Friedrich Hayek was the 20th century’s most significant free market theorist. Over the course of his long career he developed an analysis of the danger that state power can pose to individual liberty. In rejecting much of the liberal tradition’s concern for social justice and democratic participation, Hayek would help clear away many intellectual obstacles to the emergence of neoliberalism in the last quarter of the 20th century.
At the core of this book is a new interpretation of Hayek, one that regards him as an exponent of a neo-Roman conception of liberty and interprets his work as a form of ‘market republicanism’. It examines the contemporary context in which Hayek wrote, and places his writing in the long republican intellectual tradition.
Hayek’s Market Republicanism will be of interest to advanced students and researchers across the history of economic thought, the history of political thought, political economy and political philosophy.
Introduction
Hayek’s Epistemic Economics
Hayek and Republicanism
The Nature of the Emergency
Intellectual Emergency Equipment and Liberal Authoritarianism
Methodology, Context and Parameters
Chapter One: Government and the Business Cycle
Hayek’s Early Work
The Gold Standard and the Central Banks
The Exchange with Keynes
Conclusion
Chapter Two: The Socialist Calculation Debates
From Economics to Political Economy
Planning vs Freedom
The Limits of Hayekian Epistemic Economics
Conclusion
Chapter Three: Liberalism: True and False
The British/Continental Binary
Mill and Rationalism
Questions of History
Conclusion
Chapter Four: Hayek’s Market Republicanism
Hayek and The Republican Tradition
Hayek and Non-Domination
The Limits of Hayekian Liberty
Conclusion
Chapter Five: The Danger of ‘Unlimited’ Democracy
Unlimited Democracy and the Total State
A Self-Limiting Democracy
Arbitrary Power and Governability
Conclusion
Chapter Six: Inflation and Social Justice
Full Employment and the New Morality
The Politics of Deflation
Social Justice and Market Republicanism
Conclusion
Chapter Seven: A Market Republican Constitution
Origins of the Model Constitution
The Model Constitution
A Constitution of Oligarchy
Conclusion
Chapter Eight: Market Republican Money
The Denationalisation of Money
Reception and Viability of the Scheme
Cryptocurrencies
Conclusion
Chapter Nine: Liberal Authoritarianism and Market Republicanism
Isonomia, Demokratia and Demarchy
Endorsing Dictatorship
Dictatorship and the Oligarchic Market Republic
Conclusion
Conclusion
Biography
Sean Irving has a PhD in history from the University of Manchester, UK.
