The Evolution of an Independent Mind

Wirkman Virkkala

I've a theory that all economists who serve in government are corrupted as a result of serving in government, Friedrich Hayek once said. I owe my own independence [to the fact] that I cleared out of every country as soon as they started using me for governmental service. This is one of the many little gems in Hayek on Hayek, edited by Stephen Kresge and Leif Wener, a light adjunct to The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek.

Hayek on Hayek opens with an excellent biographical essay by Kresge, which contains some interesting information I have not seen elsewhere — for instance, Hayek's divorce and second marriage, and its relation to his move to America. But the bulk of the slender volume consists of memoirs by Hayek, interspersed with interviews expanding thoughts and subjects covered in the memoirs. It also includes a radio debate that Hayek subjected himself to in the wake of the popularity of his Road to Serfdom. This round table discussion with two American com-symps — er, progressive socialist-liberals — is a gas. As is the whole book.

The appeal of Hayek on Hayek, I readily admit, is all the gossip in it. Of course, since much of this is old gossip, and about famous people, it qualifies as history. But it is not the kind of history professors dole out to their students:

Lord Beveridge was completely ignorant of any economics whatsoever (p. 83), and did not write the most important parts of his famous book on unemployment (the book that brought Keynesianism to the unwashed masses of politicians). He once wrote, after much counselling by Hayek on the nature of inflation, But unfortunately, as Professor Hayek has discovered [!], an increase in the quantity of money tends to drive up prices (84).
Harold Laski was a pathological problem. Even among his friends today, they recognize he was a pathological liar (82).
Hayek saw the great economist Carl Menger only once, and in a later tribute described the founder of the Austrian School of Economics as tall. This one bit of personal observation in a generally scholarly account was, in fact, the only inaccurate statement: Menger was actually quite medium-sized (54). Hayek, impressed by Menger's bearing, and perhaps overawed by his intellect, simply overestimated his physical stature.
Though by age 15 a convinced agnostic, Hayek's position vis-à-vis the different Christian churches was somewhat ambivalent. As Hayek confesses, he felt that if somebody really wanted religion, he had better stick to what seemed to be the 'true article,' that is, Roman Catholicism. Protestantism always appeared to me a step in the process of emancipation from a superstition — a step which, once taken, must lead to complete unbelief (41).
Contrary to rumor and suspicion, Ludwig von Mises failed to obtain a post at the University of Vienna not out of anti-Semitism (Mises was a Jew), but because the Jewish members of the faculty hated him (Mises was an anti-socialist; they were all socialists).
Hayek was a mountain-climber, and this fact about him — not any contribution he made to economics — was what primarily interested Cambridge economist A.C. Pigou.
Despite John Maynard Keynes's and Hayek's disagreements over economic theory — Hayek figured that Keynes had spent no more than a year studying economics, and that Keynes' knowledge of economic theory was pretty much limited to that of economists of Cambridge, where Keynes taught — the two were actually pretty good friends.
Though Keynes prided himself on his political influence (he described himself as Cassandra), he was unable to get the British government to go along with his and Hayek's plan to fund the war effort in a non-inflationary way. (Could Hayek's support of the scheme have been the jinx?)

For the half-dozen or so people obsessed with trivia about economics and economists, this book is a goldmine. For those trying to make sense of the two most important anti-socialist thinkers of our socialist-drenched age, Hayek on Hayek is also helpful. We get a lot of Hayek here, but alas not much Mises; if you want Hayek's more studied thoughts about his mentor, you'd best consult Volume IV of the Collected Works, The Fortunes of Liberalism (1992), which contains a fascinating chapter on the older economist.

For my part, I was looking for an explanation of how a major intellectual figure like Hayek could recapitulate most of the major ideas of one of his most influential predecessors, Herbert Spencer, without ever mentioning him. Was it a case of politic careerism? It is difficult to come up with a thinker as out of favor as Spencer was during the time Hayek was building his reputation. But once that reputation was established, he would have little reason to slight an un-P.C. antecedent. And Hayek, the consummate historian of ideas, was never reticent about giving credit.

But I found no smoking gun in Hayek on Hayek. Instead, I found quite a lot of evidence suggesting that Hayek's similarity to Spencer is a case of convergent evolution, of a later species evolving to fill the niche left by an extinct one. Few things are more certain than that during the middle 40 years of this century, the years of Hayek's flourishing, Spencerianism was as extinct as the Dodo.

The best evidence for Hayek's independence is found in his work in psychology. In these memoirs, Hayek takes pains to relate his early work on the psychology of sensations to his growing dissatisfaction with the ideas of Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle. His solution to the problems of sensation, memory, and concept-formation may be Spencerian, but it is apparently the result of original research. Readers curious about the development of Hayek's psychological theory or its fruition in the least famous of his great works, The Sensory Order (1952), will be pleased with its extensive treatment in Hayek on Hayek. It appears that any similarity between The Sensory Order, regarded by some scholars as ahead of its time, and Spencer's Principles of Psychology of 1855 and 1870, is coincidental.

(There are more spectacular similarities between the two thinkers — spontaneous order, social evolution, group-selection theory, and a sophisticated opposition to social engineering being only the most obvious. These similarities suggest some sort of influence. Perhaps Hayek got Spencer's ideas through others. Menger and Friedrich von Wieser are two good possibilities: Menger is the most important post-Spencerian spontaneous order theorist, and Wieser turned away from history and toward the more abstract social sciences primarily because of Spencer's work. Mises, who cited Spencer as a precursor, is also a possibility for such indirect influence.)

Of course, the filiation of Hayek's ideas is the prime interest in a book like this. Happily, it adds to our stock of knowledge on this subject. For instance, the similarity between Hayek's thought and Immanuel Kant's is treated nicely (and, thank the Invisible Hand, concisely). Appropriately, Hayek discusses his affinity with Karl Popper's work at greater length. Though this book is no substitute for the more thorough treatments of this subject available, it is good to have a primary document, something parallel to Ludwig von Mises' Notes and Recollections and Margit von Mises' wonderful and peculiar My Years With Ludwig von Mises. Like these books, it imparts a sense of the subject's personality. It also draws a picture of the evolution of Hayek's thought — of its integration, its increased sophistication, and (of course) its divergence from mainstream twentieth-century ideas.

Hayek on Hayek is elegantly designed, with photographic plates and a typesetting style worth noting: the memoir portions are typeset in standard book style, while the interview portions are in a sans-serif type, without right justification. The index is also helpful, with short biographies and bibliographies of all the personages cited in the text. Alas, here I detected two small errors:

Carl Menger is described as an economist and mathematician. Though Menger likely knew math, he is infamous for not having used it in his economics. It was his son, Karl Menger, who was the professional mathematician.
Surely the editors could have found the date of death of Hans Mayer, who succeeded Wieser at the University of Vienna. The citation (p. 166), reads Hans Mayer (1879–?; Austrian economic historian. Author, Die Wirtschaftslehre der Gegenwart (1927–1932)). For the record, Mayer died thirty-seven years before Hayek, in 1955.

But these are minor flaws. It is Hayek who is the center of attention in this book, and I hazard that he should be judged independently of Spencer, Mises, and Mayer. And editors Kresge and Wener have been careful not to err regarding his life, or his opinions.

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