Hayek: A Collaborative Biography

Murray Rothbard, Hayek’s fourth generation Austrian School co-leader, proclaimed: ‘we can learn a great deal from Lenin and the Leninists.’ For purposes of ‘cadre development,’ they needed a ‘journal, a Society of Austrian Economists, and a favourable graduate department.’ ‘Conspiratorial silence’ was also required—including suppressing information about Hayek’s and Mises’ mental illnesses. On non-interference grounds, Hayek defended the ‘civilization’ of apartheid from the American ‘fashion’ of ‘human right’—but routinely interfered with a variety of countries to promote his re-feudalization agenda. After ‘German Austrian citizens,’ ‘equal before the law in all respects’ was forcibly imposed on Austrian nobles, Austrian ‘scholars’ continued to use aristocratic incentives to defend the ‘free’ market: ‘Noblemen owned the estates over which they hunted and therefore suffered capital losses if they failed to preserve their game.’ During the resulting Global Financial Crisis, Alan Greenspan acknowledged a ‘flaw’: ‘Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.’

Two concepts of civilization continue to compete: achieved versus ascribed status. The British branch of the neoclassical school endorses one vehicle; the Austrian branch the other. The British branch tends to embrace Pigouvian externality taxes; the Austrian branch embraces blind faith: ‘what we lack is a liberal Utopia’ where ‘for practically all regulations the costs are greater than the benefits. It is simpler to argue against regulations as such’—as Hayek put it. Or as Rothbard put it: the junk bond criminal, Michael Milken, was ‘the most creative financial innovator of our time.’ The British branch embraces tax-funded compulsory education; Mises provided neo-feudal foundation for Liberalism in the [Austrian] Classical Tradition: ‘There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education. Public funds must not be used for such purposes.’ The British branch has genuinely acquired academic credentials; while the Austrian branch award themselves doctorates and ‘Post-Doctoral Fellowships’ at, for example, New York University and Stanford University.

Mises’ motto was ‘Do not give into evil, but proceed ever more boldly against it’—one of his targets was the ‘böse Saat’—‘evil seed’—of Christianity. In 1922, Mises declared that the Church must liberate itself from ‘the words of the Scriptures’ because the First Estate (the clergy) had failed to prop-up the neo-feudal social hierarchy which, until 1918, had provided the foundations of his intergenerational entitlement program: ‘All efforts to find support for the institution of private property in general and private ownership of the means of production in particular, in the teachings of Christ are quite vain.’ In 1927, Mises found a replacement: ‘The victory of Fascism in a number of countries is only an episode in the long series of struggles over the problem of property.’ The ‘Fascists’ praised by Mises included ‘Germans and Italians,’ ‘Ludendorff and Hitler.’

In 1938, almost 100% of Austrians voted in favour of Anschluss with Germany; and then, Eastern ReichThird Reich Austrians—who comprised only 8% of the total population—rapidly became disproportionately represented as SS members, concentration camp staff and commanders. Austrian territory was the road to serfdom for the 800,000 victims who were compelled to work as war-time slave labourers (many of whom were murdered as the Allies advanced). This history was rectified by the war-time Austrian National Committee which united all Austrian ‘rightwingers’ and provided them with political representation in Washington. One of their successes was the proclamation of ‘Austrian Day’ (25 July 1942) by twelve U.S. State Governors (the ‘dissociation of German villains and Austrian victims’). Otto the Habsburg Pretender—Opus Dei’s candidate as monarch to rule over a united Catholic Europe—was the leading force behind this Orwellian rectification. In 1980, Hayek and Brian Crozier also used ‘unscrupulous methods’ to try and get Habsburg’s associate, Franz-Josef Strauss, elected as West German Chancellor. They were assisted and funded by the carbon lobby and the Heritage Foundation, where ‘scholars’ ‘hovered’ around Hayek ‘with a combination of delight and awe that makes them seem like small boys around a football hero.’