Francis Fukuyama, whose recent book is fatally flawed by his presumption that political orders build society, reviews Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty in the New York Times without giving the reader much evidence that he actually read the book. For one thing, he critiques Hayek as if Hayek was a consistent Rothbardian. Moreover, the whole burden of Hayek’s book is to address the precise point that Fukuyama accuses him of neglecting (how we can know that the state will fail at planning).
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/16825/hayek-as-hubristic-cartesian/
Hayek as hubristic Cartesian?
Previous post: Observe the Mises Wiki in Action
Next post: Go Ahead, Throw Your Vote Away!
{ 17 comments }
He also doesn’t give much evidence that he’s noticed any historical event that’s actually happened in the past 30 years:
“Voters in the United States and Europe took seriously the arguments about the dangers of big government and reversed course after the 1980s.”
I think I must have missed something…
I see a lot of Fukuyama types in academia. They claim to have read a book, but what they really do is skim it and use it as a launch pad to ride their hobby horses. Fukuyama clearly doesn’t know anything about Hayek, and yet because he has skimmed some of his books he thinks he can sell himself as an authority. The dishonesty and hubris is astounding!
If Mises.org had a “like” button, I would have clicked it for this comment.
I notice Mises Canada has the feature of being able to up- and down-vote comments, but the rest of the layout is a bit confusing.
http://www.mises.ca/posts/articles/poor-relief-in-ancient-rome/
Now that you mention it, my acquaintance who got a PhD in economics in the 1950s admitted to me that when his papers (I gather they were from the Chicago School and relating to the supposed velocity of money) were criticized for having insufficient references, the supervising prof gave him a list of titles and without reading let alone absorbing or digesting them he simply shoved them in as references at the end of the paper, QED. He said that nobody ever called him out over this practice. This was at a prestigious, private university.
Academia acts as though plagiarism is the only sin academics can commit. It’s the least of their sins. There seems to be an unwritten code of conduct that I won’t call attention to your fundamental dishonesty if you don’t call attention to mine.
That reminds me of the way that Keynes dishonestly caricatured ‘human action’ when it came out. For being fantastically outgunned, lied about, and ignored by the govt, Austrian Economics is doing quite well for itself.
George Soros’ excuse for not having read the book is that he has dozens of billions of dollars (see Soros’ embarrassing presentation at the Cato Institute last week).
What’s Fukuyama’s excuses for this disgraceful performance?
I’d say that being a billionaire, it should be pretty easy to afford someone to Cliff’s Notes Hayek’s work instead of appearing ignorant in front of a crowd
Anger over Fukuyama’s dishonesty almost blinded me to his logical fallacies. Fukuyama’s appeal to his readers is based on an appeal to authority. He doesn’t bother to grapple with Hayek’s ideas. He merely wants to tarnish Hayek’s authority enough to prevent people from reading the book. To do that, he brings in other authorities who disagree with Hayek.
Next he uses the ad hominem attack by bringing up Argentina. So Hayek endorsed a dictator. What does that have to do with his economics!
Maybe worst of all Fukuyama descends further into dishonesty by insinuating that Hayek knew about the regime’s mass murders at the time. He didn’t. No one did.
If anyone desires a lesson in propaganda, Fukuyam offers an excellent example.
I seem not to find where Fukuyama brings uup Argentina … Where’s that?
I’m sorry! I meant Chile!
I have read too many critical reviews of books that I have also read, sometimes twice to make sure I understood the author, and come away with two feelings: 1) The reviewer didn’t actually read the book or 2) the reviewer didn’t understand what the author wrote. Since I know for a fact that the reviewer is a very intelligent person and could understand the author if he tried, I’m forced to accept #1.
A good example is Milton Friedman. He called Hayek’s “Pure Theory of Capital” incromprehensible. Now I am no where near as intelligent as Friedman, but I read the book twice because there were some points I didn’t get in the first try and there is very little that I found incomprehensible. It’s common sense. The only conclusion I can come to is that Friedman didn’t read the book.
I’ve seen no evidence Milton Friedman ever read _TPTofC_. Very likely his wife Rose did read the book — she at one time was doing a dissertation on capital theory under Frank Knight. Frank Knight was irrationally crazed about Bohm-Bawerk and the Austrian tradition in capital theory. And it’s clear Knight never understood it. This set a certain tone in Chicago ….
Interesting! I’m not sure where I got that Friedman quote. It has been too long. So you think Friedman was working from his wife’s recollection of what Knight had told her?
I really have grave doubts about the whole genre of the book review as it has emerged. It is hardly ever the case when when I’ve read a book, and then read reviews, I have a sense that the reviewer was really serious about grappling with the book at all. Mostly reviewers read the first pages and then riff. It is a disgrace. I really can’t imagine how anyone would or could do such a disgusting thing, but it is very common Fukuyama just riffed on Hayek, maybe read the jacket copy. this is all to common.
Another thing I can’t stand is how academic reviewers who have read the book believe that they have to try to make some criticism. Most of the time, the criticism is actually answered in the book. And most of the time, the reviewer lacks the competence to make any criticism at all. And yet they do, just to stay true to the stupid form as it has emerged.
Amazon reviews are more trustworthy in general – at least those who write without agendas.
By the way, David Gordon is a highly unusual exception here. Authors LOVE his reviews and his criticisms because he takes the author and book seriously. But this makes him highly unusual in this world.
The nice little book Japanese Higher Education as Myth outlines the author’s thesis that most of the world’s educational systems are simulations of what the general population believes real intellectual work looks like, just good enough to fool the casual observer who has no idea about the workings of the system. I suspect American book reviews work much the same way.
Comments on this entry are closed.