Hayek endorsed Lippmann’s The Good Society unreservedly, seeing his views confirmed

Evidence

Hayek’s response to the proofs of The Good Society expressed, in contrast to the positive but somewhat more reserved reviews from Knight and Simons, an unqualifi ed endorsement of Lippmann’s arguments. Hayek wrote to Lippmann that he expected from his readings of the serialized portions of the book that he would “be in complete agreement with the critical parts,” but it was “a pleasant surprise that I found myself in almost equally complete agreement, even to points of detail, with the constitution section.” He went so far as to express par tic u lar enthusiasm for Lippmann’s positive proposals, noting that he had “always regarded it as the fatal error of classical Liberalism that it interpreted the rule that the state should only provide a semipermanent framework most conducive to the effi cient working of private institutions as meaning that the existing legal framework must be regarded as unalterable.” In one of the rarest of scholarly experiences, Hayek had found a book that perfectly conformed with his evolving views. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 164

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies how Hayek distinguished the flexible legal framework of classical liberalism from rigidly fixed existing law — a key conceptual boundary for the emergent neoliberal doctrine.
• XREF: connects to: Austrian economic readings converted Lippmann against planned economies by 1937 — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 154; Lippmann’s Good Society framework shaped Hayek’s later political philosophy — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 163; Lippmann’s The Good Society was intellectually indebted to Austrian economics via Hayek — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 154