Hayek delivered his 1933 LSE inaugural lecture lamenting the free market’s decline.
Evidence
In the spring of 1933, nearly a de cade after Keynes had proclaimed the end of laissezfaire, Friedrich Hayek ascended to the podium for his inaugural lecture at the London School of Economics (LSE). His subject, like Keynes’s, was the shift away from classical economics, but in all other respects the circumstances of his pre sen ta tion markedly differed. In the intervening years the world had descended into a state of severe depression, casting the established paradigms of the economics profession’s leading fi gures into doubt even as they assumed increasing prominence in the public sphere. In contrast to Keynes’s genteel Oxford environs, Hayek’s audience consisted of members of an institution that was not yet four de cades old, still populated largely by occasional students, and bordering a slum. Hayek himself was seventeen years Keynes’s ju nior and little known outside small circles of social scientists in En gland and his native Austria. His speech was distinguished by a thick Viennese accent that many in his audience struggled to follow. And although Hayek agreed with Keynes that the social philosophy of the free market was in eclipse, the purpose of his remarks was to lament rather than to celebrate its decline. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 38
Categorization
- XREF: Sets up the MPS history thread — Hayek’s position at LSE and his relation to Keynes’s 1926 ‘end of laissez-faire’ essay are foundational to the Mont Pèlerin story. — connects to: Hayek saw collectivist mass politics as the long-standing destroyer of free markets. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 69
- ADDENDUM: Provides background context relevant to the austerity/neoliberalism reading program, situating Hayek institutionally before the MPS was founded.
Broader Connections
- Hayek saw collectivist mass politics as the long-standing destroyer of free markets.
#corroborates(0.80) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 69