Life as Art -- An Economist's Morality Play
F.A. Hayek Lectures at Manhattan Institute
F. A. Hayek wrote "The Road to Serfdom", causing Political Economy Prof. Robert Skidelsky’s lecture for the Manhattan Institute on June 14, 2006 to include references to "Serfdom" as a term of art purposely chosen. Prior to taking the podium, Lawrence Mone - Manhattan Institute then President- said of Hayek that:
Economics is not just a matter of dollars and cents. It is about how to structure society so that each individual can fulfill his own unique God-given potential. It’s about creating a just political order, a healthy culture, the rule of law, limited government. In short, its about human freedom. Hayek understood markets don’t act in a vacuum. That market and morality are not just related but inseparable from each other. When one reads Hayek, you cant help but be overwhelmed by the sense of moral clarity.
Also emphasized in Mone’s opening remarks was the Hayek essay entitled "The Intellectuals and Socialism". Mone commented that in it, Hayek wrote:
The movement toward Socialism is primarily the result of bad ideas having taken root among the Intellectual class. Hayek understood that to defeat a bad idea, the best way is to put a better one in it’s place.
When Lord Skidelsky - world authority on Keynesian Economic Theory in opposite to Hayek - recounted how Winston Churchill, then Thatcher, and then Reagan took up Hayek economics, it was prompted by having witnessed FDR in the United States and the British Labor Party’s fall from grace in their pursuit of all things Keynesian. On her re-read of "Serfdom", Lord Skidelsky relates, that the scales fell from Thatcher’s eyes. It was then, he recalls that Reagan coined the well accepted phrase about how the New Deal and Great Society left a legacy that required people to work more hours of their day for the Federal government than for themselves. He intended to change that.
Using "The Road to Serfdom" theme, Lord Skidelsky brings full circle the political economic morality play that has evolved from the juxtaposition of Hayek and his opposite, Keynes’ economics. The basic premise of the morality play generally, is one in which an "everyman" character who is easy to relate to makes a journey and is influenced by characters along the way, eventually gaining some kind of personal integrity. (Definition, Wisegeek On-line Dictionary).
The Hayek version of what is in store for "everyman" warned that if employment is destroyed by oppressive inflationary means, capitalism gives way to communism or totalitarianism. That was the very road we must avoid at any price was a strong Hayek plea. In 1974, he received the Nobel Prize in Economics.. To go down that road as a culture, might be our "everyman" journey. Who will be our influence?
Skidelsky deftly points out the book’s reference to serfdom in the title cannot be considered an accident. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, serfdom is defined as a condition of bondage or modified slavery. Serfs were people in whose labor, landowners held property rights. In pre-revolutionary Russia, Sidelsky explains, a landowner’s estate was often determined by the number of souls he owned.
In other words, in feudalistic times, one had to remain in the same place and job to work off what was owed to the landowner. According to Lord Skidelsky, "this feudal relationship started in the late Roman Empire but gave way over centuries to private property and free labor. To be free of serfdom, one was free to sell one’s land and work where one pleased".
Comparing these understandings to the current mortgage meltdown where the government will provide the means by which to save one’s mortgage through the new loan modification program, the government may be considered the mortgagee. Hayek might surmize this arrangement might seem eerily reminiscent of those "good old days" of feudalism. In the current day and age, the home owner might find confined to do what the government decides when lending money. How much of one’s life and life dreams might be negotiated or coerced away a Hayek adherent might ask. How much will the homeowner be able to pay back at reasonable rates and times while remaining in debt to the powers that be.
The next thing we may find is a reprise in the film industry and the afternoon matinee. Filmgoers may once again see the the landlord tying the maiden to the railroad tracks in an effort to collect the rent. Who will the hero to come along and untie this impending bondage? Stay tuned for the rest of the on-going series. It is likely Hayek is turning over in his grave with this latest version of a modern morality play. .
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