Hayek: A Critique

Published
by
Friedrich Braun
on January 9, 2008
in Conservatism , Libertarianism and Political Philosophy
.

I read this article on Hayek a few months ago in its French original and it’s the best critical analysis of laissez faire, free market capitalism and its principle European guru, Friedrich von Hayek, that I’ve ever read. Unrestrained, savage capitalism is ultimately destructive of all that traditionalists and conservatives pretend to cherish and value, so it’s ironic to usually see them championing what they should normally oppose with with all the strength at their disposal. Alain de Benoist’s piece is quite lengthy so you might want to print it out. Enjoy!

The “Club de l’Horloge” held its 5th annual meeting October 20-22 1989 in Nice, on “Liberalism at the People’s Service.” The general tone was “national liberal” conservative. According to the Club’s president, Henry de Lesquen, “there can be no authentic liberal society as long as the concept of man emerging from the Western, humanist and Christian tradition has not prevailed.”[1] The objective was to contrapose two liberal traditions: Locke’s vs. Hume’s and Burke’s, i.e., a “bad liberalism” leading to libertarian or anarcho-capitalist movements, and a “good liberalism” concerned with preserving tradition and thus reconcilable with a “nationalist” perspective. This politically opportunistic approach legitimates itself by appealing to a long gone author: Friedrich A. (von) Hayek. While the distinction[2] has recently been somewhat mitigated, “national liberalism” (or conservative liberalism) constantly reappears in the history of ideas.[3] A good way to approach this problem is to begin with Hayek’s works.

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