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Book part
Publication date: 30 October 2020

Advising the “Devil” or “Preaching” to the Public? The Controversy Over Milton Friedman’s 1975 Visit to Chile

Andrew Farrant

This chapter explores a number of relatively unknown aspects of the controversy over Milton Friedman’s March 1975 visit to Chile through the analytical framework provided…

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This chapter explores a number of relatively unknown aspects of the controversy over Milton Friedman’s March 1975 visit to Chile through the analytical framework provided by James M. Buchanan’s late 1950s assessment of the economist-physician analogy. The chapter draws upon a range of archival and neglected primary sources to show that the topics which generally rear their head in any contemporary discussion of Friedman’s visit to Chile – for example, whether it is appropriate to provide policy advice to a dictator – were aired in a largely private mid-1970s exchange between Friedman and a number of professional associates. In particular, the controversy over Friedman and Chile began several months before Friedman arrived in Santiago.

Details

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on Sir James Steuart: The Political Economy of Money and Trade
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542020000038C009
ISBN: 978-1-83867-707-7

Keywords

  • Milton Friedman
  • James Buchanan
  • Chile
  • Advice
  • Democracy
  • Neoliberalism

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Book part
Publication date: 23 July 2016

Romance or No Romance? Adam Smith and David Hume in James Buchanan’s “Politics without Romance”

Andrew Farrant and Maria Pia Paganelli

Can we model politics as exclusively based on self-interest, leaving virtue aside? How much romance is there in the study of politics? We show that James Buchanan, a…

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Can we model politics as exclusively based on self-interest, leaving virtue aside? How much romance is there in the study of politics? We show that James Buchanan, a founder of public choice and constitutional political economy, reintroduces a modicum of romance into politics, despite claiming that his work is the study of “politics without romance”: Buchanan’s model needs an ethical attitude to defend rules against rent-seeking.

We claim that Adam Smith, more than David Hume, should be considered one of the primary intellectual influences on Buchanan’s public choice and constitutional political economy. It is commonly believed that Hume assumes in politics every man ought to be considered a knave, making him an influence on Buchanan’s idea of politics without romance. Yet, it is Smith who, like Buchanan, describes rent-seeking and suggests that public virtues may be the remedy through which good rules maintaining liberty and prosperity can be generated and enforced. Smith, like Buchanan, rejects sole reliance on economic incentives: the study of politics needs some romance.

Details

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A013
ISBN: 978-1-78560-960-2

Keywords

  • James Buchanan
  • David Hume
  • Adam Smith
  • benevolence
  • constitutions

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Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2009

Road to Serfdom The servants of our own machinery? F. A. Hayek's caldwell's Edition of Hayek's

Andrew Farrant

As Bruce Caldwell (2007, p. 1) notes, Hayek's classic text had a “decidedly inauspicious” beginning. In spring 1933, Hayek wrote a memorandum (Nazi socialism) to Sir…

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As Bruce Caldwell (2007, p. 1) notes, Hayek's classic text had a “decidedly inauspicious” beginning. In spring 1933, Hayek wrote a memorandum (Nazi socialism) to Sir William Beveridge – then Director of the London School of Economics – arguing that National Socialism represented the “culmination” (Hayek, [1933] 2007, p. 245) of earlier pro-socialist trends. As Hayek puts it, National Socialism was[The] ultimate and necessary outcome of a process of development in which the other nations have been for a long time steadily following Germany…The gradual extension of the field of state activity, the increase in restrictions on international movements of both men and goods, sympathy with central economic planning and the widespread playing with dictatorship ideas, all tend in this direction. (Hayek, [1933] 2007, p. 248, italics added)

Details

A Research Annual
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-4154(2009)00027A019
ISBN: 978-1-84855-656-0

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Book part
Publication date: 19 August 2019

Introduction to a Collection of Reviews and Commentaries on Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains

Andrew Farrant and Scott Scheall

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Including a Symposium on Ludwig Lachmann
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542019000037B015
ISBN: 978-1-78769-862-8

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Book part
Publication date: 19 August 2019

The Allure and Tragedy of Ideological Blinders Left, Right, and Center: A Review Essay of Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains ☆

Peter J. Boettke

Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the…

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Nancy Maclean’s Democracy in Chains (2017) is an attempt to provide a narrative arc for the rise of free market ideas in political action during the second half of the twentieth century and into the first decades of the twenty-first century. The central character in her narrative is neither F.A. Hayek nor Milton Friedman, let alone Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises, but James M. Buchanan, the 1986 Nobel Prize winner in economics. MacLean argues that rather than extol the virtues of the market economy as Hayek and Friedman did before him, Buchanan focused on the dysfunctions of politics. Due to a series of argumentative fallacies and failures that follow from her ideological blinders, I argue that MacLean’s attempt is a missed opportunity to seriously engage some very pressing issues in public choice and political economy and understand how James Buchanan attempted to resolve them in a democratic manner. As such, Democracy in Chains is not only a mischaracterization of Buchanan and his project but also a poignant lesson to us all about how ideological blinders can subvert even the sincerest effort to unearth truth in the social sciences and the humanities.

Details

Including a Symposium on Ludwig Lachmann
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542019000037B016
ISBN: 978-1-78769-862-8

Keywords

  • Democracy in Chains
  • James Buchanan
  • Nancy MacLean
  • public choice
  • political economy
  • institutions and archive
  • B31
  • H11
  • Y3

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Book part
Publication date: 30 October 2020

Prelims

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Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology: Including a Symposium on Sir James Steuart: The Political Economy of Money and Trade
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542020000038C002
ISBN: 978-1-83867-707-7

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Book part
Publication date: 19 August 2019

Poking a Hornets’ Nest: The Debate on Democracy in Chains ☆

Gary Mongiovi

In Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean draws attention to the influence that James M. Buchanan’s work has had on the political economic discourse of the past half century…

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In Democracy in Chains, Nancy MacLean draws attention to the influence that James M. Buchanan’s work has had on the political economic discourse of the past half century. Buchanan and his collaborators in the Virginia Political Economy tradition have provided intellectual firepower for efforts to delegitimize democratically sanctioned policies aimed at alleviating the dysfunctional consequences of market activity. While MacLean’s account contains some well-documented inaccuracies, her characterization of Buchanan’s agenda is broadly accurate. This chapter assesses Buchanan’s economics in light of the themes raised by MacLean. His work, we shall argue, is a modern manifestation of what Marx termed “vulgar economy,” that is, ruling-class ideology posing as science.

Details

Including a Symposium on Ludwig Lachmann
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542019000037B020
ISBN: 978-1-78769-862-8

Keywords

  • Buchanan
  • MacLean
  • classical liberalism
  • vulgar economics
  • Virginia political economy tradition
  • democracy and capitalism

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Book part
Publication date: 31 July 2008

Acknowledgments

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A Research Annual
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(08)26026-8
ISBN: 978-1-84663-904-3

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Book part
Publication date: 17 July 2006

Notes on the fifth summer institute for the preservation of the study of the history of economics

Warren J. Samuels

I was invited by Sandra Peart and David Levy to take part in the Summer Institute held from 26 to 30 July 2004 at George Mason University. After some discussion I agreed…

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I was invited by Sandra Peart and David Levy to take part in the Summer Institute held from 26 to 30 July 2004 at George Mason University. After some discussion I agreed to give two lectures, on my project on the use of the concept of the invisible hand and on the theory of economic policy of Lionel Robbins and Friedrich Hayek, and to participate in a public “conversation” with James M. Buchanan before the same group. Subsequently, I accepted Buchanan's invitation to have a videotaped private interview by him.

Details

Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(06)24020-3
ISBN: 978-0-76231-349-5

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Book part
Publication date: 23 July 2016

List of Contributors

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Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542016000034A017
ISBN: 978-1-78560-960-2

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