Volker Fund wanted an American Road to Serfdom pitched at near-literacy level
Evidence
Luhnow agreed to underwrite Hayek’s trip and emphasized once more that his primary objective was to find someone to compose a text that a layperson could comprehend, a plan for “a workable society of free enterprise.” He suggested the book How We Live by Fred G. Clark (1944) as a stylistic model for the American Road to Serfdom. One doubts if Hayek had ever seen a copy, for if he had, he would have immediately soured on Luhnow. How We Live was a large-print book, with didactic pictures facing each page of “text,” which itself consisted of single-sentence paragraphs written for people who still moved their lips as they read. The quality of argument resembled a fourth-grade civics textbook. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 738
Categorization
- SHARE: The How We Live stylistic model is a delicious detail for anyone who studies mid-century conservative publishing or philanthropy.
- QUESTION: Worth chasing: did Hayek ever see How We Live, and how did his final American Road differ from this model in practice?
- XREF: connects to: The Volker Fund redirected a charity into American conservative intellectual politics — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 716; The Volker Fund bankrolled FEE as a libertarian propaganda outlet — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 758; Volker Fund pushed neoliberal reformulation to serve corporate Cold War interests — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 762 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Aaron Director failed to deliver the planned American Road to Serfdom
#expands(0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1098