Hayek: A Collaborative Biography

Part XI: Orwellian Rectifiers, Mises' 'Evil Seed' of Christianity and the 'Free' Market Welfare State

Robert Leeson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319774275
• eBook ISBN: 9783319774282
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: Economics

Funded by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, the Mises- and Hayek-inspired 'free' market has adopted 'The Slogan of Liberty' - but should their faith-based assertions be accorded the same epistemological status as a science? If Austrian economics is a branch of divinely revealed 'knowledge' - as the epigone Godfather, Hans Sennholz, insists - what validity do its policy recommendations have? Should those who falsely claim to have PhDs be tax-funded as 'Post-Doctoral Fellows' and 'Professors'?

This volume examines the consequences of the 'free' market colonisation of economics – climate change, financial crises and the corruption of academic discourse

© The Author(s) 2018

Robert LeesonHayek: A Collaborative BiographyArchival Insights into the Evolution of Economicshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77428-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Orwellian Rectifiers and the ‘Free’ Market Welfare State

Robert Leeson^{1, 2}

(1)

Department of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

(2)

Notre Dame Australia University, Fremantle, Australia

Robert Leeson

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

1 Journalists and the ‘Free’ Environmental Market

The Österreichische (Eastern Reich, Austrian) School of Economics was founded by Carl Menger (1840–1921) and developed in its second generation by

• Eugen Böhm Ritter von Bawerk (1851–1914)
• Friedrich ‘Freiherr von’ Wieser (1851–1926).

The third generation was led by

• Othmar Spann (1878–1950)
• Hans Mayer (1879–1955)
• Ludwig ‘Elder von’ Mises (1881–1973)
• Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950).

The fourth generation (and its epigones) was (and, it seems, still is) presided over by

• Friedrich ‘von’ Hayek (1899–1992)
• Murray Rothbard (1926–1995).

Included among the epigones (almost all Mont Pelerin Society, MPS, members) are

• Hillsdale College President, George Roche III (1935–2006); and a (Presuppositionalist?) ‘Misean for life’ Luftwaffe bomber pilot, Hans Sennholz (1922–2007), who ‘almost alone among eminent free enterprise economists, rests his defense of a free society on revelation … divinely revealed information’ (Chapter 7, below);
• three devout Presuppositionalists, the self-appointed ‘Tea Party Economist’ and public stoning theocrat, Gary North (1942–); MPS President, Peter Boettke (1960–); plus Timothy Terrell (1973–), Mises Institute Scholar, Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Senior Fellow, and Heartland Institute ‘policy advisor’ ¹ ;
• Frederick Nymeyer (1897–1981), disciple of Dutch Calvinism, the Christian Reformed Church and the ‘free’ market (of which he was a major funder), Mises’ self-described ‘protégé’ and quasi-follower of the Presuppositionalist, Rousas J. Rushdoony (Chapter 8, below);
• two of Hayek’s University of Chicago Ph.D. students, Ralph Raico (1936–2016) Professor of History, Buffalo State College; and Ronald Hamowy (1937–2012), Professor of Intellectual History, University of Alberta; plus one of Mises’ New York University (NYU) students, George Reisman (1937–), Professor of Economics, Pepperdine University;
• the co-founder of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, editor of the ‘free’ medical-and-drug industry Private Practice, and suspected co-author of the racist and homophobic Ron Paul Newsletters, Llewelyn Rockwell Jr. (1944–); Walter Block (1941–), the editor of the Mises Institute’s I Chose Liberty (2010); plus the official Last Knight of Liberalism biographer and Mises Institute Senior Fellow, Guido Hülsmann (1966–);
• three fund-raising Presidents of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), Leonard Read (1898–1983); Forbes columnist, CIA ‘intelligence officer’ and Mormon founder of FreedomFest, Mark Skousen (1947–); and ‘Lt. Col. Richard M. Ebeling, PhD’ (1950–), international authority on ‘free’ market business ‘ethics’ and NYU 1983–1984 ‘Post Doctoral Fellow’—seventeen years before he obtained a Ph.D.;
• the founder of the Orwellian-named Institute for Humane Studies (IHS), F.A. ‘Baldy’ Harper (1905–1973); his employee, Leonard Liggio (1933–2014), who was also a ‘research professor of law at George Mason University (GMU)’ and an NYU ‘postdoctoral fellows in European Economic History’; the co-founders of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Anthony Fisher (1915–1988), Arthur Seldon (1916–2005), and Ralph Harris (1924–2006); a business sector lobbyist and Hillsdale College Professor of Economics, Arthur Shenfield (1909–1990); plus the founder of the Heritage Foundation and MPS Treasurer and President, Edwin Feulner Jr. (1941–);
• six journalist-activists, Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993), Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Newsweek; John Chamberlain (1903–1995), Fortune, founding editor of The Freeman, and Wall Street Journal editorial page writer (1950–1960); John Davenport (1904–1987) Fortune and editor of Barron’s weekly; George Koether (1907–2006), Mises’ ‘friend’ and ‘longtime ambassador for Misesian economics,’ ² Donald McCormick (1911–1998), aka Richard Deacon, prolific and fraudulent historian, Sunday Times Foreign Manager, and author of Approaching 1984 (1980a); and William H. Peterson (1921–2012) author of ‘Reading for Business’ Wall Street Journal column ³ ;
• two global activists, Brian Crozier (1918–2012), editor of the Economist Foreign Report; and Robert Moss (1946–), an editorial writer and special correspondent for the Economist, editor of the Economist Foreign Report and Daily Telegraph columnist;
• two GMU graduates, Roy Cordato, Lundy Professor of Business Philosophy, Campbell University, and Heartland Institute ‘expert’ ⁴ ; and Alexander Tabarrok (1966–), who together with Ebeling and Boettke promoted the post-communist reconstruction that facilitated the rise of Putin’s ‘Russia of the Oligarchs’; plus
• three official Hayek biographers, the academic fraud, ‘Dr’ Sudha Shenoy (1943–2008); Hayek’s ‘closest collaborator,’ ‘Dr’ Kurt Leube (1943–), Professor of Economics, California State University (CSU) East Bay/Hayward; and Bruce Caldwell (1950–), NYU ‘Post-Doctoral Fellow’ (1981–1982), and the ‘free’ market monopolist of the Hayek Archives.

Although Hayek’s middle brother, Heinrich ‘von’ Hayek, was a card-carrying Nazi Doctor who benefited from the ‘free’ market in freshly executed corpses (Hildebrandt 2013, 2016), he may have been able to provide some insights into the Third Reich because most of the relevant ‘knowledge’ is publically available (and denied only by the extreme Right). In contrast, much of the archival evidence about Friedrich ‘von’ Hayek is being suppressed by his disciples—presumably for fund-raising purposes (Leeson 2015a, Chapter 2). The history of Hayek’s MPS was written by Max Hartwell (1995), the MPS President (1992–1994); and four MPS members were/are official biographers: Shenoy, Leube, Caldwell and William Warren Bartley III (1934–1990). ⁵ This Collaborative Biography is (to put it mildly) non-authorized and edited by a non-MPS member—the second authorized biographer, Hayek’s secretary (1977–1992), Charlotte Cubitt (circa1930–), was also not an MPS member.

Mises (1985 [1927], 54) complained about the Soviet Union: ‘Whether or not permission is granted for a book to be published depends on the discretion of a number of uneducated and uncultivated fanatics who have been placed in charge of the arm of the government empowered to concern itself with such matters.’ In George Orwell’s (1949) Nineteen Eighty Four, ‘Ingsoc’ was Newspeak for English Socialism and the ‘Ministry of Truth’ was devoted to ‘rectifying’ historical records. Hayek (2007 [1944], Chapter 11) wrote on ‘The End of Truth’ and ‘Auslib’ is Newspeak for Austrian Liberty: Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, ‘Deacon’ McCormick, Hamowy, Raico and Shenoy were all Orwellian rectifiers.

John Blundell was, successively, head of the Federation of Small Businesses’ Press, Research and Parliamentary Liaison Office (1977–1982), President of the IHS at GMU (1988–1991), President of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (1987–1991), President of the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundations (1991–1992), and IEA Director General (1993–2014). As IHS Director (Blundell 2014, 100, n. 6), ‘raised the [tax-exempt] $30,000 needed to send Bartley around the world’ to undertake biographical interviews. Bartley (who reportedly died of AIDS-related cancer) spoke openly about his ‘Last Tango in Vienna’ conclusion: Hayek was a ‘closet homosexual’ whose sexual activities with his cousin who became his second wife (but not, presumably, his first wife) resembled his own. The Bartley transcripts are being disciple-suppressed: could this be related to their contents?

The MPS initially consisted of

four Austrian School economists:

• Hayek, Mises, Fritz Machlup, and Lionel Robbins;

five Chicago School economists:

• Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Aaron Director, Harry D. Gideonse and Frank Knight;

fifteen other academics:

• Maurice Allais, Carlo Antoni, Karl Brandt, Stanley Dennison, Walter Eucken, Erich Eyck, Frank D. Graham, Bertrand de Jouvenel, Carl Iversen, John Jewkes, Michael Polanyi, Karl Popper, William E. Rappard, Wilhelm Röpke and François Trévoux;

plus seven businessmen and/or business sector lobbyists:

• H...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Orwellian Rectifiers and the ‘Free’ Market Welfare State
• 2. The Economic Consequences of Blind Faith
• 3. The Politicization of Academia
• 4. ‘Financial Considerations’ and the ‘Free’ Academic Market
• 5. ‘Consistent Doctrine,’ ‘The Morals of the Market,’ and the ‘Filthy Load of Pinks’
• 6. The Fall of Left Utopia and the Rise of ‘Free’ Market Euphoria
• 7. The Sovietization of American Universities: ‘Intellectual Orgies’ and ‘the “Nonconcept” of Education’
• 8. Mises’ ‘Evil Seed’ of Christianity
• 9. ‘German Villains and Austrian Victims’
• 10. Who Lies Behind the ‘Free’ Market?
• Back Matter