Friedrich August Hayek
Friedrich Hayek — author of The Road to Serfdom and, with Milton Friedman, the intellectual supply of postwar market liberalism — is treated by Haz Al-Din as the pseudoscientific replacement for the classical political economy Marx completed.
From the streams
- Asked directly (DOMINATING LIBS/N*ZIS/GROYPERS/OPPS stream): "What is your take on Hayek, the guy who wrote The Road to Serfdom?" — "I don't really like that guy. I'm not particularly fond of him." (Noting with amusement the questioner remembered an earlier stream where Haz granted Hayek "granules" of credit — "there's always granules and parts of cows, if you will" — partial truths inside ideological wholes.)
- The school's function (MASSIVE DEBATE ROYALE): "Marx so thoroughly critiqued the classical school, brought classical political economy to its logical conclusion, that the bourgeoisie needed a more subjectivist, pseudoscientific economic 'science' to explain why capitalism is the best — and this is where you get folks like Hayek and Milton Friedman." Classical economy asked where wealth and value come from; the Austrians and Chicagoans changed the subject to preference and price.
- Cultural legacy: Road to Serfdom as the founding text of the American libertarian movement (Kanye's CHALLENGE stream).