On Classical Liberalism

Hayek, Freedom, and Serfdom

Once upon a time, I regarded Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and the Austrians — and also Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and the libertarians — with respect and admiration, but in important ways as adversaries.

They were not (I thought) on my team. I no longer think that. I think that they are on my team, or (much better), that I am on their team. Among other things, they saw something crucial about a foundation of the liberal tradition: freedom from fear.

There is a personal reason for my former view. I spent over a quarter of the century at the University of Chicago, and while I learned so much from Richard Posner and Richard Epstein, and also from Gary Becker and George Stigler, they represented, in a way, the prevailing wisdom in the Chicago environment. Some young people, in the law school and the economics department, seemed to me a bit like lemmings.

I didn’t agree with Posner and Epstein, or with Becker and Stigler. In any case, the idea of just following them, and marching in their big footsteps, did not seem so appealing. It would have felt like a form of obedience.

Way back then, I thought that Posner and Epstein (and Becker and Stigler too):

(1) had a stylized, fairy tale account of government failure;

(2) were insufficiently empirical;

(3) were far too allergic to redistribution;

(4) underplayed the endogeneity of human preferences;

(5) underplayed deliberative democracy and the idea of the public interest; and

(6) had an unrealistic and a priori account of human rationality.

Hayek and the Austrians, and the American libertarians, were not the same as my older Chicago colleagues, of course, but I saw them as part of the same general tradition. (By the way, I still think (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), and (6).)

Back then, I did admire Hayek in particular, and I taught some of his work almost every year. (And I read far more of his work than I taught.) His discussions of the failures of planning, of human ignorance, and of the price system, are fundamental, and are relevant to many things (including federal rulemaking).

Hayek’s understanding of the Rule of Law seemed, and seems, to me flawed,* but still, there is a lot in it. I don’t think he is right about the road to serfdom, but his worries are the right worries.

Many people like to distinguish between what they see as classical liberalism, represented by Hayek (among others), and what they see as modern liberalism, associated with (for example) John Rawls and the New Deal. In their view, the classical liberals were focused on freedom, including economic freedom, while modern liberals are more focused on equality, and are open to or even enthusiastic about restrictions on economic liberty.

For reasons elaborated by Stephen Holmes, the opposition between classical liberals and modern liberals may not be so helpful. Still, many people like it, and care about it.

Here’s what I want to emphasize. I like Hayek a lot less ambivalently than I once did, and von Mises, who once seemed to me a crude and irascible precursor of Hayek, now seems to me to be (mostly) a shining star (and sometimes fun, not least because of his crudeness and irascibility). The reason is simple: They were apostles of freedom. They believed in freedom from fear.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, I did not see that clearly enough, because they seemed to me to be writing against a background that was sharp and visible to them, but that seemed murky and not so relevant to me — the background set by the 1930s and 1940s, for which Hitler and Stalin were defining. (After all, Hayek helped found the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947.)

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, socialist planning certainly did not seem like a good idea, not at all, but liberalism, as I saw it, had other and newer fish to fry. People like Rawls, Charles Larmore, Edna Ullmann-Margalit (in The Emergence of Norms), Jurgen Habermas (a past and present hero), Amartya Sen (also a past and present hero), Jon Elster (in Sour Grapes and Ulysses and the Sirens), and Susan Okin seemed (to me) to point the way.

I liked their forms of liberalism. Hayek and the Mont Pelerins (and Posner and Epstein) seemed to be fighting old battles, and in important ways to be wrong. With respect to authoritarianism and tyranny, and the power of the state, of course they were right; but still, those battles seemed old.

But those battles never were old. In important ways, Hayek and the Mont Pelerins (and Posner and Epstein, and Becker and Stigler) were right. Liberalism is a big tent. It’s much more than good to see them under it. It’s an honor to be there with them.

*See https://www.amazon.com/Liberalism-Defense-Cass-R-Sunstein/dp/0262049775/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.WBPh1PeZJLVnrDteLU0fzeAtZPCgyk_SlR7Zw-zFykJVEiCMK-o-Ay0K7OHOpP--Ly2MDdjBd0fuNmIeWT8bPKMDjU0HOXCj1UFSPQQJH1LOWfEJk51Vh4astXMI98Ma0L308J2THrBdWxhhtGGcGr6V2ydmIBEOdY3K7uh-8hwaUxzcBXe7Zpj2ji7Ww8drNWK8Mp_KnZ2d4LqLTFfpLNyqfNNxxRbKQpilkrV65C0.6EMmKtUc0jpICXPtNT4eEX93mM6RCGnCSY3ED3Fw9us&qid=1738852419&sr=8-6