocate of and indeed an opponent of. Thats an interesting question that i wont i wont go too far into here. But he you know, he had he had reservations about natural law theorizing to justify liberal institutions. So that was what he was opposing. And he was contrasting it with the and the openness of a of a of a of Market Society and indeed see echoes of these sorts of debates taking place again today where conservatives are saying, yeah, wed like markets, but jeez, you know, the theyre there if you have free markets, youre opening up society to all sorts of problems that we we think perhaps we should constrain with the sort of government that we like to be able to constrain it. So, again, these debates are, you know, you know, i on this on this theme of his anti dogmatism. Most people believe that the left right spectrum, which i remind you, comes from the seating plan of the french assembly. And its not a natural object. Is is all you need to know about politics either youre on the left or the and thats it. Whereas we liberals in cluding hayek float above of thats that left right arms spectrum the spectrum is devoted to deciding how the massive powers of the state shall be used against individuals. In the case of the left, economically, in the case of the right, all kinds of ways. And we say it spanish and we say, to hell with it. We, we, we, we dont were not on the spectrum any there was he just to reinforce that in that very he does say left right is wrong that there should be a triangle yeah lets write is separate exactly floating above there it is its at the apex heres a question it goes in a different direction. Carmen chu writes if i am not wrong, hayek admitted that his pure theory of capital was incomplete as a theory of capital and money, so far as you know, did leave any unpublished notes or writings regarding any potential further work on the topic. Yeah, this is this is a wonderful. So he he for seven years on book called the pure theory of capital that was meant to be a two volume work. Hayek was always projecting multivolume works and at the end of seven years, he said, he said in interviews he was happy that in this case that the war started because it kind of absolved him of the responsibility of having to do volume two because hed he just sickened of this. It was a real struggle he was trying to do. He was trained as a lawyer and hes trying to do pure theory. Thats thats going to be tough thats going to be tough to do. So the last couple of chapters of the pure theory of capital actually of outline the direction he have taken it to integrate it with monetary theory. His plan was to do a full integration of capital theory with monetary theory. And he doesnt he doesnt accomplish that. And he didnt try to to to continue with that work afterwards. Whats whats wonderful about the story is that probably his most famous piece is a paper called the use of knowledge in society certainly among economists. This is his most famous piece. This is something that he whipped off in a matter of weeks when he was in gibraltar doing work for the british government. Late 1944. His friend from the geist kreiss, fritz mcclure, was in the United States, had become the associate editor of the American Economic review and said, look, fritz, send me a paper. And fritz said, oh, and it goes okay. When he gets to gibraltar, he decides to do it. And it basically, if you look at some of his earlier work, theres a theres a little piece that he wrote for the oxford liberal review, kind of a student paper in 1941, 1942, that has the ten example that is one of the famous examples of of how a market coordinates disperse knowledge human action in a world of dispersed knowledge. You basically drew on earlier work and, wrote something very quickly, and it becomes his most famous paper versus the thing that he works on for seven years that doesnt go anywhere. And indeed, he writes a sardonic a to does to a friend. He says, ive been saying this stuff for ten years, but it gets in the American Economic review and suddenly everybody thinks, oh, great, you know, i mean, so there we go. The academic just one of many stories. Somebody writes. Okay. All right. Right here. Thank you. Microphones coming coming after ibm, i believe supply side economics is, often regarded as a modern hayek theory in many areas. So i wonder how hayek would evaluate the supply supply side economics forged by Arthur Laffer, adapted by reagan and trump. Thank you. I dont know. Do you want to try question supply side economics . Would that be sure . The idea theres a supply side in the economy is something that was basically by keynesians keynesians, some of my early work. So my Early Historical work was saying, now wait a second, the british growth cant all be about demand there are resource and resource constraints and no free lunches. So i think he would approve that part of it. I dont think he would have approved of my friend Arthur Laffer is sort of casual attitude towards decreasing taxes as. Hayek would have come of age during. This huge hyperinflation after world war one in germany and i guess the response of the german and austrian government say oh they owed reparations coming out of the dawes plan and, they went to wall street to finance this. Ultimately, i guess gets complicated with the depression anyway. How aware was hayek of was going on when he was with this whole thing and what impact did it have on his theories so if we wanted to draw the simplest contrast between hayek and keynes is that hayek lived through the hyperinflation, whereas keynes lived in an england after world, one that was beset by high levels of unemployment for the decade preceding, the Great Depression. So so the sorts of concerns they brought to their theorizing. I very much reflected those two different experiences in terms of his personal experiences. He he worked at a temporary Government Office and. He got that employment before the austrian hyperinflation took off. It wasnt as bad as a german one, but it pretty bad. And and his his salary was protected. But in terms of virtually everyone he knew and his family members, yeah, they were there. Savings were decimated by the hyper inflation. You know, savings just thats those are the losers during, a hyperinflation. Anyone who had any kind of savings and you know the the impact that hyperinflation had in both austria and germany in terms of of exacerbating the tensions the class tensions that that already existed were everywhere evident. So it it was a really important part of of his intellectual formation. He he always had a sardonic wit about him. So he said i in one of his letters home in 1923, 24, when he was in new york, he said, i would ask you to send me a a million crown note, but i dont have a penny. I dont they dont they dont allow us to split something less than a penny. So it was, it was something along those which i thought was pretty good, you know, over here. Thank you very much. As a as you said an intellectual biographer, id be curious to know hayek in his early adulthood and university how his ideas were influenced by things like the viennese cycle analytic society, by some of philosophy that was going on in vienna at the time, like wittgenstein and the sort of overall vienna secessionist esthetics too. How did that influence his thought, both in terms of the things wrote about psychology, which did, and then how that went on to influence him as an austrian economist. So. He grew up in a family. Scientists, mostly natural scientists, but he did write he did have an early interest in psychology. It was he wrote a paper that was challenging some of ernst marks views about sensations. This is something that later grew into his 1952 book, the order. So this was a long lasting interest that had got to the London School of economics in, the early 1930s. And everyone said, oh, from vienna, what do you think about, freud and and and he thought that freud was a fraud, basically. I mean, he had the same sort of evaluation that karl had that if you cant if youre if youre saying that youre explaining everything with something that cant be tested, then its not really science. Indeed, he had he the opportunity to meet freud. When freud went to london. He, you know, escaped the nick of time from vienna and about a year later died but had come to the London School of and everyone was fawning over him and hayek just he declined to even meet him so he he was vienna as i said before vienna intellectually was very small place. So he was if it was an intellectual, he was aware of it. Finkelsteins ludwig wittgenstein, a was a second cousin to his mother, so they were related and they interacted to some extent. Him less so when he was in vienna, more when when they were both together in cambridge during the war. This viewer says i was a business student at the university of chicago before professor mccloskey was there. There was no of austrian economics and definitely not hayek or hayek and. Austrian contributions to economics being covered more these days. No, and its its very strange. I was i was on the faculty at university of chicago for years and hayeks no not was israel kerzner his books were being published by the university of Chicago Press and they keep reminded. So i bought copies of because they were cheap, but i didnt read them very carefully. And and the its very strange for me maybe bruce can shed light shed light on it. There was a kind of contempt for austrian among the chicago economists symbolized the failure of the department of economics to hire this guy when they had a chance. He was upstairs in the committee on social thought, you know. So again, its an interesting story. Hayek name had been proposed to. The department of economics back in 46. But the people that they ended up considering and that was the year ultimately they hired Milton Friedman but some of the people who also being considered for the positions that were that had opened up if you look at them they were doing theory of the sort that the economist today would view as real theory. Yeah yeah mathematical Mathematical Modeling and and so. At the same time at chicago, there was a group called, the kohls commission, and they were very mathematical. They were basically this is the the group that took took it beyond intermediate price theory in macroeconomics to to the stuff that you would get in grad and they were all there in the in the 1950s. And whats fascinating this is going to be again in volume two, but the chapter that ive been working recently is a wonderful seminar that hayek put together in the 50 to 53 Academic Year in which he had people like frank night. He had Milton Friedman. Milton friedman actually gave an early version prior to publication of the methodology of positive economics, the paper that became kind of the the statement of, of, of in hayeks view anyway, the, the positive mistakes of, of, of the chicago school. So theres so there was always a tension there in terms of methodology, certainly between friedmans vision and. In hayeks vision, hayek thought that testing was important, but falsification was very difficult, and that that youre not to have the kind of cumulative progress in economic theory that was held out as being possible particularly in the 1950s, that a very that was a very optimistic age about what economics was going be able to accomplish. I was there. Im so sorry. Im thinking about this question about you. Do you learn about hayek and austrian economics in College Classes . Would it be fair to say that in physics classes today you dont learn about or newton you learn todays state of the art as the professor and the textbook understand it, and that in economics you dont study smith and marshall and high eq, you study state of the art understanding economics. Yeah but its its its its a grave mistake in a lot of fields in other field of history. Its a mistake, but its certainly a mistake in bob lucas, another Nobel Prize Winner in his graduate macroeconomics course at the university of chicago, he announces the first day, were not going do any article thats older. Five years. And so ive heard page ph. D. Graduate of the university of chicago, speak of this person, John Maynard Keynes. They dont know how to pronounce keynes and hayek. Theyve never of so and a long time ago, axel lange hotfoot, right . Oh, great economists pointed out in the history of thought that they had the advantage of feel like economics is that if you reach a dead end, you can go back down the tree of knowledge and find where you went wrong. So there theres a kind of crazy arrogance about this. Well just do the last five years of papers. Lets wrap this up here with. Well, ill give you a final question, but if you have final thoughts that you want to expand into, you can. Can you talk about or did you find out anything interesting about relationship between hayek and karl. Yes. Ill give an abbreviated summary. Its a wonderful relationship, and it continued on until their deaths. So this is a long term relationship. But popper is austrian philosopher of science, often associated the doctrine of falsification ism that scientific theories make make falsifiable hypotheses season that that is constant challenge of scientific reasoning is is that you want to put claims that can be proven wrong by by evidence. Thats what science does thats what makes it different from theology. One could draw that kind contrast so or freud or marx so were open ended predict. Well the revolution is supposed to come right . It hasnt come yet. Well, you just got to give it more time. Yeah, okay. That that thats not it. Pretends be science, but its not really science. So popper gives a paper at hayeks seminar. They didnt know each other in vienna, but hayek had learned about poppers from his friend habila, who was in vienna. And he said, you have this guy in for your seminar, give his his, his seminar. They meet each other and then some little correspondence. But hayek ends up im sorry. Popper up going to new zealand he to get out of vienna many of his relatives ended up dead. You know he was hes jewish so he he gets new zealand and then in the middle of world war two, they start up a correspondence and part of the correspondence is popper saying desperately, please get me out of this place. Okay. That they dont care about research here. They they dont have a library of any sort. Im dying intellectually here. Please help me. Help me. And independent of that. Theyre both on basically historicism and its problems. Okay. And and scientism and its they both have a similar view of whats wrong in the social science is but poppers coming from a philosophers point of view and hayek is coming at it from the view of someone who knows the writings in the social sciences. So they both recognize each other, somebody who can help them develop their arguments further. So this becomes a very rich conversation that, you know, you send a letter and four months later you get you get a response. So one of the interesting ill finish with this this final episode, one of the interesting things i learned was the poverty of a of historicism, which is poppers little book, the half of it doesnt match up well with the second half of it. And i never understood why that was true when read this correspondence, i suddenly why it was true. Hayek offered to publish the paper in three parts in the journal economics, which is published at the London School of economics in the proper sense, in the first, third and then gets a number of pieces from hayek that is on similar topics. He realizes that what hes going to say in the and third part he needs to revise it so its more consist with what hayek is saying because is basically giving him a an opportunity to express himself in a in a major journal so he modifies the way hes put things but it really destroyed the the overall overall coherence of the piece in the hayek is instrumental helping popper come to the london of economics, which is where he taught for the rest of his life. So popper was always very appreciative of of hayeks on his behalf, not only to get his work published, also to help him find a position that was not that was not in new zealand. I, ive never been to new zealand. I dont know. His claims were that. But anyway that was, thats the story. All right thank you. Deirdre mccloskey thank you Bruce Caldwell. The book is hayek a life at fine bookstores everywhere. Thank you all for coming. Thank you all for watching on the broadcast