The 1974 Hayek-Myrdal Nobel Prize

Abstract

I was aware of Friedrich Hayek even when an undergraduate, and as a rather muddled left-winger (recently radicalized by Suez) I ‘knew’ he was on the ‘other side’, one of those responsible for the prolongation of the Great Depression and the author of a book called The Road to Serfdom (1944) which was a right-wing attack on the welfare state. However, I actually read almost nothing by him, nor was I ever asked to — his Introduction to Paper Credit was the only exception here, in my third undergraduate year at the LSE, probably at Lionel Robbins’ suggestion. I don’t recall being troubled in the least by the evident contrast between the even-tempered scholarship of the latter work and the allegedly repellant nature of Hayek’s work in general.