F.A. Hayek | Series of 28 index cards with autograph manuscript notes on economics and other subjects, 1970s-80s

F.A. Hayek

Series of 28 index cards with autograph manuscript notes and statements on economics, political theory, and other subjects

many considering how economic structures drive social change and the power of free markets ("..."Men without common purposes and men which [sic] do not even know of each other can collaborate for their mutual benefit only if they freely dispose over distinct resources..."), others addressing philosophical and sociological questions ("...The error of utilitarianism is that it believes that rules of conduct were adopted because of the recognition of their utility while it was not the men who selected them but that those men who practiced them were selected..."), each written in capitals, most written on rectos only, each lined card 100 x 148mm, altogether 31 pages, [1970s-1980s], a small number of cards sunned at margins

"What has led me to my conviction that socialism is not half right but all wrong[?]"

AN EXCEPTIONAL GROUP OF NOTES BY HAYEK ENCAPSULATING HIS FINAL THOUGHTS ON SOCIETY. These notes seem to be closely related to Hayek's last work of the 1980s, especially The Fatal Conceit. This late work returned to the attack on socialism that had begun with The Road to Serfdom, arguing that there is an intimate connection between the growth of civilisation and private property:

"The possibility of investing in other people's labour proved to be the innovation most productive of lives[.]"

Several of the cards return to one of Hayek's favourite themes, the limitations of intellectual theory: "Paradoxically as it may sound, it was the partial and incomprehended effectiveness of factually false beliefs (about the consequence of wrong action) which enabled man to build so much better than he knew". Societies may not understand the reasons for their own successes, which may lie in the hidden and unintended order of markets and price signals: "Men often do not know to which of their practices they owe their prosperity". He also has choice words on various other subjects including the limitations of statistical analysis ("The economic quantities measured by statistics are not something you can do anything with, nor can they ever operate as causes. They may serve as useful indicators of certain general tendencies but they explain nothing.").

PROVENANCE

F.A. Hayek; thence by descent