Hayek’s memoirs downplayed how receptive he was to Luhnow’s commission
Evidence
At the meeting Luhnow sought to commission Hayek to write The American Road to Serfdom. The original text had been composed with a British audience in mind and perhaps had been pitched at too elevated a level of discourse for American audiences. Subsequently, Hayek in his later book Hayek on Hayek claims that he did not take Luhnow’s offer seriously, but says that he spoke at length with his “great friend” Henry Simons about it in Chicago (Hayek 1994, 127). Hayek also claimed that he “had to report to Luhnow in the course of the journey that I couldn’t do anything about it,” and that he initially declined Luhnow’s offer after returning to England. Nevertheless, Luhnow cabled back and gave Hayek the authority to determine the course of the project, including subcontracting the authorship of the revised Road, to which Hayek agreed (Hayek 1994, 127-128). However, an epistolary exchange between Hayek and Luhnow challenges Hayek’s personal reminiscences: apparently, Hayek had been much more receptive to the opportunity, because he regarded it as potentially constituting something much more ambitious. Hayek actually wrote Luhnow from Chicago on May 3, 1945, before returning to England: My friend, Mr. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 717
Categorization
- CANDY: A neat irony: the famous free-market thinker quietly misremembered his own enthusiasm for corporate funding.
- XREF: connects to: Stigler’s memoir mischaracterized the founding meeting’s stated purpose — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 864
Broader Connections
- Stigler’s memoir mischaracterized the founding meeting’s stated purpose
#corroborates(0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 864