No good deed goes unpunished? Revisiting the Hayek-Samuelson exchange over Hayek's alleged 'inevitability' thesis

Andrew Farrant () and Edward McPhail ()
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Andrew Farrant: Dickinson College - Department of Economics
Edward McPhail: Dickinson College - Department of Economics

History of Economic Ideas, 2010, vol. 18, issue 3, 87-104

Abstract: Much controversy exists over whether F. A. Hayek posited an inevitability thesis – interventionist policy would supposedly mutate into full-blown command planning – in The Road to Serfdom. This paper argues that much of the confusion over Hayek’s alleged inevitability thesis is generated by the particular tenor that different scholars impute to Hayek’s frequent use of inevitability and similar phraseology. Drawing upon Hayek’s early 1980’s exchange with Paul Samuelson over Hayek’s inevitability thesis, we provide evidence that suggests Hayek and Samuelson both understood Hayek to be positing a particular variant of the inevitability thesis: the thesis that dogged persistence with interventionist policy would ultimately lead to command planning.

Date: 2010
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hid:journl:v:18:y:2010:3:4:p:87-104

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